😅I don’t really have any ideas my damn self but I’d love sum mean!olderbf!smoke
꣑ৎ mean!olderbf!smoke who makes you watch him finger you like You’re on your back with your legs forced wide, thighs trembling, pussy already dripping down onto the sheets. Smoke’s between them, one heavy hand pinning your hip to the mattress so you can’t squirm away, the other two thick fingers buried knuckle-deep inside you. He works them slow and mean, curling just enough to make your walls clench, then dragging them out so you can hear how wet you are.
“Look,” he orders, voice low and rough. “Eyes on my hand. Watch me play with this greedy little pussy.”
You try to turn your face away. He doesn’t allow it. His free hand clamps around your jaw and forces your head down so you’re staring straight between your own spread legs. His fingers are shiny with you. He spreads them open, shows you the stretch, then shoves them back in hard enough that your breath punches out.
“Pathetic,” he mutters, almost amused. “Soaking my hand already and I’ve barely started. You always this easy, or is it just me?”
He fucks those fingers into you in a steady, punishing rhythm, the wet sound filthy in the quiet room. Every time he pulls out he makes sure you see it—how your pussy clings, how it gapes for a second before he fills it again. His thumb finds your clit and presses down, rolling it in tight circles that make your hips jerk.
“Don’t you fucking look away.” His voice drops colder. “You wanted this. You came crawling. Now watch me play with my pussy.”
He adds a third finger without warning. The stretch burns and you cry out. He laughs under his breath, mean and quiet, and keeps going, scissoring them inside you, stretching you open while his thumb grinds your clit without mercy. You’re dripping down his wrist. He makes sure you see every drop.
“Listen to that. You hear my pussy talking, baby .” He leans in closer, breath hot against your thigh. “You gonna cum on my fingers while I make you watch? Gonna cream all over my hand like the desperate little slut you are?”
You try to close your legs. He shoves them wider with his shoulders and pumps harder, knuckles slamming against you, the wet slap of it loud. His eyes stay locked on your face the whole time, watching every twitch, every broken sound you make.
“That’s it. Keep those pretty eyes open. Watch me finger-fuck this messy pussy until you can’t take it. Until you’re shaking and crying and still begging for more.” He twists his wrist, curls hard against that spot that makes your vision white out. “Because I’m not stopping. Not until I’ve played with it as long as I want.”
His fingers keep moving—slow, then brutal, then slow again just to hear you whimper. He spreads them inside you, shows you how open you are, then drives back in deep. Your clit is swollen and throbbing under his thumb. You’re close and he knows it. He can feel the way you flutter around him.
“Go on,” he taunts, voice dripping contempt. “Come for me while you watch. Make a mess. Show me exactly how filthy this pussy is when I treat it like it deserves.”
He doesn’t stop. He just keeps working you, mean and relentless, forcing you to stare at every thrust of his fingers until your thighs are shaking and your pussy is clenching hard around him, and there’s nowhere left to hide from how thoroughly he’s using you.
Ok what if Michael had a longtime gf (2 year age gap/ she’s younger) during thriller era all the way to bad era. She gets tired of him constantly forgetting about their dates and how he starts to act distant and always out with different models. They break up during the beginning of bad era. In 1988 she dates again and gets married in 1989. He finds out through his brothers that she had gotten married. All of his sisters attended, even his mother and he didn’t know. He starts getting mad she’s married and presses her until she breaks and she has to divorce her man bcs Michael wants her back.
you’d been with michael since the late seventies, sticking by his side through every high and low. from the rise of thriller all the way into the bad era, you were there, right in the shadows. you preferred it that way. while michael lived for the spot lights and dreamt of becoming the biggest star the world had ever seen, your dream was far simpler.
michael was your dream.
after a lifetime of feeling completely alone, all you wanted was a future with him. marriage, kids, quiet mornings, a home filled with warmth. but as the years went on, that future felt further and further away. michael was always in the studio. dates were forgotten, promises were broken, and every time you tried to press him about it, he’d give you the same sweet excuse. he’d hold your hands, look into your eyes, and tell you that the music was his career, that he was doing all of this to build a life for the two of you.
so you let it happen. over and over and over again.
then came the distance. it wasn't just late studio nights anymore, you barely spent any time together at all. suddenly, every paper you picked up showed him with brooke shields or surrounded by world famous models. you were tired of feeling like a ghost in your own relationship.
so you called it off.
breaking up with him was the hardest thing you’d ever done. you were completely devastated, but with the first leg of the bad tour launching, you figured he’d be fine. in your heart, you believed he loved his music more than he’d ever loved you anyway.
getting over him wasn’t easy, but you survived. you built a new life, piece by piece. and in 1989, you got married to a man named dan.
dan was nice. he was simple, quiet, and stable. he wasn't michael, not even close. but you liked him, and you knew that with enough time, you could love him. rebbie, janet, and toya all showed up to the small ceremony to support you, knowing how much you’d been through over the years. michael didn't know about the wedding until marlon’s big mouth accidentally spilled the beans weeks later.
when the truth hit him, michael was furious. he was heartbroken that his own family had kept it from him, and it stung even worse knowing his sisters had actually attended. the realization slammed into him all at once: he had lost you, and he couldn't breathe without you. he missed you so much it felt like a physical ache. he needed you back.
the chase started off subtle. red roses left on your doorstep in the morning. then came delicate jewelry boxes, every gift accompanied by a handwritten note.
after the fourth delivery, you couldn't take it anymore. you picked up the phone late one night and dialed his private line.
“michael, i’m married. please stop,” you said the second he answered, your voice trembling slightly.
there was a quiet pause on the other end of the line.
“do you love him?” he asked softly.
you let out a long, heavy sigh. “he’s my husband, michael.”
you hung up before he could say another word, pressing your forehead against the cold wall.
you thought that would be the end of it, but michael had made up his mind. he’d spent years fighting for his career, but now he was going to fight for you and he wasn't going to stop until you were back in his arms.
the next day, he showed up at your doorstep.
you froze as you pulled the door open, staring at him in disbelief. "michael, what are you doing here? my husband will be home any minute," you whispered, frantically glancing past him down the quiet street.
"tell me you love him," michael said, his eyes searching your face.
"what?"
"tell me you love him, and i’ll go. i’ll leave you alone, i’ll stop with the gifts, i’ll stop trying to win you back. but, baby…"
"he’s my husband, michael," you said, tears forming in your eyes as all the pain you’d buried came rushing right back to the surface.
"i know that. you keep saying that… but do you love him?"
you couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. the tears spilled over, falling freely down your hot cheeks.
michael stepped closer, reaching up to gently take your face into his warm hands. his thumbs brushed away the dampness on your cheeks. "come home to me, please. i’m not the same man anymore. i promise, i’ll spend the rest of my life proving it to you, just come back."
"michael, i can’t. i’m married now," you sobbed, the words pulling at your chest.
"you were supposed to be married to me."
"yeah, and whose fault is that?" you choked out, your voice cracking. "i wanted nothing more than to have a life with you, michael. it was supposed to be me and you, living in this big ole house. it was supposed to be us trying for babies. it was supposed to be you, michael."
you dropped your head into your hands, sinking into the grief of what could have been as you cried uncontrollably.
"it can still be us," he pleaded, his own voice breaking as he pulled your hands down from your face so he could hold them tight against his chest. "baby, i love you. i’ve never stopped loving you. i was stupid, i was selfish. you’re the only thing that matters to me. not the music, not the tours, not the fans. you, lovey. just you.”
he pulled you into his arms, wrapping you up in the tight, safe grip you had missed for so long. you buried your face into his shoulder, smelling the familiar scent of his cologne, feeling the rapid beat of his heart against yours.
"i'll take care of everything, you won't ever have to feel alone again," he whispered into your hair, his hands rubbing your back just like he used to. "just tell me you still love me. please, baby. tell me there's still a chance."
you stood there in the doorway, caught between the safe, quiet life you’d built with dan and the deep, unforgettable love you still held for michael.
you pulled away from michael the second you heard the crunch of tires on the driveway, frantically wiping the hot tears from your face.
"hey baby," dan called out cheerfully as he got out of the car, slamming the door shut.
you saw michael’s jaw clench tight at the pet name, the exact word he had just whispered to you a minute ago now flying so casually from your husband’s lips.
"i didn’t know we were expecting company," dan said, walking up the porch steps with a easy smile.
"oh, michael was just stopping by," you said, your voice tight as you tried to sound composed.
"yes," michael said, forcing a polite, tight smile toward dan.
"are you staying for dinner? you’re more than welcome to," dan offered, completely oblivious to the heavy tension thick in the air.
"no honey, michael can’t stay," you answered quickly, almost pleadingly looking at michael to just go.
"that’s too bad," dan said, stepping up to put a gentle kiss on your forehead. michael watched every second of it, his eyes darkening as his fist tightened at his side. "it was good to see you, mike," dan called over his shoulder before disappearing into the hallway.
"i’ll call you later, michael," you murmured softly, starting to push the door closed.
but before the latch could click, michael reached out, grabbing the edge of the door and pulling you forward. before you could even process it, his lips were on yours.
panic surged through you. you tried to pull back, terrified that dan would walk back into the entryway, terrified that one glance through the window would break his gentle heart. but the moment michael’s lips pressed firmly against yours, deepening the kiss with all the desperation and years of longing he’d been holding back, every defense you had built up completely shattered.
the gentle, simple life you’d tried so hard to build instantly dissolved. as michael’s hand cupped the back of your neck, pulling you closer into the kiss, you knew the painful truth.
your marriage was over.
michael pulled back just an inch, his heavy breath warm against your lips, his dark eyes staring down into yours with absolute certainty. "i'm not letting you go again," he whispered into the small space between you, his thumb brushing your lower lip.
he finally let go, turning and walking down the steps toward his car without another word, leaving you standing in the doorway with your heart hammering against your ribs.
you closed the door softly and leaned your head against the wood, listening to the quiet sounds of dan moving around in the kitchen.
how do you face your husband knowing everything has just changed?
two weeks felt like two years.
for fourteen endless days, you put on a mask. you smiled at dan across the kitchen table, you asked him about his workday, and you let him wrap his arms around you in bed. but every single time he touched you, every time you made love, your mind drifted right back to michael.
you felt like a monster. dan was a good man. he didn't deserve a wife who was mentally miles away, trapped in the memory of another man’s scent and touch. so every morning, you turned the shower on as hot as it would go, sitting on the cold tile floor and crying softly into the steam so dan wouldn't hear you. you were about to blow up your entire life, destroying a safe, gentle marriage for a chance at a love that had already broken you once before.
by the end of the second week, the guilt was eating you alive. you couldn't keep faking it for another second.
you waited until dan left for work on a friday morning. the house fell dead silent. with shaking hands, you walked over to the telephone, picked up the receiver, and dialed the private number michael had given you years ago. the one he never changed.
"hello?" his voice came through the line, soft and breathless, like he’d been sitting right next to the phone waiting for it to ring.
you squeezed your eyes shut, a tear slipping down your cheek before you could even speak.
"michael," you whispered.
a long, heavy breath escaped him on the other end. "baby," he murmured, his tone thick with relief. "i thought... i was starting to think you weren't going to call."
"i need to see you," you said, your voice trembling. "we need to talk."
"tell me where," he replied without a second of hesitation. "i'll come to you, or i'll send a car right now. anywhere you want, baby. just tell me."
you pulled up to the quiet, hidden lookout point in the hills. the exact spot the two of you used to escape to. back then, it was your secret sanctuary. looking out over the glowing lights of the whole city, it felt like the rest of the world simply didn't exist.
when you stepped out of the car, you saw him. michael was leaning against the hood of his car, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. the moment his eyes landed on you, his posture shifted completely. he looked stunned, breathless, as if he had spent the whole drive up here convincing himself you wouldn't actually show up.
"you really came," he breathed, a small, fragile smile breaking across his face.
you walked over, stopping a few feet away, unable to hide the heavy exhaustion and pain written across your face.
"i miss you, michael. i still love you, i'm just… i'm scared," you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper in the quiet night air. "we’ve tried before and we didn’t work. and dan… i feel terrible."
the mention of the past made michael’s expression soften, a deep flicker of regret passing through his dark eyes. he took a slow step toward you, bridging the space between you, but he didn't grab you right away. he wanted you to see him, to hear him.
"i know," he murmured gently, reaching out to softly take your cold hands into his warm ones. "i know I broke your heart before. i was obsessed with the music, with being the best, and i let the only thing that actually mattered slip right through my fingers. i was a fool, baby."
he squeezed your hands tight, looking straight into your tear-filled eyes.
"i'm not that same person anymore. losing you tore me completely apart. i don't care about the records, the crowds, or the tours if I don't have you to share it with. i swear to you, on my life, if you give me this chance, you will never come second again. never."
a single tear slipped down your cheek as you looked out at the twinkling lights below, thinking of dan sitting back at the house, completely oblivious to the hurricane about to destroy his quiet life.
"he's a good man, michael," you choked out, your throat tight. "he didn't do anything wrong. i'm going to break his heart."
"and i'll hate myself forever for putting you in a position where you have to do that," michael whispered softly, bringing one of your hands up to his lips, kissing your knuckles softly. "but you're living a lie with him, baby. you love me and i love you.”
he gently pulled you in until your forehead rested against his chest. you could hear the fast, heavy beat of his heart.
"come back to me," he pleaded softly into your hair. "let me make it right. let me give you the life we were always supposed to have."
you nodded against his chest, the final thread of hesitation snapping inside you.
“i’m yours, michael,” you whispered, the words heavy and real in the quiet air.
a soft, breathless laugh escaped his lips, sounding half like a sigh of pure relief and half like a sob. he pulled you in tighter, his arms wrapping around yoj, burying his face deep into the crook of your neck. you felt the warm dampness of his own tears against your skin as he held you as if he’d never let you go again.
"i've got you," he breathed, his voice thick with emotion as his hands stroked your hair. "i've got you, baby. i promise you... i'll never let you go again."
﹒ ୨୧◞ 。summary .ᐟ 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?
﹒ ୨୧◞ 。before you interact .ᐟ divorce, mental health struggles, anxiety, a major panic attack that could be upsetting, self sabotage, minor cuts, scrutiny of michael’s looks, grief, codependency, family conflict, co parenting, jealousy, pining, unresolved feelings, age gap in relationship (reader is now 28-29, michael is 37-38). verbal and physical alterations. mentions of substance abuse.
﹒ ୨୧◞ 。disclaimer .ᐟ this series contains depictions of addiction, substance abuse, and deteriorating mental health. this piece is not an accurate depiction of any real life individuals. — 25k word count.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤJune, 1995.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ ㅤPrimetime Live interview, ABC News Studios, New York.
The interview had been going beautifully right up until the last subject change. That’s when things reached the point of no return.
Michael and Lisa Marie sat beside one another, close enough that their elbows occasionally brushed whenever either of them shifted. The room was set up in a way that felt purposefully intimate for the Primetime interview to give viewers a glimpse behind the “spectacle” of their marriage. Michael had been relaxed for most of it, occasionally laughing into his hand when he became embarrassed by a question, his answers wandering into long explanations that Diane Sawyer patiently waited through. Lisa had been quieter but comfortable enough, watching him whenever he spoke with an expression that alternated between affection and amusement whenever he did something silly.
They had already discussed the wedding. The public fascination. The accusations that their marriage was a publicity stunt. Their respective families. The scrutiny surrounding their relationship. Michael had even been coaxed into talking about how difficult it was to have something so personal become something the entire world felt entitled to dissect.
Diane Sawyer leaned forward slightly. “I want to ask you about something else, Michael. Before we part ways.”
His expression changed slightly but Lisa noticed. It was the tiniest little thing—his smile didn’t disappear exactly, but it faltered as his heart skipped a beat, putting him in fight or flight mode. Michael hated when interviewers announced their next question as it usually meant the question was going to be invasive or uncomfortable for him. He was often left feeling bare and violated no matter how much he tried to regulate his inner self.
His eyes dropped for a moment and one hand moved against his knee as he braced for the questioning.
“Your previous relationships have been talked about almost as much, if not more than your marriage to Lisa,” She continued. “And obviously, one of the most significant was your relationship with your former wife—(Name).”
Michael’s gaze remained lowered as he quietly processed her words, his expression giving little away. Beside him, Lisa subtly straightened in her chair before reaching over to give his forearm a reassuring squeeze.
“You were together for several years. You were young, her even younger. I understand that you two had a mentor and apprentice kind of relationship in its early stages.” She pauses briefly. “You eventually built a life together, had a beautiful child. But even after the divorce, people have continued to speculate about the two of you.”
Michael nodded slowly. “Ah.. yes.”
“Do you think that’s fair?”
He took a moment. “I think..” His fingers moved against the golden brace on knee some more. “I think when people see something that was very beautiful.. and then they see it end, they want to understand why. They want a reason. They want somebody to blame.”
Lisa watched the side of his face.
“Was it beautiful?” Diane asked. “Your relationship with (Name), I mean.”
There was no hesitation as he spoke. “Yes.”
One word that felt instinctual and so certain in itself that there was no room to argue what he meant. Lisa’s eyes narrowed at his answer though, and Diane smiled faintly before speaking again. “You don’t hesitate on that.”
“No.” Michael shook his head. “No, I don’t. It was. It really was.” He leaned back slightly, his expression becoming more distant.
“We were very, very close. She knew me before a lot of awful things happened and took.. very good care of me during. She knew me before.. everything became so toxic. Before all the craziness. And she knew me as Michael. Not..” He made a vague gesture toward the room. “This. I mean—she’s a beautiful woman and has a beautiful, kind soul. I will always respect her.”
“You seem very passionate about this.”
“You could say that, yes..”
“And do you think that makes it harder to let go of somebody? Passion?”
Michael’s lips parted and he seemed to consider giving the safe answer. He really did. Lisa could practically see him constructing it in his head. There were plenty of things he could say. He could say that people moved on. He could say that he wished her well. He could say that the past was the past. He could say that he was happily married now.
Instead, he said: “You ever completely let go of people you loved.”
Lisa’s face stilled at his words and Diane caught it immediately, deciding to just go for it:
“Do you still love her?”
There it was—the question. The one they both had probably known was coming from the moment they’d agreed to sit down and have this interview.
Michael gave a small, nervous laugh. “Love changes.”
Diane didn’t let him take the cop out answer, continuing to press him. “That’s not really an answer.”
Michael looked down as Lisa stared at him, rubbing his palms together. “I mean..” He sighed. “There are different kinds of love.”
“Is that what you feel for her now?”
“She’s the mother of my son.”
The interviewer raised her eyebrows. “Well, yes.. but I feel like you’re still not truly answering my questions with a straight answer.”
Michael smiled awkwardly as he looked toward the interviewer again, then briefly toward Lisa almost as though he were checking whether there was a way to navigate this without stepping directly onto a land mine. But Lisa’s expression said there wasn’t.
“I’ll always care about her,” Michael said. “Always.”
“Care?”
“Yes.”
“Only care?”
His eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger but concentration. “I don’t know if you can put a word on it.”
Diane smiled. “That’s interesting.”
“How so..?”
“Because you seem very sure that what you had with her was beautiful, that you still care about her, and now you’re saying you don’t know what you feel.”
Michael’s mouth tightened. “I didn’t say I don’t know what I feel.”
She leaned back. “Then what do you feel? Really.”
He was quiet and a second passed then another before Michael’s eyes fell toward his hands. “I think..” He paused again. “I think there are people who become a part of you.”
Lisa’s face hardened as Michael continued, seemingly unaware that every word was making the situation worse. “You can go on with your life. You can meet other people. You can fall in love again. You can get married. You can have a whole different life. But that doesn’t mean that what happened before just disappears.”
The blonde nodded slowly. “So she is still a part of you.”
Michael looked up. “Yes.” But apparently he realized that answer had been too direct because he quickly began trying to soften it, backtracking a bit.
“But that doesn’t mean..” He gestured vaguely between himself and Lisa. “It doesn’t mean anything bad. Lisa and I have our own relationship. This is completely different.”
Michael looked at her and she smiled.
It was a beautiful smile. But it was also the sort of smile that could have killed a man at twenty paces. Diane looked between them, clearly aware that something had shifted.
“Michael, if I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that you can still have feelings for someone from your past without wanting to be with them.”
Michael nodded. “Absolutely.”
“And you don’t want to be with her?”
He hesitated feeling his wife’s stare, his lips pressed together. “..No.” Lisa’s expression relaxed by approximately half a millimeter then Michael continued. “It’s about wanting to be with somebody.” And Lisa’s eyes closed just for a second, visibly attempting to regulate herself. Why couldn’t he just stop talking about this woman!
Diane almost smiled. “What is it about?”
Michael looked genuinely thoughtful now, which was.. unfortunate for his wife sitting next to him. “It’s about knowing that if something happened to her, I would..” He stopped.
Lisa opened her eyes.
Michael swallowed. “I would feel it.” There was silence and Diane let it sit. Michael was starting to seem increasingly aware of the fact that he was digging himself into a hole but was apparently incapable of stopping.
“I’d always feel it,” He added quietly. “Because she’s important to me.”
Lisa looked at him again. Not the amused, affectionate look she’d given him earlier—not even irritation. It was a stare so flat and murderous that when Michael glanced over, it startled him.
His eyes widened slightly. “What?”
Lisa’s smile returned, not a damn thing about it was reassuring. “Nothing, Michael. I’m just listening.”
Michael looked back toward the interviewer.
Diane, who had clearly decided she was going to let him continue destroying himself, asked, “And do you think part of you will always be in love with her?”
Michael froze. And this time, he knew exactly what was happening. He could have said no, it would have been easy. A clean, uncomplicated no. He could have laughed and said, “That’s my past. I’m married.”
Instead, Michael’s expression softened.. and that was the answer before he even spoke. “I think,” He took a breath. “I think when you really love somebody, you don’t just stop.”
Lisa’s face fell and Michael looked at her with the smallest flicker of realization in his eyes.
Too late.
The interviewer didn’t move. “So you still love her.”
Michael’s gaze remained on Lisa before returning to the interviewer. “I’ll always have love for her.” Lisa’s nostrils flared and Michael hurried on. “But it’s not the same. It isn’t what it was.”
“Is that because you’re married now?”
“Oh, yes.” Michael looked at Lisa like he wanted to say something and she raised an eyebrow at him.
Michael finally turned toward the camera, his expression becoming comically resigned. “She’s going to kill me later, guys.”
Lisa smiled. “I haven’t that decided yet, maybe torture first.”
The interviewer laughed and Lisa leaned back against the couch, folding her arms. Then after a second, she added casually, “I think he answered the question, Diane.”
Michael looked at her. “I did.”
“Very thoroughly.” She added and Michael shifted in his seat.
The interviewer looked between them, ”Lisa, does it bother you to hear Michael speak about her this way?”
Lisa’s expression changed and for the first time since the subject had come up, she didn’t look angry.
She looked tired. “Well,” she said carefully, “Everybody has a past. I have one. He has one. I don’t expect him to pretend that his life started when he married me.”
Michael’s eyes softened at her words and that somehow irritated her even more. “You know,” She continued, “A lot of people say we went about our relationship the wrong way—which he never cheated for the record, we were friends first—but in the end? He chose me,” She paused, searching for the next few words. “Or at least that’s how I see it. And some people should just get over that instead of crying about it.”
Michael lowered his head.
Diane asked, “And do you think he still has feelings for her?”
Lisa looked at him and Michael looked very suddenly interested in the floor. Her mouth tightened before she spoke. “Obviously. I don’t get why he does, but I don’t completely fault him for it because I know we got into this relationship so quickly.”
Michael’s head snapped up, picking up on the small dig at (Name). “Hey..”
She turned toward him, clearly irritated at him continuing to speak. “What, Michael? Seriously.”
“You don’t have to say it like that.” He lowers his voice, brows furrowed as he watches her.
“Then how should I say it?”
“I don’t know.” Michael’s expression became wounded. “But not like that.”
Lisa looked at him then shook her head. “Honest, he’s in love with everybody.”
Michael stared at her. “That’s not true.”
And that was the moment Michael realized that the interview wasn’t going to be remembered for anything he’d said about marriage, privacy, or fame.
Tomorrow, the headlines would not be about Lisa Marie Presley. They wouldn’t be about their wedding. They wouldn’t even be about whether their marriage was real.
They would be about the fact that Michael Jackson had been asked whether he still loved his former wife and had somehow managed to answer yes without ever actually saying the word. And Lisa Marie Presley was sitting six inches away from him when he did it.
The fallout from the interview began almost immediately it aired. By the following morning, Michael’s comments about (Name) had been pulled apart by every entertainment program and newspaper that could get its hands on them, with commentators dissecting his tone, his pauses, and the particular way his expression had changed whenever the interviewer brought up his former marriage. What might have been a relatively harmless acknowledgment of a complicated past had been transformed into a fresh round of speculation about whether he still loved her, whether his marriage to Lisa was already in trouble, and whether the two women were somehow competing for the same man. Her name appeared beside his in headlines she hadn’t agreed to be part of, accompanied by photographs from years earlier that made the entire thing feel even more intrusive. She’d spent months deliberately stepping away from the spectacle surrounding Michael’s personal life, only to find herself dragged directly back into it because he’d been unable to give a straightforward answer on television.
She watched the interview later that afternoon from the comfort of her own living room, Aladdin playing quietly in the adjoining room while she sat with the remote in her hand and increasingly narrowed eyes. She had expected the questions about his past. She’d known the interviewer would bring her up. What irritated her was the way Michael had answered them, circling around the subject instead of simply acknowledging that they had once been married and moving on. He hadn’t said anything particularly scandalous, but there had been enough hesitation, enough softness in his voice, enough carefully chosen words to give the public something to chew on for weeks. By the time the segment ended, she had muted the television and stared at the blank screen for several seconds, her expression caught somewhere between disbelief and annoyance.
“Michael.”
She reached for her glass, taking a slow sip before setting it back down. She wasn’t angry that he’d remembered their marriage. She was irritated that he’d managed to make their private history relevant to a marriage that had nothing to do with her. She had worked too fucking hard to separate herself from the constant speculation surrounding him, and now she was once again being discussed because apparently, she were an unresolved chapter in someone else’s relationship.
The phone rang before she had fully decided whether she was more annoyed with Michael or with the people who had turned a fifteen minute interview into her problem because of their line of question. She stared at the receiver before answering.
“Hello?” His voice came through.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” There was a brief silence. Neither seemed particularly interested in acknowledging what they both knew the call was about.
Finally, Michael sighed. “..Did you see it?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Hard to miss.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t mean for it to.. become all of that.”
She let out a small, humorless laugh. “Michael, what on Earth were you thinking!”
“I wasn’t trying to drag you into anything, Tink..”
“But you did. And I told you not to call me that anymore.” Her voice remained controlled, but the irritation was unmistakable. “I’m not.. angry that you were asked about me. I’m irritated that now everyone thinks there’s some unfinished business between us that needs to be discussed.”
Another pause. “There isn’t?”
The question caught her off guard. She stared toward the window, her expression hardening. “I’m about to hang up.”
He seemed to realize he’d stepped somewhere he shouldn’t. “Please don’t, I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.” His voice was softer now. “I’m sorry, really..”
She believed that he meant it, which somehow made the situation more frustrating. “Just.. be careful next time.”
“I will.”
Neither of them said goodbye, they lingered in the silence for another few seconds, both seeming reluctant to be the one to end the conversation, until she finally glanced toward the hallway.
“I have to go check on Aladdin. He’s too quiet.”
“Okay.”
She hung up first.
A few days later, Michael came to pick Aladdin up for the afternoon and quickly noticed something different about her. She looked sexy, he hates to be crude but she did. Her hair had been styled pretty, her makeup was finished, and she’d chosen an outfit that looked.. like she was intending to show a lot of skin. There was a small clutch sitting on the entryway table beside her keys, and a pair of heel that were clearly meant for going somewhere nicer than the grocery store rested near the door. Michael’s eyes moved over the details unconsciously before he looked back at her face.
“You’re going somewhere?”
She glanced down at herself as though she’d forgotten what she was wearing. “Yeah. I have an event.”
She turned back toward Aladdin, who was struggling to fit one of his toys into a small bag. Michael nodded once.
“Oh.” He bent slightly to help Aladdin with the zipper, his expression carefully neutral. “What kind of event?”
She looked at him. “An industry event.”
“Mm.” He nodded again, pretending that answer had satisfied him. It hadn’t.
He picked up Aladdin’s overnight bag and checked that everything was inside, but his attention kept drifting back toward her. “Who’s going?”
(Name) looked at him with an expression that was nearly amused. “People.”
He blinked. “I meant, are you going with anyone?”
There was a tiny pause before she answered. “I’m going with friends.”
“Oh.” Another nod. “Which friends?”
That was when she understood exactly what he was doing. She studied him, watching the way he avoided looking directly at her while pretending to be intensely interested in the contents of Aladdin’s bag.
“Why?”
“No reason.”
“Michael.”
He finally looked at her. “What?”
She smiled faintly, but there was no warmth in it. “You’re fishing.”
His mouth opened slightly before closing again. “I’m not, I’m just curious.”
“Sure.” She picked up Aladdin’s jacket and handed it to him. “And I’m not telling you.”
He looked away, caught. She could see the faint frustration settling across his face, but she didn’t indulge it. She simply crouched to straighten Aladdin’s collar and kissed the top of his head.
“Have fun with Daddy, okay?”
Aladdin nodded enthusiastically and grabbed Michael’s hand.
Michael lingered at the doorway for a moment longer than necessary. He looked back at her, clearly tempted to ask again, but whatever question had been forming never made it out. (Name) stood there calmly, watching him with an expression that told him she knew exactly what he’d been trying to accomplish. There was no jealousy in her face, no defensiveness, no attempt to make him wonder whether she was seeing someone. She simply wasn’t giving him access to that part of her life anymore. He had once known where she was going, who she was seeing, what she was wearing, and why she was going somewhere before she’d even finished getting ready. Now he had to stand at the door and wonder. She gave him a small wave as he led Aladdin toward the car, and when the door finally closed behind them, she turned back toward the house without giving the interaction another thought. Michael, meanwhile, sat behind the wheel with his hands resting against it, staring through the windshield and wondering who exactly had earned the privilege of seeing her dressed like that tonight.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤJuly, 1995.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch - Main Residence. Los Olivos, California.
The magazine had been open on the same spread for nearly fifteen minutes, although Michael had turned the pages enough times that Elizabeth suspected he had memorized the article by now. They were sitting together in the sunroom at Neverland Ranch, the afternoon light pouring through the tall windows and laying pale gold across the carpet, the gardens outside looking unnaturally serene beneath the California sun. Elizabeth had been enjoying her tea in the comfortable quiet of the room, occasionally watching Michael over the rim of her cup as he shifted in his chair and thumbed restlessly along the magazine’s glossy edge. He had been perfectly relaxed when he’d first picked it up. Now his posture had gradually stiffened, one ankle hooked behind the other, his shoulders slightly hunched forward as he studied the page with an intensity that would have been impressive if the subject weren’t celebrity gossip.
The article was about his ex wife. That in itself wasn't unusual. Her name had been appearing with increasing frequency in entertainment magazines since the divorce, sometimes because of her work, sometimes because of her public appearances, and sometimes simply because the press seemed incapable of allowing a famous woman to exist without attaching a romantic narrative to her. This particular article had taken a more ambitious approach. Rather than linking her to one man, it had assembled an entire collection of them. There were photographs of her leaving restaurants with actors, laughing with musicians at industry parties, standing beside athletes at charity events, and talking with various famous men whose expressions suggested that their interest in her went considerably beyond professional admiration. The article itself was careful enough to acknowledge that not every encounter constituted a date, but the implication was obvious. Since her marriage had ended, men who had spent years admiring her from a safe distance apparently felt free to make their interest known.
One of them had openly admitted to having a crush on her. Another had been caught flirting with her at an awards event. A third had reportedly been trying to get her attention for months. The photographs didn’t always show anything scandalous, which somehow seemed to bother Michael even more. There was no convenient villain here, no obvious indiscretion he could point to and condemn. There were simply men looking at his former wife and realizing she was available for the taking.
Michael turned another page and stopped, Elizabeth’s eyes following the movement. He stared at the photograph before muttering, “This is ridiculous.”
Elizabeth lowered her cup into its saucer with a quiet porcelain click and glanced toward the magazine. “What is, honey?”
Michael’s finger remained tucked against the page. “This. All of this.” He made a small, irritated gesture toward the article. “They’re taking every little thing she does and turning it into somethin’.. she goes somewhere with a man and suddenly they’re dating. She talks to another at a party and they’re flirting. She laughs at something a man says and she’s involved with him. It’s irritating..”
Elizabeth’s eyes moved from the magazine to Michael's face. He was trying very hard to sound irritated with journalism, and there was enough genuine annoyance in his voice that she might have believed him if he hadn’t spent the previous ten minutes reading the same three paragraphs.
“They’re magazines, Michael.”
“I know what they are.” His eyes stayed on the page. “That’s what makes it worse. They know people are going to read this. They know Aladdin is going to grow up and see these things about his mother. They don’t care what they put in here.”
Elizabeth watched him, her expression becoming more thoughtful. Michael sensed the silence and finally looked up. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re thinkin’ something.”
Elizabeth picked up her tea again, allowing the smallest hint of amusement to touch her expression. “I’m always thinking about something, my dear. You should know me better by now to know.”
Michael’s mouth tightened as he looked back down at the magazine, apparently deciding that the safest course was to ignore her. “This is about Aladdin.”
That made Elizabeth pause and she lowered her cup again. “Oh, is it?”
“Of course, yes.” Michael answered too quickly, and the speed of it betrayed him before he could recover. He shifted in his chair then leaned forward to rest his forearms against his knees, the magazine hanging loosely from one hand. “She’s his mother. That’s what people forget. They can write whatever they want about adults, but eventually.. he’s going to see this stuff. He’s going to have people asking him questions about his mother and who she’s seeing and why.. why she’s always being photographed with different men.” He trails off. “I don’t think that's fair to him.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly. “No. It isn’t.” Michael relaxed a fraction, then she added, “But I’m not sure that’s the only thing bothering you.”
Michael gave her a long look before turning his attention back to the article. “I don’t like the way they’re handling it.”
Elizabeth leaned back against her chair, crossing one leg over the other beneath the table. “The article?”
“The whole thing.”
“What whole thing?”
“The way they’re making her look.”
Elizabeth waited and Michael's gaze remained fixed on the page. “Like she’s going from man to man.”
There was a tiny pause. “Why does it matter if she is?”
He looked at her and Elizabeth kept her expression perfectly neutral.
Michael’s jaw moved, and it looked like he was physically swallowing on something. “.. It doesn’t.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Because that's what they’re implying.” His eyes dropped toward the photograph again. “They’re exploiting her. She doesn’t—she doesn’t know any better.” He said.
“Michael..”
“Yes?”
“It’s.. it isn’t your job to protect her anymore. She’s a big girl now, I’ve watched her grow and blossom into this.. beautiful flower. She’s not as naive as she was back then, it’s been almost ten years.”
That stopped him.
Michael stared at the page, his fingertip moving unconsciously along the edge of the paper. “You don’t understand. Even these no good rappers thinking they have a chance.. I mean—(Name) isn’t that kind of woman.”
Elizabeth watched him carefully. “You seem to know quite a lot about which men have been trying to get her attention.”
Michael looked up and she lifted her cup and took a slow sip, giving him no satisfaction whatsoever.
The photograph beneath his hand showed her at some industry gathering, dressed elegantly and standing beside an actor whose attention was very obviously fixed on her. He had one hand near the small of her back, not quite touching her, while she laughed at something he had said. The picture wasn’t intimate enough to prove anything, but it was intimate enough for Michael’s imagination to supply the missing pieces, which was precisely why he had looked at it so many times.
He hated that she looked happy.
That was the part he couldn’t explain away.
There was nothing forced about her expression. She wasn’t posing for the cameras or giving them the pretty smile she’d learned to use when she knew she was being watched. She was genuinely laughing, her head tipped slightly toward the man beside her, her entire face relaxed in a way Michael knew intimately.
His thumb stopped moving.
“She looks happy,” He said and Elizabeth’s eyes moved toward him. Michael seemed to realize only after the words were out that he’d said them aloud.
“She does,” Elizabeth answered.
His eyes remained on the photograph. “She doesn’t even know him that well.”
Elizabeth’s eyebrows lifted. “How do you know?”
Michael hesitated. “I know.”
“You know him?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know how well she knows him?”
Michael finally looked at her, visibly annoyed by the direction the conversation had taken. “I’ve heard about him.”
Elizabeth’s mouth threatened to curve and Michael saw it. “Don't.”
She picked up her teaspoon and stirred the tea she had already finished sweetening, mostly because it gave her something to do with her hands. “Michael, you appear to know more about this woman’s social calendar than she probably does.”
His expression changed. “I have a child with her.”
“Yes.” Elizabeth's eyes moved to him again.
“She tells me a little bit.” Michael kept his gaze toward the windows.
The statement wasn’t entirely untrue. On the rare occasions when they had to communicate, usually because of a mutual obligation, an industry event, or some other unavoidable overlap in their social circles, she would sometimes mention offhandedly that she was attending a particular function. He never thought much of it at first. But he started to noticed who appeared beside her in photographs. He noticed who seemed to be attending the same events. He noticed which men were mentioned more than once. He noticed when someone who had never previously been associated with her began appearing everywhere she went.
And, most humiliatingly, he noticed when she seemed to enjoy someone’s company.
Michael closed the magazine halfway and rubbed his thumb against the spine. Elizabeth let him have the silence for perhaps ten seconds.
Then she said, “She’s also single.” And Michael’s eyes lifted. Elizabeth watched the reaction happen. “She can go to dinner with somebody,” Elizabeth continued, her tone remaining calm and matter-of-fact. “She can have friends. She can flirt. She can be photographed with men. She can date if she wants to date. She’s—she’s owed that, honey.”
“I know.” Michael’s response came quietly, defensively.
Elizabeth watched him turn the page. “And eventually she can fall in love again.”
His hand stopped and the page remained half turned beneath his fingers. Michael stared down at it and he carefully flattened the page and lowered his hand to the table. “I know.”
His voice was different now, the irritation had gone out of it as Elizabeth studied him. Michael leaned back in his chair and looked through the windows, his attention moving beyond the gardens to somewhere much farther away. His expression had become unusually still, and the silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable so much as revealing. The afternoon continued around them without concern.
Somewhere outside, birds moved through the trees. A faint breeze stirred the curtains beside the windows.
He knew she was allowed.
He knew that better than anyone.
The divorce had given her the right to rebuild her life without having to explain herself to him. She didn’t owe him solitude. She didn’t owe him a period of mourning that lasted long enough to make him comfortable. She didn’t owe him the courtesy of making sure nobody flirted with her in public. She was allowed to have the dating life that twenty something’s were expected to have.
And yet seeing it was another matter entirely.
Michael finally looked down at the article again. “I don’t like it.” He looked at her. “I don’ t like seeing her with them.” The admission was quiet enough that it disappeared beneath the sound of the teaspoon settling against the saucer.
Elizabeth’s expression softened.
Michael seemed to regret saying it. He shifted in his chair, his fingers returning to the magazine. “I do’'t mean that I think she belongs to me. I don’t. I know she doesn’t. She can do whatever she wants.. And I don’t care who she sees.”
Elizabeth’s gaze dropped to the photograph beneath his hand. She knew well enough that he was trying to convince himself that his words were true.
Michael sighed, then leaned forward and closed the magazine again. He placed both hands flat against it, as though physically restraining himself from opening it again. “I just don’t like the idea of some man coming around my son and acting like he knows her and my baby.”
“That is a different concern.” She said.
“Yes.”
“And a reasonable one.” Michael nodded at her words, feeling a bit of relief.
Elizabeth waited before adding, “But you’re still jealous.”
His head lifted. “I am not jealous.” The answer was fast, indignant enough to be convincing. Elizabeth merely looked at him.
Michael held her gaze for a few seconds before looking away. “I’m not.”
“She was my wife,” He said finally. “We were together for a long time,” He repeated, quieter this time. “For a long time.”
“I know.. and now she’s not.” Elizabeth let the statement sit between them.
Michael swallowed. He looked like he was reminding himself of something he understood intellectually but hadn’t quite accepted emotionally.
“I know she can be with whoever she wants,” he said. “I know that. I just...” His sentence trailed off, and he rubbed the heel of one hand against his palm before settling it back on the magazine. “It’s so strange.” Michael’s eyes drifted toward the photograph again. “It’s strange seeing everybody else suddenly get to have her.. and I can’t anymore.”
Elizabeth went still and Michael realized what he’d said almost immediately, looking back toward the window.
The words had escaped before he could reshape them into something safer, but there was truth in them. Not ownership exactly. Something more complicated and considerably more painful. There had been a time when he could look at her across a room and know that, whatever was happening around them, there was still a private bond between them that nobody else could touch. Even after the marriage became difficult, even after they hurt one another badly enough that divorce became inevitable, he had still possessed the strange security of knowing that the history between them belonged to both of them.
Now the world was moving around her as though that history had become irrelevant. Men who had once admired her from afar could approach her. Men who had always thought she was beautiful could tell her. Men who had watched her marry Michael Jackson could now look at her and see only a single woman.
Michael wasn’t prepared for how much he hated that.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤAugust, 1995.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Bluebird Cottage Preschool - Hidden Hills, California
The preschool graduation was held on a warm June morning beneath a white canvas tent on the school’s back lawn, the kind of ceremony that was far more elaborate than any four or five year old could possibly understand and far more important to the parents than they would ever admit. Tiny folding chairs had been arranged in neat rows across the grass, each one decorated with a small paper name card, while a low wooden platform stood at the front beneath a banner congratulating the graduating class in bright, cheerful letters. There were flowers tied to the ends of the aisle, disposable cameras being passed between parents, grandparents whispering excitedly to one another, and a table covered in miniature cakes and fruit waiting for the reception afterward. Somewhere near the entrance, a teacher was trying unsuccessfully to keep a collection of children in tiny yellow caps and gowns from running off before the ceremony had even begun. (Name) stood among the other parents with one hand resting lightly against the strap of her handbag, listening with half an ear as another mother beside her talked about summer plans. She smiled when appropriate, laughed quietly at something she was told, and looked entirely at ease. There was nothing performative about it all, she wasn’t scanning the crowd. She wasn’t wondering whether Michael had arrived yet. She wasn’t thinking about him at all. She was happy and today was Aladdin’s day.
Then the whispering began near the entrance, no need to turn around to know who had arrived.
A few seconds later, she heard the familiar murmur of recognition that followed Michael wherever he went, even when he was trying to attend something as ordinary as a preschool ceremony. She finally glanced over her shoulder and saw him standing with Lisa, both of them accompanied by a small cluster of people who had managed to make a four year old’s graduation look like the president was here. Something inside her tightened, but it was fleeting. Lisa’s presence was not unexpected. Michael had brought her into the life they had once shared, and there was no reason to pretend that history had somehow ceased to exist simply because the marriage was over. Still, seeing them arrive together produced a small, involuntary ache beneath her ribs, the kind of feeling that belonged to an older version of herself. She swallowed it before it could become anything more, turned back toward the stage, and adjusted the sleeve of her dress. That was all. She did not stare. She didn’t react, not allowing the sight of another woman beside her former husband to become the center of a day that belonged to her son.
Michael, however, had been looking at her since the moment he’d walked through the gate.
And for several seconds, he genuinely couldn’t breathe properly.
It wasn’t the sentimental kind of reaction he’d expected from seeing her again. It wasn’t simply that she looked good. She looked absolutely fucking devastating. There was something disorienting about it, because he had spent so long remembering her through the worst period of their marriage that his mind had unconsciously preserved an older version of her. The woman he remembered had been beautiful, certainly, but there had always been tension beneath it. Exhaustion around her eyes. A guardedness in her expression. The faintly distracted look of someone whose thoughts were perpetually somewhere else, usually worrying about him. This woman had none of that. She looked rested. Healthy. Completely present. Her face seemed softer without being diminished, her posture effortless, her clothes elegant without appearing calculated. Her hair had changed, falling around her shoulders in a way he didn’t recognize, and when she laughed at something the woman beside her said, the sound carried across the lawn with such effortless warmth that his stomach actually turned.
He looked away, then looked back.
That was the problem.
He couldn’t seem to stop.
His mouth went dry. A strange pressure developed beneath his ribs, followed by the sudden, almost nauseating awareness of his own heartbeat. He swallowed hard and shifted his weight, as though changing his physical position might somehow restore his composure. It didn’t. She was still there, still laughing, still completely unaware of him, and the fact that she wasn’t looking at him made it worse. He had expected resentment. He had expected anger. He had even expected her to look older, more tired, somehow marked by the time they’d spent apart. Instead, she looked like someone who had been released from a weight he hadn’t realized he’d been watching her carry. She looked happy. The unguarded kind that made him feel as though he were witnessing something he no longer had any right to see.
Michael felt genuinely ill.
It was an ugly realization, because beneath the admiration was something painfully close to grief. He had known this woman more intimately than anyone else in the world. He had watched her wake up with tangled hair and sleep still in her eyes. He had known what she looked like when she was sick, when she was exhausted, when she was furious, when she had just finished crying and tried to pretend she hadn’t. He had once been able to reach across a room and touch her simply because she was his wife. Now he was standing several yards away, watching her laugh with someone else and realizing that he had somehow managed to lose access to a person who had once been woven into nearly every ordinary part of his life.
And she hadn’t even noticed he was staring.
Lisa noticed.
She noticed the direction of his eyes, following his line of sight toward (Name) before looking back at him. She said nothing. Michael seemed to realize only afterwards that he’d been caught staring and finally looked away, rubbing his thumb absently against the side of his hand. He tried to redirect his attention toward the ceremony preparations, toward the people around him, toward anything that wasn’t the woman standing across the lawn, but his eyes kept betraying him. Every time she moved, his attention followed. When she bent down to fix the strap of her son’s little graduation cap, he watched. When she tucked her hair behind her ear, he watched. When she laughed, he watched. He was angry with himself for it, because none of this was useful. Beauty didn’t change anything. Missing her didn’t change anything. Feeling sick over how beautiful she looked didn’t undo the years between them.
Then the children were called forward.
One by one, the little graduates appeared in their miniature caps and gowns, some walking proudly toward the platform while others clung to their teachers or stared blankly at the audience with the solemn confusion of children who had no idea why so many adults were crying. When Aladdin’s name was finally announced, (Name)’s entire face changed. She straightened, her eyes lighting with unmistakable pride as she watched him walk toward the stage with his cap sitting slightly crooked on his head. She looked radiant in that moment, because she was completely absorbed in her son. Michael’s chest tightened again. He watched her applaud, watched her smile, watched the pride spread across her face as Aladdin accepted his little certificate, and something inside him twisted painfully with the realization that this was what she looked like when she wasn’t waiting for him anymore.
Aladdin eventually spotted them in the crowd and waved both hands enthusiastically despite being told repeatedly to keep them at his sides. (Name) laughed, covering her mouth, while Michael found himself smiling despite everything. When the ceremony ended, Aladdin ran toward his mother first, throwing himself against her legs before proudly presenting the certificate he’d been given. She crouched, straightening his cap and kissing his cheek while he talked over himself trying to explain every detail of the ceremony. Michael approached more slowly, giving them space, and when Aladdin finally noticed him, he reached for his father’s hand without hesitation. Michael crouched beside him, his expression softening as his son proudly announced that he was “graduated now.” The years between them seemed to disappear. There was simply a father, a mother, and their little boy standing together beneath the afternoon sun.
When someone suggested taking a picture of Aladdin with both his parents, (Name) agreed without hesitation. She moved beside Michael because it was the simplest thing to do, positioning herself on Aladdin’s other side while the photographer raised the camera. She was completely focused on their son, smoothing down the front of his little gown and reminding him to hold up his certificate properly. Michael stood beside her, close enough to smell the faint perfume she’d worn, and the proximity nearly undid him. He could see the details of her face from inches away now, the little changes time had made, the confidence that hadn’t existed the last time he’d stood this close to her. She didn’t look at him once. She didn’t seem remotely conscious of the fact that he was looking at her.
The camera flashed.
Michael looked at her instead of the lens.
She never noticed.
When the photographer took another picture, (Name) laughed and leaned toward Aladdin, completely unaware of the man standing beside her looking at her stupid because he had just been confronted with the full consequence of his own decisions. Michael’s stomach turned again, that same awful mixture of attraction, grief, guilt, and disbelief twisting beneath his ribs. She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Somehow, after everything he’d done, after everything they’d survived, after the years they had spent apart, she had become even more beautiful.
And the worst part was that she had no idea.
She simply took Aladdin’s hand when the photographs were finished and walked away with him, laughing at something he said.
Michael watched her go.
She never once looked back.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ September, 1995.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ MTV Video Music Awards - Radio City Music Hall, NYC.
The MTV Video Music Awards had the particular kind of chaos that seemed to exist nowhere else. Music blared from somewhere beyond every corridor, production assistants hurried past with headsets pressed to their ears, celebrities disappeared behind curtains only to reappear moments later beneath a storm of camera flashes, and every hallway seemed to contain someone waiting to be interviewed. (Name) had been prepared for the spectacle. She had attended enough award shows to know how to move through them without being swallowed by the noise, how to smile for cameras when necessary and disappear into the background when she wanted to. What she hadn’t anticipated was Michael’s performance. She knew he was performing “You Are Not Alone,” but knowing the title and being emotionally prepared to watch him stand beneath a spotlight were two entirely different things.
She was somewhere in the audience when the lights finally dropped, the noise of the arena dissolving into anticipation. Michael appeared onstage to an eruption of screaming, and for the first few moments she forced herself to watch him the same way everyone else was watching him. He was performing. That was all. It should have been easy to separate the man onstage from the man she had once known intimately, but there were too many small things she recognized. The tilt of his head. The way his hand moved when he became particularly absorbed in a lyric. The subtle shift in his expression when the performance stopped feeling like choreography and started feeling personal. She tried to tell herself that she was imagining it, that years of knowing someone could make ordinary gestures feel meaningful when they weren’t.
Then he turned toward the audience.
His arm extended.
His finger pointed.
The camera immediately cut to the crowd, and the arena erupted all over again.
(Name)’s breath caught.
It lasted barely a second, but it was enough. Her mind betrayed her before she could stop it, instantly searching the direction of his gesture, trying to determine who he had been looking at. She knew there was no rational reason to assume it had been her. Lisa was there. Thousands of people were there. The gesture could have been directed toward anyone, or toward no one at all. It could have been nothing more than part of the performance. Yet something about the timing, the expression on his face, the strange familiarity of the way he had looked into the crowd made her heart begin pounding so hard that she could feel it in her throat.
By the time the performance ended, the audience was on its feet. The reaction was enormous, and within minutes the gesture had become one of the things people were talking about. Cameras replayed the moment. Commentators speculated about its meaning. Someone somewhere inevitably asked whether Michael had been pointing toward Lisa, while another person insisted that the gesture had been aimed somewhere else in the audience. It took nearly no time at all for (Name)’s name to begin circulating alongside his, dragged back into the conversation despite her having done absolutely nothing to invite it.
She lasted several minutes before the room became too much.
The applause, the music, the cameras, the whispers, the people who kept glancing toward her as though they were trying to determine whether she had reacted to the performance, all of it began pressing inward until she could no longer distinguish one sensation from another. She excused herself quietly and slipped into one of the bathrooms, locking herself inside a stall for several minutes while she tried to breathe normally. She pressed her palms against her knees and closed her eyes, furious with herself for being affected at all. She had spent years learning how to live without him. She had built a life that no longer revolved around what Michael was doing, who he was with, or what the public thought of their history. Yet one stupid gesture from a stage could still make her feel sixteen different emotions at once.
When she finally stepped out of the stall, she nearly walked directly into Lisa.
Both women stopped.
It was an absurd coincidence, the kind of encounter that might have been funny under literally any other circumstances. Instead, the air between them became tense. Lisa’s expression changed first, recognition followed by something harder. (Name) straightened instinctively, wishing she had stayed in the stall.
“Are you okay?” The question sounded polite.
(Name) nodded. “I’m fine.”
Lisa studied her. “You didn’t look fine out there.”
Something in her tone made (Name)’s shoulders stiffen. “I said I’m fine.”
Lisa exhaled slowly, but whatever restraint she had been trying to maintain seemed to fray as quickly as she regained her composure. “I watched you during his performance.”
“And?”
“And you looked like you were going to fall apart.”
(Name)’s expression hardened. “I was overwhelmed.”
“Was it because he pointed at you?”
She simply stared at Lisa. “I don’t know who he pointed at, Lisa.”
“This is ridiculous—you think I don’t know that he loves you? You think I want to hear about you every time he’s upset?” Lisa demanded. “You think I wanted to feel like there was another woman standing in the room every time he talked about his past?”
“Then maybe you should ask your husband about this instead of thinking I’m the problem.”
“Do you have a problem with me?” Lisa’s voice was sharp enough to cut through the noise of the bathroom, and (Name) turned toward her slowly, still trying to understand why she had followed her into the room in the first place.
“No. Do you have one with me?”
“Alright. Then have you been fucking my husband?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
(Name) stared at her, genuinely stunned before the disbelief gave way to anger. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
“I’m asking you a question.”
“And I’m telling you, that you’ve lost your goddammed mind.”
Lisa folded her arms, her expression hardening. “Look, we don’t need to keep having this back and forth. I’m bigger than this. Besides, I’m sure you have somewhere to be. Like taking care of your kid.”
The insult landed exactly where Lisa intended it to and (Name)’s expression changed. “Bitch, where the fuck are your kids?”
Lisa’s jaw tightened. “Not watching me pop pills.”
The silence afterward lasted perhaps half a second?
Then (Name) hit her. Square in the nose.
There was no warning for either woman to reconsider. Her hand moved before the anger had even caught up with it, the impact snapping Lisa’s head back as she stumbled backward before she grabbed at (Name), and whatever thin thread of restraint had remained between them finally disappeared. They collided hard, knocking into the counter before losing their balance and crashing onto the tiled floor.
Someone screamed. Another voice shouted for security.
By the time the bathroom door swung open, both women were tangled on the floor, hair disheveled, clothes pulled askew, each trying to get the upper hand while several horrified staff members rushed forward to separate them. One of the people who had entered froze for a fraction before reaching for the radio clipped to their belt.
“Get security in here!”
“I’ve got them!”
“Don’t fucking touch me!”
The entire thing became chaos within seconds. People crowded the doorway. Someone recognized Lisa. Someone else recognized (Name). A production assistant backed away with wide eyes, whispering into a phone. The bathroom that had been empty moments earlier suddenly became the center of a miniature backstage emergency, with staff trying to pull the two women apart while both continued shouting over one another.
And, because humanity apparently cannot witness a disaster without very quickly turning it into content, someone outside the bathroom had already begun telling people what had happened. Within minutes, the story had transformed from a private argument into the night’s most coveted piece of backstage gossip.
Two women. One man. A screaming match. A physical altercation. And somewhere in the building, a few thousand people were still applauding Michael Jackson’s performance, completely unaware that his unresolved past had just exploded in a bathroom a few corridors away.
The days following the VMAs left a residue neither marriage could quite scrub away. Michael was furious with Lisa for putting her hands on (Name), and while he understood that the argument had escalated on both sides, he could not get past the fact that Lisa had chosen to engage the mother of his child in that way. He made that distinction repeatedly in his own mind, insisting that his anger had nothing to do with lingering feelings and everything to do with Aladdin. She was his son’s mother. She was someone he had once promised to protect. Whatever existed between them now, whatever had been destroyed years earlier, there were certain lines he still believed should never have been crossed. Yet, even as he tried to frame his reaction in terms of fatherhood and basic decency, Lisa began noticing how instinctively protective he remained of (Name), and how quickly his composure changed whenever her name entered a conversation.
Lisa’s suspicion didn’t come from any dramatic confession or one incriminating incident but from accumulation. Michael seemed to know too much about (Name)’s life for someone who insisted their relationship was limited to co-parenting. He knew when she was traveling, which events she had attended, what projects she was working on, and occasionally details he could only have learned through conversations that had nothing to do with Aladdin. Whenever Lisa questioned him, he retreated behind the same explanation: (Name) was Aladdin’s mother, and naturally that meant there would always be some degree of communication between them. It was technically true, which made it all the more frustrating. Lisa could not point to a single thing and call it evidence of an affair. There were no secret meetings, no physical betrayal she could prove, no obvious infidelity. What she could see was the difference in him. He never sounded as though (Name) were simply the mother of his child. There was history in his voice. Familiarity. A tenderness he seemed completely unaware of until someone else pointed it out.
In the following weeks their arguments became increasingly centered around that uncomfortable space between what Michael insisted was true and what Lisa could plainly observe. He continued to reduce the relationship to its most defensible definition, while Lisa became increasingly convinced that the word “just” had never belonged anywhere near (Name). Michael could say that he had moved on. He could insist that his marriage to Lisa existed independently of his past. He could remind her that he and (Name) had been divorced for years. None of it changed the fact that the past remained emotionally active inside him, even if he refused to name it. Eventually, their arguments stopped being about (Name) herself and became about the larger question Lisa had begun asking herself: whether she had married a man who was actually available to her.
The answer became increasingly difficult for both of them to ignore. Their marriage had begun to feel less like a relationship and more like two people occupying the same emotional space while avoiding the obvious emptiness between them. Michael withdrew further into himself, spending longer hours working, retreating into private rooms, finding reasons to be elsewhere whenever the atmosphere at home became too heavy. Lisa stopped pressing as often because she was beginning to understand that there was no question she could ask that would force him to confront something he wasn't ready to admit. Their home became quieter. The arguments became less explosive and more exhausted, which was somehow worse. Anger still implied investment. Silence suggested resignation. Lisa started to contact her ex-husband again, to which, Michael had his suspicions confirmed through a mutual friend.
Meanwhile, (Name)’s life continued moving in a direction that had nothing to do with either of them. She had continued seeing other men casually, without the frantic quality that might have suggested she was trying to replace Michael or prove something to herself. She went to dinners. She accepted invitations. She attended events with people who made her laugh. She allowed herself to be flirted with and, occasionally, to flirt back. Dating no longer felt like an act of rebellion against her past. It was simply something a young woman was allowed to do when she had finally stopped treating her divorce like a permanent state of her love life. She had spent years being someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s partner, and she was beginning to enjoy the novelty of being herself without having to explain what that meant.
Then another magazine appeared, and this one was different than the one he read with Elizabeth months prior.
The photograph on the cover showed (Name) leaving a restaurant beside a man whose face had begun appearing beside hers with increasing frequency—Matthew Lillard. There were no sensational claims about a whirlwind romance, nothing definitive enough to be called a relationship, but the article noted the pattern that had begun developing around them. They had attended several of the same events. They had been photographed together more than once. He had been seen leaving her home. They were no longer simply appearing in the same social circles by coincidence. There was something developing, something sufficiently consistent that even the magazine seemed to recognize the difference between another casual dinner and a relationship that might actually have somewhere to go.
Michael found the magazine and pretended he hadn’t been interested in it. The conversation he has with Elizabeth a while back plaguing his mind—it feels like deja vu.
He sat with it open in his hands far longer than necessary, his eyes moving slowly across the article while his expression remained blank. He read every paragraph. He studied every photograph. He lingered on the ones that showed (Name) laughing, particularly the photographs in which she looked completely comfortable beside this man. There was something about her expression that unsettled him more than the man’s presence itself. She looked happy, genuinely at ease. There was no visible trace of the woman who had once been consumed by their marriage. She looked as though she had reached a point where Michael was no longer the central fact around which her life organized itself.
He kept telling himself the article didn’t bother him.
He turned the page.
Then he went back and looked at the photograph again.
The realization that followed was unpleasant precisely because he could not justify it. He had no claim on her. He had given that up years ago. She was allowed to date whoever she wanted, to fall in love, to marry again, to build an entirely new life if she chose. None of those things belonged to him anymore. He knew that intellectually. What he couldn’t explain was why the possibility of another man becoming familiar with the parts of her he had once considered exclusively his made something dark and possessive twist inside him.
Across the room, Lisa noticed the magazine. She noticed how long he had been holding it. She noticed that he hadn’t turned the page in several minutes.
And, more importantly, she noticed that Michael wasn’t reading the article anymore.
He was staring at the photograph.
For the first time, Lisa didn’t need to ask what he was thinking.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ November - December 1995.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Los Angeles, California.
Thanksgiving arrived with the strange negotiated rhythm that had become normal for Aladdin. He spent part of the holiday with (Name), surrounded by his mother’s warmth, food spread across a table that had been set with far more care than necessary for a little boy who was mostly interested in dessert, and then crossed the city later in the day to spend time with Michael. The arrangement had once seemed impossibly sad to (Name), the idea of dividing holidays into blocks of hours and deciding which parent got which traditions. But by then, she had learned that children did not experience time the way adults did. Aladdin didn’t sit at the table counting how many hours he had left before he had to leave. He was simply happy to be loved in two different homes, and watching that happiness made the arrangement easier to bear. When Michael arrived to pick him up, there was no tension between them. They exchanged the kind of quiet acknowledgment that had become increasingly common, a simple recognition that the day belonged to their son and neither of them intended to make it about the past.
Christmas was more complicated, simply because Christmas had once belonged to all three of them. There were traditions that had survived the divorce accidentally: certain decorations, certain foods, the same ridiculous children’s movies playing in the background while Aladdin tore through wrapping paper with the enthusiasm of someone convinced every box contained the greatest gift ever manufactured. This year, they agreed to spend part of Christmas morning together for his sake. It was surprisingly peaceful. There was no performance of reconciliation and no attempt to pretend they were still a family in the conventional sense. They simply occupied the same room without fighting. Michael sat on the floor helping Aladdin assemble one of his toys while (Name) sat nearby, drinking coffee and watching their son struggle with a piece that clearly did not belong where he insisted it belonged. At one point, Aladdin became frustrated and demanded that both of them help him, and the absurdity of the situation made (Name) laugh. Michael looked over at her, and for a fleeting moment, there was something that felt warm between them. They had spent years doing this together. They knew how to parent the same child. They knew how to communicate without speaking when Aladdin was being particularly difficult. For a few minutes, the history between them seemed less like an open wound and more like something old and complicated that could simply exist without any added drama or attention.
Michael found himself unexpectedly grateful for the memory. He had spent so much of the year thinking about everything he had lost that he had forgotten there were still pieces of the old life that could exist without destroying either of them. Watching (Name) laugh with Aladdin, watching her kneel beside him when he wanted to show her something, watching the three of them occupy the same space without anger, made him briefly understand that divorce had not erased everything they had built. It had only changed what they were allowed to call it. When it was time for him to take Aladdin, there was no bitterness or hesitation. (Name) helped their son into his coat, kissed his cheek, and reminded him to behave for his father. Michael thanked her quietly, their eyes meeting before he turned toward the door with Aladdin’s hand in his.
The contrast became painfully obvious when he returned to Lisa. Their own holiday celebrations were perfectly pleasant on the surface. There were gifts, dinners, photographs, appearances, and all the expected rituals of a couple spending Christmas together. Nothing was outwardly wrong. They could sit beside one another, smile when necessary, exchange presents and participate in conversations with family and friends without anyone realizing how little they were actually sharing. Yet the intimacy had begun to feel absent from everything they did. Michael could be physically present while seeming miles away, and Lisa had stopped trying to pull him back every time he disappeared into his own thoughts. She began noticing how often his attention drifted toward his phone, how easily he became distracted, and how much more animated he seemed when talking about Aladdin than when discussing their life together. Even when (Name) was never mentioned, Lisa could feel the presence of that history sitting quietly between them.
By the end of the holiday season, Lisa had stopped asking herself whether she was imagining the distance. She wasn’t. The marriage had become something neither of them seemed willing to name, but the silence surrounding it had started to feel like an answer. She had once believed that if they loved each other enough, the complications surrounding Michael would eventually become manageable. She had believed there would be a point where the past stopped being present, where his history with (Name) became exactly that: history. Instead, she was beginning to understand that the problem was not necessarily that Michael wanted to return to his former marriage. It was that some part of him had never actually left it emotionally. He had moved forward in every practical sense while carrying pieces of it with him, and Lisa was exhausted from pretending those pieces weren’t taking up space in their relationship.
Christmas ended quietly. There was no dramatic confrontation, no sudden declaration that everything was over. Just two people returning to a home that had begun to feel less like a marriage and more like a place they happened to occupy together. Michael was increasingly withdrawn, retreating into himself whenever the atmosphere became too heavy, while Lisa became increasingly aware that she was waiting for a version of their relationship that might never return. The holidays had given them a temporary illusion of normalcy, but once the decorations came down and the visitors left, there was nothing left to distract them from the truth.
Their marriage was already beginning to unravel. The paperwork would come later. The legal language would eventually give the separation a date, a filing number and a formal ending. But emotionally, the ending had begun long before either of them was willing to call it that.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ January, 1996.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch - Main Residence. Los Olivos, California.
The separation did not remain private for long. By the first week of January, photographs of Michael and Lisa appearing separately were being accompanied by increasingly confident reports that their marriage was in trouble, and within days the speculation had become an accepted fact in the entertainment press. The moment the separation became public, however, the story acquired a third character. (Name)’s name began appearing in headlines and television segments alongside theirs, usually accompanied by some variation of the same insinuation: that Michael had never gotten over his first wife, that Lisa had finally become tired of competing with his past, and that (Name) was somehow responsible for the collapse of their marriage. The fact that (Name) had been divorced from Michael for years seemed irrelevant. The press had already decided that the story was more interesting if she were positioned at its center.
She was furious—absolutely furious. She had spent the better part of two years rebuilding a life and now strangers were casually assigning her responsibility for the failure of a marriage she had not been a part of. She began seeing her own name in articles she had never spoken to, reading descriptions of her supposed relationship with Michael that bore little resemblance to reality. The more she tried to ignore it, the more absurd it became. Her divorce had already been public enough. She had no desire to become the villain in another woman’s marriage simply because the man at its center had unresolved feelings.
Michael refused to discuss her publicly. Whenever reporters asked whether (Name) had played a role in the separation, he declined to answer. He wouldn’t confirm anything, wouldn’t deny anything, and wouldn’t offer the press even a sentence they could use to close the subject. From his perspective, he was protecting her. He knew that anything he said about their history would be dissected, exaggerated, and turned into another headline, and he had no intention of feeding it. Unfortunately, silence was not interpreted as protection. It was interpreted as confirmation.
(Name) eventually called him and she was far less diplomatic than the reporters had been.
“You need to say something.”
Michael was quiet on the other end. “I’m not talking about you.”
“That’s exactly the problem.”
He sighed. “I don’t want to give them anything.”
“You’re already giving them something.” There was a pause. “They’re saying I broke up your marriage! And you’re letting them!”
“I’m not letting them do anything.” He says through the receiver.
“You are when you refuse to correct them.”
Michael rubbed his forehead, staring blankly at the floor. “If I say your name, they’ll make it worse.”
“They’re already making it worse.” She says. “I don’t need you to defend me by pretending I don’t exist in your life.. I need you to understand that when you say nothing, people fill in the blanks themselves. And they never fill them in with anything kind.”
He knew she was right. He had spent so much of his life trying to control what the public knew about him that he had forgotten there were circumstances where withholding information could create more damage than providing it. His silence was meant to keep (Name) out of the story, but the story had already swallowed her.
On January 18, the divorce filing became official.
The paperwork was filed quietly, but nothing involving Michael remained quiet for long. By that afternoon, the news had spread through the entertainment press and the speculation intensified. The filing gave the rumors a concrete shape. This was no longer merely a troubled marriage or an uncertain separation. It was a legal process now, and once again, (Name)’s name surfaced alongside it.
When she and Michael eventually spoke after the filing, neither seemed to know how to begin.
There was something strangely awkward about hearing him discuss the end of another marriage. She knew she shouldn’t care. She had no claim to his emotional state, no responsibility for what happened between him and Lisa, and certainly no desire to become involved simply because their shared history made everything more complicated.
Still, she worried about him. And she hated that she did.
“You know what everyone is going to say now.”
“I know.”
“They’re going to assume you filed because you want to come back to me.” She almost laughed. “And I’m not going to be your rebound.”
He understood.
She wasn’t talking about dating or talking about whether he would ask her out or whether they would eventually find their way back to one another. She was talking about the emotional vacuum that existed after a marriage ended, the dangerous temptation to reach backward toward something familiar simply because the future was frightening.
When he finally spoke, his voice was soft. “You're not a rebound.”
She looked down at the floor. “Then what am I?”
He had no easy answer, and that silence told her more than she wanted it to.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ February, 1996.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Los Angeles, California.
Michael’s calls to (Name) became more frequent without either of them acknowledging that they had. At first, there was an obvious reason for every one of them. He would call to ask what time Aladdin had eaten, whether he had remembered to bring his favorite pajamas to Neverland, whether he was still insisting on sleeping with the same stuffed animal he had carried everywhere for years. Sometimes it was a question about school or a minor scrape he had gotten during play. Nothing inappropriate. Nothing that could not reasonably be attributed to two divorced parents trying to stay informed about their child. (Name) answered because Aladdin was involved, and that distinction mattered to her. She kept their conversations polite, practical, and deliberately contained. If Michael asked about Aladdin, she answered about Aladdin. If the conversation ended there, she considered it a successful call.
Then the calls began stretching.
A question about Aladdin would somehow become a discussion about something Michael had seen on television. That would become a complaint about an upcoming appearance. That would become him telling her about something that had happened at Neverland, or asking her opinion about a decision he was trying to make, or simply talking because he seemed reluctant to hang up. There were evenings when she would realize several minutes had passed without either of them mentioning their son at all. She began recognizing the pattern before he did. “How’s Aladdin?” had become less of a question and more of an entry point, a socially acceptable excuse for hearing her voice.
Michael rarely seemed to notice when the conversations crossed that invisible line. He would call expecting to discuss something small and then find himself talking to her for nearly an hour. Sometimes he sounded restless before she answered, as though he had been pacing with the phone in his hand and had finally convinced himself that calling her was reasonable. Other times he sounded exhausted, his voice quieter than usual, and she would listen while he talked about his day without ever quite admitting that what he had actually wanted was someone familiar on the other end of the line. There were pauses that lasted too long, times when neither of them spoke and neither seemed particularly eager to end the call. (Name) began noticing those silences. She also began noticing that Michael had stopped finding reasons to apologize for them.
She was careful not to encourage it. She had learned too much about emotional dependence to mistake it for intimacy. There was a dangerous difference between someone wanting you and someone needing you because they had not learned how to stand alone. Michael was freshly divorced, overwhelmed by the press, increasingly isolated, and still trying to figure out what his life looked like without the structure he had built around his marriage. She understood why he reached for something familiar. She simply refused to pretend that familiarity automatically made it healthy.
Still, there were times when she found herself softening despite herself. She knew the sound of his voice when he was genuinely happy. She knew when he was forcing himself to sound fine. She knew when he was tired before he ever admitted it. Years of loving him had left her with instincts she could not simply erase because the marriage was over. The difference now was that she no longer allowed those instincts to dictate her life. She could care about him without making his emotional state her responsibility, and that distinction became increasingly important as Michael began relying on her in ways he had not during their marriage.
Aladdin’s visits to Neverland became another source of contact between them. Michael adored having his son there, and Neverland offered Aladdin an entire world designed around the kind of childhood Michael wanted him to experience. There were rides, animals, enormous gardens, movie nights, games, and enough distractions to keep a child occupied from morning until bedtime. Michael sent (Name) updates constantly at first, almost as though he needed to reassure her that everything was going well. Photographs would arrive of Aladdin riding a carousel, feeding an animal, or asleep beneath an absurd pile of blankets after exhausting himself running around the property. Sometimes Michael called simply because Aladdin had done something funny and he wanted her to hear the story rather than waiting until she picked him up.
Those calls were easier for her to accept.
There was something comforting about hearing Aladdin laughing in the background while Michael talked. Their son remained the one uncomplicated piece of their connection, the one reason they could still occupy the same emotional space without either of them having to explain why. When (Name) visited Neverland to pick him up, she could see how happy Aladdin was there, and that mattered more than her discomfort with the memories the place carried. Michael would walk them toward the entrance, sometimes carrying Aladdin when he was sleepy, and they would exchange a few words before she left. Nothing dramatic happened. Nothing needed to.
But increasingly, Michael seemed reluctant to let those moments end.
He would linger beside her after Aladdin had already climbed into the car. He would find another question to ask, something unnecessary about school or a schedule they had already discussed. Sometimes he would simply stand there, hands tucked into his pockets, looking as though he had forgotten what he had intended to say. (Name) began recognizing that look, too. It was the same hesitation she heard over the phone when he called with no real reason at all.
The irony was that Michael had once spent years insisting that he needed space from her, that her concern felt like pressure, that everyone around him was constantly asking something of him. Now, with the marriage to Lisa ending and the life he had built afterward collapsing around him, he was slowly finding his way back to the person who had once represented the very thing he had tried hardest to escape.
And (Name) noticed.
She simply didn’t yet know what she intended to do about it.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ March, 1996
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch - Main Residence. Los Olivos, California.
The toys had taken over the living room.
Plastic dinosaurs stood shoulder to shoulder with race cars, brightly colored action figures, and a sprawling train track that had long since abandoned any resemblance to the instructions that came in the box. The afternoon sunlight filtered lazily through the floor-to-ceiling windows, catching on polished hardwood floors littered with tiny pieces that Michael had nearly stepped on twice already. He didn't mind. The mess meant Aladdin was here, and there were very few things in the world Michael treasured more than the weekends he got to spend with his son.
At his age, Aladdin possessed the limitless imagination only children seemed capable of. Every toy had a voice, a backstory, and an important job. One minute they were astronauts rescuing dinosaurs from the moon. The next they were superheroes chasing a runaway train. Michael followed every impossible plot twist with complete commitment, crawling across the floor on his hands and knees, making exaggerated explosion sounds that sent Aladdin into another fit of laughter.
“You gotta save him!” Aladdin squealed, pointing dramatically toward a tiny plastic firefighter lying beneath the coffee table.
“I’m trying!” Michael laughed, stretching his arm beneath it. “He’s stuck! I can’t reach him.”
“You can do it, Daddy!”
The word never failed to soften him.
Daddy.
No screaming fans. No magazine covers. No sold-out stadiums.
Just Daddy.
Michael finally fished the toy out from beneath the table and held it triumphantly above his head.
“I got him!” Aladdin erupted into applause so enthusiastic it was impossible not to laugh with him.
Michael shook his head, smiling to himself as he gathered a few of the newer figures into his lap. They looked expensive. Better made than most of the toys he'd bought in recent months. He turned one over in his hands, studying the packaging that Aladdin had left nearby.
“These are nice,” He murmured.
Aladdin barely looked up, completely engrossed in arranging another battle. “They’re my favorites!”
Michael smiled. “Mommy got you new toys?”
”Nuh.” His answer came so casually that Michael almost missed it.
“No?”
Aladdin continued pushing a toy truck across the carpet. “My other Daddy did!”
...
Everything seemed to stop. The train noises. The laughter.
Even the grandfather clock in the corner of the room seemed to disappear beneath the ringing that suddenly filled Michael's ears. His fingers tightened ever so slightly around the action figure still resting in his palm. He looked at his son, expecting him to laugh, to explain, to correct himself.
Instead, Aladdin simply kept playing.
Children had a remarkable way of saying things without realizing they had done anything at all. Michael forced his mouth into the same gentle smile he'd been wearing all afternoon, though he could already feel it becoming difficult to hold.
“Other Daddy?” He repeated carefully.
“Uh-huh.” The little boy nodded as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world. “He got me the train, too!”
Michael swallowed. The movement felt strangely difficult. “..Did he?”
Another nod. “He said we could get whatever I wanted!”
Michael stared at the toy in his hands, he wasn't hearing the words anymore.
Only those two.
Other Daddy.
Questions crashed into one another so quickly he couldn't separate them. Had she introduced someone? Was this serious? Had Aladdin started calling another man Daddy because someone had asked him to? Or worse.. because it had happened naturally? How long had this been going on? Why hadn't she told him?
He hated himself for how quickly his thoughts spiraled.
He knew children misunderstood things.
He knew they invented names.
He knew they repeated phrases they'd overheard without understanding them. But knowing that did nothing to stop the ache spreading through his chest.
He set the toy down with careful hands. “So..” he began, keeping his voice impossibly soft. “You had fun?”
“The best!” Aladdin beamed.
Michael smiled. “I’m glad.” He meant it.
God, he meant it.
His son deserved every happy memory imaginable.
That didn’t make it hurt any less.
The rest of the afternoon unfolded exactly as it had before, at least on the surface. Michael laughed when Aladdin made ridiculous jokes. He let himself be tackled onto the rug during an imaginary dinosaur attack. He helped build an impossibly tall tower out of plastic blocks only to gasp theatrically when Aladdin knocked it over with a toy airplane. Anyone watching through the windows would have seen a father completely absorbed in his little boy.
Only Michael knew how hard he was working to keep his thoughts from showing on his face.
When Aladdin eventually wandered into the kitchen after announcing he was “starving forever,” Michael remained kneeling on the living room floor.
The silence settled over the house with startling speed.
He stared blankly at the scattered toys for several long moments before slowly rising to his feet. His legs felt heavier than they should have. The cordless phone rested on its charging cradle beside the piano. He crossed the room without thinking, lifted the receiver and dialed a number he still knew by heart despite every reason he had to forget it.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
Four.
The line clicked.
“Hello?” Her voice.
Familiar enough that, for a fleeting second it felt like nothing had changed. Michael closed his eyes because there was going to be no greeting. No polite conversation. No attempt to pretend he'd called for any other reason.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet enough that it nearly disappeared into the receiver. “..Who’s ‘Other Daddy’?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
Not the kind that came from a bad connection or someone searching for the right words. Michael could hear the faintest movement on her end, something shifting in the background, and then nothing at all. He opened his eyes and stared at the piano across the room, his free hand curling against his hip.
“Michael..”
“Who is he?”
His voice remained quiet, too quiet.
She exhaled slowly. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I'm talking about.” His jaw tightened. “Aladdin just told me.”
Another pause.
Michael looked toward the hallway where his son had disappeared into the kitchen. He could hear cabinet doors opening and closing, followed by the unmistakable sound of a child rummaging through things he had been told not to touch.
“He said somebody got him those toys,” Michael continued. “He said his other Daddy got them for him.”
The word sounded worse coming from his own mouth.
He hadn't planned to repeat it. He certainly hadn't planned to give it that much weight. But hearing himself say it made something inside his chest constrict all over again.
“Michael, listen to me.”
“No, I'm listening.” His voice sharpened despite himself. “I'm asking you a question. Who is ‘Other Daddy’?”
“He doesn’t have another father.”
Michael laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“Then why is he calling somebody else Daddy?”
“What on Earth are you talking about?”
The irritation in her voice finally reached him, and some small, rational part of him recognized that he was being unfair. He knew that. He knew he was calling her without any context, demanding explanations before she'd even had a chance to understand what exactly Aladdin had said.
It didn’t matter.
He had spent years accepting the pieces of fatherhood he was allowed to have. He had accepted the schedules, the distance, the missed mornings, the birthdays he couldn't always attend, the holidays that had to be arranged around his work. He had accepted that there were entire ordinary portions of his son's life happening without him because that was the reality of being Michael Jackson and having a child who needed something resembling a normal childhood.
But there were certain things he had convinced himself belonged to him.
Daddy was one of them.
“Is there somebody you’re seeing?” he asked.
Silence.
Michael's stomach dropped. “Are you?”
“Michael, that’s not what this is about.”
“That sounds like a yes.”
“It’s not a yes.”
“Then tell me no.”
She went quiet again.
Michael turned away from the piano. “Tell me there’s nobody.”
“Why are you doing this?” She asked.
“Because my son told me another man is calling himself his daddy!”
“He said that?” She sounds shocked. “To your face?”
“He said other Daddy.”
“Michael, he’s a little boy.” A sigh.
“I know how old he is.”
“Then you should know better than to take everything he says literally.” That stopped him and Michael’s mouth parted slightly because he knew she was right. That was the worst part.
He knew exactly how children spoke. Aladdin could call a stuffed bear his brother one afternoon and insist the following morning that the same bear was actually his mailman. He could create entire relationships between toys and then forget them by dinner.
Michael rubbed his forehead. “Then what does it mean?”
“It means there’s a man in his life who he likes.”
His eyes closed again. “Somebody you brought into his life.”
“Yes.” The answer was simple.
Michael’s shoulders stiffened. “Does he live with you?”
“No.”
“Does he spend the night?”
“Michael.”
“I’m asking.”
“No.”
“Does Aladdin see him often?”
A pause. “Sometimes.”
Michael stared toward the kitchen. Sometimes. He hated that word. It was vague enough to conceal practically anything.
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long has he been around?”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“No, you’re trying to figure out how serious this is.”
Michael went still. Because that was exactly what he was doing. He leaned his hip against the edge of the piano, staring down at the carpet.
“Is it serious?”
She didn't answer and Michael swallowed. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“Don’t do this, please. My therapist said this isn’t good for m—”
Michael’s face hardened as he cut her off. “I have a right to know who’s around my son.”
“I’m not saying you don’t!”
“Then why does this feel like I’s the last person to know?”
“You aren’t! You’d have a fit if you were.”
“Oh, really? Because I didn’t know there was some man buying my kid toys and letting him call him Daddy.”
“He didn’t teach him that! Neither did I!”
Michael stopped. “What?”
“You heard me.”
The anger that had been building inside him faltered slightly. “What does that mean then?”
“It means Aladdin started saying it on his own.”
Michael didn’t speak and the room suddenly felt too large. “He started it on his own?”
“He had to! Because I don’t know anything about this.”
Michael stared at nothing.
The answer should have made him feel better but it didn’t. If anything, it was worse. Because if someone had taught Aladdin to say it, Michael could have been angry at him. He could have blamed somebody for crossing a boundary. He could have told himself that Aladdin didn’t understand what he was saying.
But if Aladdin had simply started calling another man Daddy because that was what felt natural to him.. Michael couldn’t decide which possibility hurt more.
“Does he call him that all the time?”
“I don’t know, Michael. I told you this is news to me..”
Michael’s eyes lowered. “Jesus.”
Another silence.
This time, she sounded tired. “…Matthew is somebody I’ve been seeing..”
Michael’s fingers tightened around the phone. He turned his face toward the windows. Outside, the afternoon was still bright and peaceful. Cars moved down the street. Somewhere nearby, somebody was mowing a lawn. The world had apparently decided that nothing particularly devastating had happened, which Michael found mildly offensive.
“How long?”
“Michael..”
“How long have you been seeing him?”
“A few months.”
He nodded slowly, though she couldn’t see him. A few months. That wasn’t a fling. That wasn’t somebody she’d met last Tuesday and decided to bring around because she was bored. A few months meant Aladdin knew him.
It meant there had been dinners and afternoons and probably weekends Michael hadn’t known anything about. It meant this man had been introduced into the private little world Michael had always felt protective over, and apparently he’d managed to become important enough that a little boy had given him one of the names Michael had spent his entire life believing belonged to him.
“Does Aladdin like him?” She didn’t answer and Michael gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “That’s a yes.”
“Of course he likes him.” Something ugly twisted in his chest. “He’s good with him.”
Michael's expression tightened. “I’m sure he is.”
Michael looked down at the toy firefighter he’d rescued earlier. It was lying on its back near the coffee table, one tiny plastic arm sticking awkwardly into the air. He crouched and picked it up. “Does he love him?”
The question came out so softly that she almost didn't hear it. “What?”
“Aladdin.” Michael swallowed. “Does he love him?”
There was a long silence before she answered. “He cares about him.”
Michael’s face fell. He understood the distinction.
Children loved easily. They loved their teachers, their grandparents, their favorite television characters, dogs they met once at the park. But there were different kinds of love, and Michael knew exactly which one he was afraid of. “Does he know he’s not his father?”
“Yes.”
“Have you explained that?”
“Michael, he knows who his father is.” The reassurance should have helped. Instead, Michael heard the unspoken correction beneath it.
You are his father.
His eyes burned suddenly, and he blinked hard. “Then why did he say other Daddy?”
“Because he’s little!”
Michael looked toward the kitchen again. His son was humming to himself now, completely unaware. and completely happy.
“Michael, You need to calm down.”
“I am calm.”
He rubbed his thumb against the edge of the plastic firefighter. “I just don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?” She asked, doing something on the other line.
“How another man got close enough to my son that my son gave him my name.”
There. That was the real thing. Not the toys or the boyfriend. Not even the possibility that she had moved on.
That.
His voice had changed when he said it. The anger had drained out of it, leaving something much more vulnerable underneath. She didn't answer and Michael stared at the little plastic figure in his hand.
“I know I'm not there all the time,” he said quietly. “I know that. I know I miss things. I know sometimes Aladdin needs somebody and I'm somewhere else because I'm working or traveling or doing something I can't get out of. I know that.”
“Michael..”
“But that’s my name.” His voice cracked slightly. “That’s the one thing I don’t want somebody else taking.”
She was quiet as Michael inhaled slowly through his nose and looked toward the ceiling, willing himself back into composure.
“I don’t care if he has somebody else around him,” He said. “I don’t. If you’re happy, then.. fine. If Aladdin likes him, fine. I want him to have good people around him. I do.” The words were sincere, which made what came next harder. “But don’t let another man become his father.”
Michael looked down, his grip loosening around the toy. Then Aladdin’s voice rang out from the kitchen.
“Daddy!” Michael's head lifted. “Daddy, can I have cookies?”
Michael closed his eyes, his expression softened despite everything. “Hold on, baby!” He called back.
Then he brought the receiver closer to his mouth. “I have to go.”
“Michael.”
“What?”
“He’s not replacing you.”
Michael’s eyes opened and didn’t answer.
“He isn’t,” she repeated. “You need to stop thinking that.”
His gaze moved toward the kitchen. Aladdin appeared in the doorway a minute later, holding an open package of cookies in both hands and looking deeply pleased with himself.
Michael stared at him; bare feet and a head of messy hair. Crumbs already on his shirt despite not technically having permission to open the package.
His son.
Michael’s expression softened completely.
“I’ll talk to you later,” he murmured and hung up before she could answer.
Aladdin tilted his head. “Daddy?”
Michael looked at him. “Yeah, baby?”
“Can I have two?”
Michael glanced at the cookies, then at his son. “Two?”
Aladdin nodded solemnly. “Three.”
Michael laughed despite himself. “Three?” He stared at him and there was a beat of silence before he laughed. He couldn’t help it. A real laugh, too, the kind that bent him slightly at the waist and made the heaviness in his chest loosen for the first time since Aladdin had said those two words.
“Come here,” Michael said, opening his arms.
Aladdin ran toward him and Michael caught him around the middle and lifted him off the floor, earning an indignant squeal before Aladdin’s arms wound around his neck.
“Daddy!” Michael closed his eyes, his cheek pressed against his son's hair. He held him longer than necessary. Maybe he was being ridiculous. Maybe he was jealous.
Maybe he was scared of something that wasn’t even happening.
But there was another man in his son’s life now, and Michael would have to learn how to live with that. Aladdin deserved more people who loved him, not fewer.
Michael knew that.
He really did.
Still, as Aladdin curled against him, Michael’s arms tightened slightly. Because whatever else changed, whatever new people came into their lives, whatever names Aladdin eventually invented for the people he loved, Michael wanted his son to always know one thing.
There was only one Daddy.
And Michael wasn’t ready to share that name.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ (Name)’s POV.
The conversation happens a few days later, after Michael’s initial reaction has cooled enough that the issue can actually be explained to a little boy who thought Santa and the Easter bunny existed. (Name) isn’t trying to make Aladdin feel guilty for liking her friend. She’s trying to explain the difference between someone being important to him and someone being his father, while also making it clear that Michael is sensitive about the name.
The afternoon had been unusually quiet.
Aladdin was sitting cross-legged on the living room rug with a coloring book spread open in front of him, his tongue poking slightly from the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on staying inside the lines. (Name) sat nearby on the sofa, sorting through a small pile of laundry that had accumulated during the week, occasionally glancing down whenever Aladdin asked her to admire something he'd colored.
It had been a few days since Michael’s phone call.
She hadn’t forgotten it.
She also hadn’t forgotten the way his voice had changed when he'd talked about Aladdin calling somebody else Daddy. Michael could be possessive in ways he didn’t always recognize, particularly where his son was concerned. It wasn’t necessarily about distrusting her or even disliking the man she had been seeing. It was something much more basic than that.
Michael wanted to feel irreplaceable.
And, unfortunately for everyone involved, kids had no concept of emotional landmines.
She folded another little shirt and set it aside. “Aladdin?”
“Mhm?” He didn't look up.
She watched him color a dinosaur’s tail purple. “Do you remember what you called Mommy’ friend the other day?”
His crayon stopped and Aladdin looked up slowly. “Which friend?”
She gave him a look.
He immediately knew. “The other Daddy?”
Her eyebrows rose slightly. “Yeah.. that one.”
Aladdin’s attention returned to the dinosaur. She set the piece of clothing in her lap and leaned forward, resting her forearms against her knees.
“I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“Okay.” He didn’t sound worried. He sounded mildly interested, which was very much a child’s response to a conversation that his mother had clearly decided was important.
(Name) tried not to smile. “You know you only have one Daddy, right?”
Aladdin nodded. “Uh huh.. my Daddy's name is Michael.”
“Right.” She reached down and gently smoothed his hair away from his forehead. “Daddy Michael is your daddy. Nobody else is your daddy, okay?”
Aladdin’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because that’s just how it is.” She paused, trying to find a way to explain something complicated without turning it into a lecture. “You can have lots of people who love you. You can have Mommy’s friends, Daddy’s friends, grandparents, aunties, uncles, people who take care of you and play with you. But that doesn’t mean they’re your mommy or daddy.”
Aladdin considered this while coloring another section of the dinosaur. “So he’s Mommy's friend?”
“Yes.”
“Not my friend?”
She smiled. “He can be your friend too.”
Aladdin seemed satisfied with that. “Okay.”
“But,” she added.
He looked up with a pout. The dreaded but. Children could hear a conjunction and suddenly know they were about to be subjected to legislation. She pointed gently at him.
“You shouldn’t call Mommy's friends Daddy.”
Aladdin’s face scrunched. “Why?”
“Because Daddy doesn’t like it.” That got his attention.
His crayon lowered. “Why?”
She hesitated.
Because Daddy is jealous.
Because Daddy spent half a phone call trying to pretend he wasn’t jealous.
Because your father has a complicated relationship with sharing anything that makes him feel like he can be replaced.
None of those were particularly useful explanations for a child.
“Because Daddy is your daddy,” she said instead. “And sometimes when you call somebody else Daddy, it makes him feel upset.”
Aladdin looked genuinely puzzled. “But I don’t mean Daddy Michael.”
“I know.” She reached over and gently tapped his knee. “I know you don't mean him. And I know you probably don’t understand why it bothers him. But you need to remember that Daddy is Daddy Michael’s special name with you. So don’t give it to Mommy’s friends, okay?”
Aladdin stared down at his coloring book his little eyebrows knitted together. “But..”
She knew she was about to regret beginning this conversation. “But what?”
Aladdin put the purple crayon down and turned around to face her properly.
“Mommy kisses him.”
(Name) went still. Gagged.
“What?”
Aladdin’s expression was perfectly innocent. “Mommy kisses Maffew like she does Daddy.”
There was a silence and she stared at him and.. Aladdin stared back.
She slowly lowered the shirt in her hands. “Aladdin.”
“What, mommy?”
“Why are you paying attention to who Mommy is kissing?”
His shoulders lifted. “I dunno..”
She watched her son, trying to decide whether to laugh, panic, or immediately revise her entire understanding of how observant children were.
Apparently, they saw everything. Everything.
And then they stored it away until the most inconvenient possible moment, because apparently childhood came with its own little intelligence agency.
(Name) cleared her throat. “Okay. Well, Mommy kissing somebody doesn’t make him your daddy.”
Aladdin’s forehead wrinkled. “But you kiss Daddy.”
“Yes.” Used to, but yes.
“And you kissed him.”
“Yes.”
“So.. he’s Daddy too?”
“No.” She closed her eyes briefly and could already feel the headache forming. “Aladdin, people can kiss each other without being married or being somebody's mommy or daddy.”
He considered that. “Why?”
“Because adults are complicated.” He waited and stared at him. “That is the explanation.”
Aladdin didn’t look convinced.
She sighed and shifted closer, pulling him gently between her knees so she could face him. “Listen to me. Mommy likes him. He’s Mommy’s friend, and maybe Mommy likes him in a special way. But that doesn’t make him your daddy. And it doesn’t mean you have to call him Daddy just because Mommy kisses him.”
Aladdin’s little face remained serious as she brushed her thumb over his cheek.
“Daddy wants you to know that he’s your daddy. He doesn’t want you to think somebody else is taking his place.”
Aladdin looked toward the floor.
“Okay?” She repeated, gentler this time. “Sometimes grown ups get feelings that are bigger than what they need to be.”
Aladdin thought about this then he asked, “Like when Daddy gets mad when Mommy talks to Uncle Jackie?”
Her eyes widened and Aladdin’s face remained completely serious, she inhaled slowly. “That—we’re not going to talk about that right now.”
“Why?”
“Because Mommy said so.”
Aladdin frowned and she reached for his face and gently squeezed his cheeks together. “Stay out of grown up business.”
“Mommy!”
“You're a very nosy little boy.” She boops his nose.
“I’m not!”
“You are the nosiest little boy I've ever met.” Aladdin squirmed in her arms, laughing. And before long, he's back to coloring and she's folding clothes.
“..Mommy?”
(Name) closed her eyes. “What, baby?”
“Does Daddy know you kiss him?”
Her head dropped back against the sofa. “Aladdin. Color your dinosaur.”
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ April - May, 1996.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Los Angeles, California.
For a while, (Name) decided the only way to keep the boundaries from becoming blurred was to make them painfully simple. If Michael called about Aladdin, she answered. If he wanted to know about school, she told him. If there was a change in the schedule, a doctor's appointment, a birthday invitation, or anything else that directly concerned their son, she was cooperative without hesitation. Everything else was different. If he asked how she was doing, she gave him a polite answer and redirected the conversation. If he mentioned something about his divorce, she told him she hoped everything worked out and changed the subject. If he called without an obvious reason, she found one for him.
“Is something wrong with Aladdin?” became her quiet way of forcing him to admit why he had actually called. More often than not, he would hesitate, realize she had caught him, and find some insignificant question to ask before ending the conversation. She wasn’t cruel about it—wasn’t punishing him. She simply refused to become his emotional landing place while he was still trying to figure out what his life looked like without Lisa.
Michael noticed the distance. He pretended he didn't. That was becoming one of his more reliable habits. He told himself that he respected her boundaries, that she was simply busy, that their relationship was naturally different now that they were divorced and both had their own lives. Yet he found himself checking the phone more often than he wanted to admit. There were times when he would reach for it automatically before remembering that he had no reason to call her. He missed the ease of their conversations. He missed hearing her laugh without having to earn it through a conversation about their son. He missed being able to tell her something insignificant simply because she was the first person who came to mind. None of those feelings were particularly convenient, so he gave them other names. Loneliness. Stress. Habit. Nostalgia. Anything except what they actually were.
They were forced into each other’s orbit again when Aladdin had another school function that required both parents to attend. It was nothing particularly glamorous, just another afternoon surrounded by parents, teachers, and children, but the circumstances made it strangely intimate. They had to sit beside one another during the presentation, exchange quiet comments about Aladdin’s behavior, and coordinate afterward when he insisted on showing both of them the same drawing approximately fourteen times. Somewhere in the middle of it, something shifted. They stopped thinking about how carefully they were supposed to behave and simply fell back into the old rhythm that had once existed between them. (Name) made an observation about one of the teachers, Michael understood what she meant without requiring an explanation, and she laughed when he gave her that familiar look he had used for years whenever they silently agreed about something. For a few minutes, it felt effortless. Not like they were married again, but like the divorce had temporarily stopped being the most important thing in the room.
Michael seemed startled by how natural it felt. He looked at her while she was laughing, and something in his expression changed. He began to say something, then stopped. She noticed the hesitation and turned toward him, waiting. He looked as though he had reached the edge of a sentence he had been carrying around for weeks and suddenly realized that saying it aloud might change everything. His mouth opened slightly, then closed again.
“What?” She asked.
He shook his head and gave her a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. “Nothing.”
She didn't believe him, but she didn’t press. Whatever he had almost said, he had decided he wasn’t ready to deal with the consequences of saying it.
What concerned her more was how unstable he seemed becoming. There were days when Michael appeared perfectly composed, charming and professional as ever, and others when his mood seemed to change without warning. He was exhausted more often. Distracted. Increasingly sensitive to criticism. There was a restlessness underneath him that (Name) recognized because she had seen it before, long before their marriage had ended. She knew the difference between someone being upset and someone quietly beginning to come apart. She didn't know whether she had the right to intervene anymore, and that uncertainty frightened her almost as much as his behavior did. She could see the warning signs without being willing to step back into the role of caretaker, and for the first time she understood just how cruel that position could be. Caring about someone did not automatically mean she had to save them.
Meanwhile, Michael’s divorce from Lisa became increasingly ugly in the public eye. What had begun as quiet speculation became a steady stream of reports about disagreements, lawyers, competing narratives, and the reasons behind their separation. Every new article seemed to resurrect the same old question: was (Name) involved? Commentators began revisiting Michael’s previous marriage as though it were evidence in the current one, dragging photographs and old interviews back into circulation and treating every interaction between the former couple as proof that something had been happening behind the scenes. Michael continued refusing to discuss (Name), but his silence only seemed to make the speculation more persistent.
Then Lisa gave an interview.
She never directly accused (Name) of anything. But. There were enough carefully worded comments about Michael’s unresolved past, the difficulty of being married to someone whose previous relationship remained emotionally complicated, and the presence of “another woman” in the background of their lives for the press to do the rest. Within hours, the interview was being summarized in headlines that made the implication far less subtle than Lisa's actual words had been. (Name)’s name was once again everywhere.
She was livid.
She had spent so long refusing to participate in their drama, separating herself from Michael’s marriage and repeatedly making it clear that whatever happened between him and Lisa belonged to them. Yet somehow she was still being dragged into it. She hadn’t married Lisa. She hadn’t filed for divorce from Lisa. She hadn’t given interviews about their relationship. She wasn’t responsible for whatever had happened between them, and she was becoming increasingly resentful that everyone seemed determined to make her responsible anyway.
The worst part was that she knew Michael’s silence would probably continue.
He would avoid the cameras. He would refuse to answer. He would say nothing about her, believing that he was protecting her, while the press continued filling the silence with whatever version of the story sold the most magazines. And she was beginning to understand that there was no clean way out of it. The more Michael tried to keep her separate from his divorce, the more obvious it became that she was still occupying some kind of emotional space in his life.
That realization unsettled her far more than the headlines did. She could handle being misunderstood by strangers. She could handle gossip. What she wasn't sure she could handle was the growing suspicion that Michael's inability to let her remain entirely in the past was no longer something she could dismiss as nostalgia.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ June, 1996.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Beverly Hills, California.
It happened outside a charity luncheon in Beverly Hills.
(Name) had barely stepped beyond the entrance when the familiar burst of camera shutters erupted around her. Security instinctively closed in, guiding her toward the waiting car parked at the curb, but she was used to this choreography by now. Smile. Keep walking. Answer what she wanted to answer. Ignore the rest. Most of the questions were harmless enough, asking about Aladdin, whether she had new music coming, or what projects she had planned for the summer. She answered a few with easy professionalism, never slowing her pace, until one voice rose above the others.
“(Name)! Is it getting serious with Matthew?”
She hesitated, but she nodded.
It lasted no more than a heartbeat, but it was enough for every photographer to notice. The questions multiplied, overlapping one another from every direction.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“Have you introduced him to Aladdin?”
“Is this your happiest relationship since the divorce?”
Security gently urged her forward again, but she turned with a small, amused smile rather than the practiced expression celebrities usually wore. There wasn't any hesitation in her face now, only a quiet warmth that hadn't existed in public for a very long time.
“What do you like most about him?”
She laughed softly, almost to herself, as though the answer had arrived before she’d had the chance to think about it.
“He makes me laugh.”
The words came so naturally that they caught even her by surprise. She looked down, shaking her head with an embarrassed smile before glancing back toward the reporters.
“I don’t know..” She admitted. “Life got really heavy for a while.”
Her smile softened. “He makes it feel light again.”
Another reporter called after her. “Do you love him?”
She only laughed, ducked into the waiting car, and closed the door without answering, leaving the question hanging in the air as the vehicle pulled away.
By the following morning, the clip was everywhere. Entertainment programs replayed it on an endless loop, magazine columnists commented on how relaxed she looked, and television hosts remarked that it was the happiest they’d seen her since before her divorce. The quote itself wasn’t particularly remarkable. It wasn’t dramatic or scandalous. If anything, its simplicity was what made people believe it. She hadn't spoken about wealth, romance, or grand gestures. She had simply smiled and said, He makes me laugh.
Michael saw the interview before noon.
He hadn’t intended to watch it more than once. Instead, he replayed the clip until he could anticipate the exact minute her smile appeared. It wasn’t the words that stayed with him. It was the expression on her face before she spoke them. There was an ease about her that he hadn’t seen in years, the kind of unguarded happiness that couldn’t be manufactured for cameras because it arrived before she’d remembered she was being watched. He sat motionless, the remote forgotten in his hand, realizing with a dull ache that he couldn't remember the last time he'd made her smile like that.
Not the tired smiles she’d worn near the end of their marriage when she was trying to reassure him everything would somehow be alright. Not the polite smiles they’d exchanged after the divorce for Aladdin’s sake. A real one. Effortless. The kind that reached her eyes before she even seemed aware she was smiling. Once upon a time, that had been him. Somewhere between rehabilitation, lawyers, silence, Lisa, and all the small decisions that slowly became permanent ones, he had stopped being the person who made her life feel lighter.
Now somebody else did.
For reasons he couldn’t fully explain, that realization hurt far more than learning she was dating at all. It wasn’t simply jealousy. It was grief. Because laughter wasn’t something people gave to strangers. It belonged to the people they felt safest around. Watching the interview, Michael understood something he had spent months refusing to acknowledge.
He was no longer the safest place in her world.
Michael told himself it was because the press refused to let it die, replaying the same twenty second clip across entertainment programs and splashing the same smiling photograph across magazine covers for weeks afterward. Every time he walked past a television, someone seemed to be discussing Matthew. Every checkout line carried another headline speculating about whether the relationship had become serious. He tried not to look. Tried not to read them. Yet somehow, every article found its way into his hands anyway. He would skim a headline out of idle curiosity, only to realize several minutes later that he'd read the entire piece, searching between the lines for something he couldn't have explained if anyone had asked.
The fear arrived quietly.
It wasn't the dramatic sort that announced itself all at once. It crept in through ordinary thoughts, through moments that should have meant nothing. He would wonder what she was doing that evening and, for the first time, the answer no longer felt predictable. She might be having dinner with Matthew. She might be watching a movie with him after Aladdin had gone to bed. She might be introducing him to friends, laughing with him in ways Michael had once believed belonged only to them. The life she was building no longer paused when he wasn't there. It continued without him, and the more permanent Matthew became, the more Michael found himself confronting a truth he had spent months avoiding. She wasn't simply recovering from their marriage anymore.
She was moving beyond it.
The phone calls became more frequent after that.
They almost always came late at night, after he knew Aladdin would already be asleep. Sometimes he'd convince himself he had a reason to call. He’d think of a question about school or wonder whether Aladdin had mentioned something during the week. Other nights, he dialed her number before he’d even settled on an excuse. She would answer after a few rings, her voice quieter than usual, softened by the late hour and he often said nothing at all. He simply listened, comforted by the fact that she had answered.
One night, after several weeks of the same strange routine, she finally broke the silence. “Michael?”
“..Yeah.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
Another pause settled between them. “Is this about Aladdin?”
“..No.”
She sighed softly. “Then why do you keep calling me?”
He closed his eyes. And trust, he had asked himself the same question countless times. “I..” He stopped, searching for an answer that refused to come. “I don’t know.”
The confession lingered between them. “You don’t know? And you call me three or four nights a week?” And what she didn't want to say was Matthew was getting a little concerned.
“I'm sorry, really..”
“You sit there without saying anything.”
“I know.”
“So why are you calling?”
He rubbed a hand across his face, exhausted by the truth before he even spoke it. “I don't know.” There was no manipulation in his voice, only confusion.
He genuinely didn’t understand what he was looking for each time he reached for the phone. He only knew that hearing her voice settled something inside him for a little while, and when the line went dead, the quiet in his house somehow felt even louder than before.
(Name) sat in silence, turning his words over in her mind. There had been a time when she would have stayed on the phone until sunrise if she’d thought it might help him. She would have coaxed him into talking, patiently untangled every fear he couldn’t name, and quietly carried pieces of him he no longer seemed able to hold himself. That instinct still flickered somewhere deep inside her, but it no longer dictated her choices.
“Michael,” She said gently, “You can’t keep calling me because you’re lonely.. you have to find someone else to talk to.”
Another long silence. “..Yeah.”
She wished he sounded like he believed it.
Outside of those calls, Michael was becoming increasingly isolated. Friends noticed that conversations with him rarely stayed on one subject for long anymore. Family dinners passed with him sitting quietly at the edge of the room, contributing only when someone spoke to him directly. He seemed distracted even when he smiled, forever somewhere else in his own thoughts. Some days he talked endlessly, unable to let a conversation end. Other days he barely spoke at all. His moods shifted without warning, his patience seemed thinner than it had ever been, and he carried around this restless energy of someone who couldn't find comfort anywhere, even in his own home.
Elizabeth noticed it before anyone said it aloud. She watched him drift through afternoons that should have been beautifully ordinary for a superstar as as himself, catching him staring absently out windows or falling silent in the middle of conversations. More than once she overheard him mention (Name) without realizing he had done it, bringing her into stories that had never been about her in the first place. It wasn’t obsessive, at least she didn't think it was. It was subtler than that. She had become the reference point his mind kept returning to, as though every road eventually curved back in her direction.
The people who loved him began exchanging worried glances when he wasn't looking. None of them were concerned because they believed he still loved his former wife.
They were concerned because he no longer seemed to know how to exist without reaching for her, even after she had spent two years teaching herself how to live without him.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ August 10, 1996.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Los Angeles, California.
The divorce was finalized quietly.
After months of negotiations, headlines and private conversations that had slowly drained whatever remained of the marriage, the paperwork was signed, filed, and completed with the same cold detachment that had defined much of the process. A marriage that had once existed in front of millions of people was reduced to signatures on documents and a date stamped onto a page.
August 20.
Michael had spent months believing that reaching the end would bring some kind of relief. He thought the uncertainty would disappear. He thought the constant tension, the arguments, the questions about whether the marriage could survive, would finally quiet once there was nothing left to fight over. He had imagined waking up afterward and feeling lighter, as though closing one door would somehow make the confusion behind it disappear.
Instead, he woke up feeling exactly the same. The silence in the house felt heavier than before.
He sat alone for a long time, staring at nothing in particular, waiting for some kind of emotional release that never came. There was no sudden clarity. No peace. No moment where everything finally made sense. He had spent months telling himself that the pain he felt was because of the marriage ending, because of the pressure surrounding it, because of everything that had gone wrong.
But with the marriage officially over, the truth became impossible to avoid.
Ending things with Lisa had not changed what he felt for (Name). It had not erased the years they had shared. It had not erased the memories or erased the way his mind still searched for her whenever something felt unbearable.
He had been unconsciously waiting for something to shift. He had convinced himself that once he was no longer tied to Lisa, once the complications were gone, he would finally understand what he wanted. Instead, all he felt was the same ache he had been carrying long before the divorce was finalized.
The problem had never been Lisa. The problem was that he had lost someone he had never truly allowed himself to grieve.
He had spent so much time trying to justify his choices, trying to convince himself that he had done what he needed to do, that he had avoided the simplest truth: he missed (Name). He missed the familiarity of her. The ease of her. The person who had known him before everything became complicated. The person who had been there before the world started telling him who he was.
But missing someone didn’t mean they were waiting. That was the part he struggled with most. Because while Michael remained caught between regret and longing, (Name) had continued moving forward. She wasn’t sitting at home hoping he would eventually figure things out. She wasn’t watching the news for signs that he had changed his mind or preserving the space he had left behind.
She had built a life beyond him.
She had Aladdin.
She had her career.
She had friends, routines, and a sense of peace that had taken years to rebuild. She went to events without wondering whether Michael would be there. She made plans without considering how they would affect him. She laughed freely. She dated someone who made her happy. She existed in a world where Michael was no longer the center of every decision.
And that realization was devastating because it meant there was no grand gesture waiting for him where everything could simply return to the way it was.
There was no going back to before.
He had assumed, somewhere deep down, that because their connection had been so significant, it would remain untouched by time. That no matter how far apart they drifted, some invisible thread would always keep them tied together.
But threads could stretch. They could weaken and sometimes they could break. Michael had spent years believing that losing someone meant they left. Now he was realizing something much more painful.
Sometimes people stayed. Sometimes they loved you. Sometimes they gave you every opportunity to choose them.
And sometimes, after you failed to, they learned how to live without you.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ September, 1996.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Los Angeles, California.
In the hills above Los Angeles, the afternoon settled lazily across the Tuscan estate she had spent nearly a year making her own.
The house no longer felt unfamiliar.
When she'd first walked through its heavy wooden doors, she'd struggled to imagine herself living there. Every room had echoed. Every hallway had reminded her of another house, another marriage, another life she'd mistaken for permanence. Now the stone floors carried the comfortable sounds of everyday living. Children's toys sat abandoned beneath an antique console table. Fresh flowers rested in handmade ceramic pitchers on the kitchen island. Framed photographs had gradually filled shelves that had once stood empty. Music drifted softly from somewhere deeper inside the house, competing with the distant splash of the pool just beyond the open French doors.
She sat cross-legged on the living room rug in a pair of linen trousers and an oversized sweater, helping Aladdin fit the last few pieces into a dinosaur puzzle spread across the Persian carpet. Sunlight poured through the tall windows, warming the room until it smelled faintly of jasmine drifting in from the garden outside. She laughed quietly when he proudly forced a piece into the wrong place, gently turning it in his small hands before helping him find where it actually belonged.
Her phone began to ring and she glanced toward the coffee table. An unfamiliar number and for a minute, she considered letting it go to voicemail.
Instead, she reached for it. “Hello?”
No one answered then a man cleared his throat. “..Hi... is this (Name)?”
She frowned. “..Yes.”
“My name is John. I’m Michael’s manager.”
Everything inside her went still.
The smile disappeared from her face so quickly it startled her. She rose instinctively to her feet, absently brushing invisible lint from her trousers as she stepped away from the puzzle.
“Just one second, sweetheart,” She told Aladdin gently, forcing a reassuring smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes before walking toward the open terrace doors. By the time she stepped outside beneath the warm California sun, her heart had already begun to race. “..Is he alright?”
The hesitation on the other end of the line answered the question before the man ever spoke. “He.. had a difficult morning.”
"What happened?"
“We’re on a commercial shoot.” His voice carried the unmistakable discomfort of someone making a phone call he knew he shouldn't have to make. “He’s locked himself in his dressing room.”
Her grip tightened around the phone. “And..?”
Another pause. “He won’t come out.”
She stared across the rolling hills beyond her property, watching the breeze stir the cypress trees lining the driveway. “What does that have to do with me?”
The production manager exhaled quietly. “..He’s asking for you.”
Silence. “He keeps saying he won't come out until you’re here.”
She closed her eyes.
Behind her, through the open French doors, she could hear Aladdin humming softly to himself as he continued working on the puzzle, completely unaware that the life she'd fought so hard to leave behind had just called her from the other side of the hills.
When she finally spoke, her voice was calm.
“I’m not the person to call.”
“No.” The honesty landed heavier than any apology could have.
She rested one hand against the warm stone balustrade overlooking the gardens, breathing slowly as she looked out over the home she’d built from the wreckage of another life. It occurred to her then that this was the first time Michael had reached for her since she’d finally stopped letting him have access to her.
John spoke again apologetically.
“..Would you be willing to talk to him?”
She didn’t answer.. because despite everything.. some voices remained instinctive, even after they no longer belonged to your life.
Finally, she closed her eyes. “..Text me the address.”
John was quiet for a beat before answering, his voice barely above a whisper. “Thank you.”
The call ended, leaving her standing alone on the terrace with the phone still loose in her hand. The late afternoon breeze drifted through the gardens, carrying the familiar scent of lavender and citrus blossoms as it rustled the hedges lining the property. For the first time since the divorce, she turned her back on the life she’d built and walked willingly toward the one she’d sworn she would never return to.
The drive across Los Angeles stirred memories. Studio lots hidden behind towering security gates. Anonymous beige buildings that concealed million dollar productions behind unremarkable walls. Endless soundstages and parking lots that had once felt as familiar as her own driveway. She had known this world intimately once. Now it felt like someplace she’d visited in another lifetime, familiar enough to recognize but distant enough to no longer belong. Aladdin sat quietly in the backseat, absentmindedly swinging his feet against the leather seat. He only asked once where they were going.
“To see Daddy?”
She caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Just—its quiet time, baby. Okay?”
By the time she reached the studio gates, someone was already waiting. The production manager hurried toward her before she’d even shut off the engine, relief written so plainly across his face that it was painful to look at.
“Thank you for coming.”
She stepped out, smoothing a wrinkle from the front of her blouse that hadn’t been there to begin with before opening the rear door for Aladdin.
“Stay right beside me, sweetheart.” He nodded without complaint, slipping his small hand into hers as naturally as breathing.
Only then did she turn back toward John. “Where is he?”
He pointed toward one of the nearby soundstages. “In his dressing room.”
“..Is he safe?”
A nod. “He hasn’t come out.”
“Okay..”
“He hasn’t said much since I spoke to you.” John hesitated, glancing briefly toward the building. “Just.. he keeps asking if you’re here.”
Something in her chest tightened.
Her gaze drifted toward the open soundstage doors where crew members lingered in clusters. Their conversations stopped the instant they noticed her approaching. Heads turned, eyes followed and no one spoke. They simply looked.. relieved. As though her arrival meant someone else had finally taken responsibility for a problem none of them knew how to solve. She hated that feeling. It reminded her far too much of the life she’d left behind.
John led them quietly through winding production corridors lined with costume racks, tangled coils of cable, makeup stations, and crew members who instinctively stepped aside without being asked. The usual organized chaos of a working set had vanished, replaced by an uneasy stillness that seemed to stretch through every hallway. Even Aladdin appeared to sense it, his small hand tightening around hers as curious eyes wandered over the unfamiliar surroundings.
At last, John stopped outside a plain white dressing room door. Two security guards stood several feet away, their presence creating an odd bubble of privacy in the otherwise busy hallway.
“He’s in there,” John said quietly.
She stared at the door. It looked painfully ordinary, yet everyone on the set had apparently spent the better part of an hour staring at it. “..Has anyone spoken to him?”
“He answers occasionally.”
“And he still won’t come out?”
John gave a quiet shake of his head. “No.”
Silence settled over the hallway and she crouched slightly, brushing a gentle hand through Aladdin’s hair. “Sweetheart, would you stay here with Mr. Branca for just a minute?”
He looked from her to the closed door before nodding. “..Okay.”
She smiled faintly, squeezed his shoulder and let his hand slip from hers before walking the remaining few steps alone. Every footfall echoed softly against the polished floor until she found herself standing directly before the door.She simply looked at it, struck by how something so mundane could suddenly feel so heavy.
Slowly, she raised her hand and her knuckles hovered for a heartbeat before tapping softly against the wood.
Once. Then twice.
The hallway fell completely silent.
She swallowed. “...Michael?”
Nothing.
After another moment, she tried again, lowering her voice until it was meant only for the man on the other side. “...It’s me... it’s (Name).”
For a long while, nothing happened. The hallway remained perfectly still. No footsteps. No voices. Just the faint hum of the air conditioning and the quiet anticipation of everyone lingering several yards away, pretending not to listen. Then came the soft click of the lock turning. So quiet she convinced herself she’d imagined it. The door eased open only a few inches, just enough for her to slip through after giving John one reassuring glance over her shoulder. The door clicked shut behind her, sealing her inside.
The dressing room was swallowed in darkness. Heavy blackout curtains covered every window, leaving only the thin strip of light beneath the bathroom door and the faint glow outlining the entrance she’d just come through. It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust, but even then the room remained little more than shadows. Garment racks stood like looming silhouettes, the makeup mirror sat dark in the corner, and somewhere deeper inside she could hear him breathing. Slow. Uneven. Too loud against the silence. A knot tightened in her stomach.
“...Michael?” she called softly. “What’s going on? Why do you have the lights off?” No answer came. Assuming the darkness itself might be making whatever this was worse, she reached toward the wall beside the door, fingertips searching for the light switch. She found it—or almost did.
Before she could press it, another hand wrapped gently around her wrist warm but unsteady as her breath caught. She turned toward the touch. For the first time she could just barely make out his outline standing only inches away, nearly invisible against the darkness.
“..Don’t.” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper. He released her wrist a moment later and she slowly lowered her hand.
“..Talk to me.”
Silence stretched between them before he finally spoke.
“They think I’m a monster.” The words barely carried across the room. She frowned.
“..Who?”
“Everyone.” His breathing faltered. “I heard them. They don’t think I could tell.. but I heard them.” A hollow, humorless laugh escaped him. “I scare them because I don't look right..” His voice cracked on the last sentence, and another long silence settled over the room before he asked, so quietly it hardly sounded like him at all, “..Are you scared of me too?”
She could only look at him, struggling to reconcile the quiet voice in front of her with the frantic phone call that had brought her here. Even in the darkness she could make out the faint rise and fall of his shoulders, the uneven rhythm of his breathing, the way every inhale seemed to catch before it could become a full breath. Whatever had happened before she’d arrived hadn’r stayed behind on the set. It had followed him into this room, wrapped itself around him, and settled into every inch of his posture. He looked exhausted, but not from work. He looked like someone who had spent the last hour fighting himself.
“..What on earth are you talking about?”
He didn’t answer but instead, a quiet laugh escaped him, brittle enough to break apart before it had fully left his throat. “The commercial.”
His voice came out rough and strained. “They wanted..” He swallowed hard, the words sticking. “They said the lighting wasn’t matching. They kept talking about my face.”
She remained silent, letting him continue.
“They brought out makeup.” His breathing hitched. “Not.. normal makeup.”
He lowered his gaze to his hands, flexing his fingers as though he could still feel the brush against his skin.
“They wanted to darken my skin.” The words lingered heavily between them. “And..” Another pause stretched painfully long. “Someone said my nose wasn’t reading right on camera. They started talking about putty. About making it look.. fuller.”
His jaw clenched so tightly she heard his teeth click together. “They kept saying, ‘It'll look more natural.’” His voice cracked on the final word. “Natural.”
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until his knuckles turned white.
“I’ve spent years having people tell me I don’t look right. Too dark. Too light. Too thin. Too strange. Too much surgery. Not enough surgery.” He released a shaky breath that sounded as though it hurt to let go. “Every time I walk into a room somebody has an opinion about my face.”
Silence settled over the room again, broken only by the faint hum of the ventilation above them. “When they brought out the putty..” He whispered, “..I just kept thinking.. I can’t fix this anymore.”
His shoulders folded further inward, every inch of him collapsing into himself. “I don't even know what they want me to look like.”
Another long pause passed before he spoke again.
“So I came in here.” Almost unconsciously, his hand drifted toward the uneven ends of his hair. “I found a pair of scissors.” And his voice became so small. “I just.. started cutting.”
The confession lingered in the darkness between them. She didn't answer, there were no words capable of undoing what had happened before she’d walked through that door. Nothing she could say would erase the comments, the makeup brushes, the putty sitting on a countertop somewhere outside this room. All she could do was stand beside him.
“..Is that why you won’t let anyone turn the lights on?”
He nodded once. “I didn’t want them to see.” His hands tightened into fists. “They were already looking at me like I was crazy.” He swallowed. “I couldn’t let them see what I’d done.”
Neither of them moved. The darkness no longer felt suffocating. It felt protective, wrapping itself around him like a blanket, concealing him from the eyes that had spent the day dissecting every feature of his face. She knew him well enough to understand this wasn't about hiding from everyone else. It was about hiding from the version of himself he imagined reflected in their expressions.
She stepped a little closer, careful not to crowd him. “..Can I please turn on the lights, Michael?”
He didn’t respond, his head remained bowed and breathing uneven as though agreeing to something so simple required him to confront every fear that had driven him into this room.
“I won’t laugh,” she said gently. “I’m not here to judge you.”
Another long silence passed, then too faint to notice, he nodded. “..Okay.”
She waited one more heartbeat to make sure he wasn’t retreating again before slowly reaching behind her. This time, nothing stopped her. The switch clicked beneath her fingertips, and warm light gradually filled the dressing room. It softened the shadows instead of chasing them away, revealing the room piece by piece until her eyes finally settled on him.
The breath caught painfully in her throat.
His pretty curls were gone.
Not entirely, but enough that the familiar silhouette she’d known for years had vanished. The carefully shaped layers he’d spent so long growing had been hacked away in uneven sections that zigzagged around his head without any pattern or purpose. Some pieces had been cut so close they barely covered his scalp, while others jutted outward where the scissors had slipped through trembling hands. Dark curls littered the bathroom floor around his shoes, clung stubbornly to his shirt, and gathered around the sink where a pair of silver scissors still rested exactly where he’d abandoned them.
But it wasn’t the hair that broke her heart.
It was him.
He stood with his shoulders curved inward as though trying to make himself smaller, eyes fixed on the floor and hands hanging uselessly at his sides. Tiny cuts crossed several of his fingers where the blades had nicked him in his panic, thin red lines that hadn’t even been cleaned. He didn’t look like someone who’s impulsively cut his hair. He looked like someone who’d spent the last hour trying to carve himself into a picture the world would finally stop criticizing, only to discover there was nothing he could change.
She said nothing, rendered speechless because she could see the fear written plainly across his face. He wasn’t waiting for her opinion of the haircut. He was waiting for confirmation that she’d see him the way everyone else did.
One hand rose instinctively to cover her mouth as her expression softened. “Oh, honey..” There was no shock in her voice—no disgust but only heartbreak.
His eyes squeezed shut. “I know,” he whispered. “It looks awful.” A humorless laugh escaped him before collapsing into silence. “I ruined it.” His chin trembled, and he couldn’t bring himself to lift his eyes from the floor. “I ruined everything.”
She remained where she was taking in the sight of the dressing room. Hair lay scattered across the tile like dark ribbon. Makeup brushes had been knocked onto the counter. A garment bag had slipped halfway from its hook. The aftermath of someone who had simply run out of places to put his feelings and acted outward.
She exhaled quietly. “..Where’s Elizabeth?” The question seemed so obvious that she asked it without thinking. He didn’t answer.
Assuming she was missing something, she glanced around the room. His jacket was draped over the back of a chair. His wallet sat beside an untouched bottle of water. His phone wasn’t visible.
“She should probably be here.” She began walking slowly around the room, looking across the vanity, the small table beneath the television, the sofa. “..Where’s your phone?” She spotted it resting on the far end of the makeup counter and reached toward it.
“I’ll call her.” Before her fingers could close around it, his hand caught her wrist. Not roughly but enough to stop her.
“..Don’t.”
She looked back at him, genuinely puzzled. “What?”
“I don’t..” He swallowed. “I don’t want her right now.”
The sentence landed with a strange and childish simplicity. There was no explanation attached to it. No attempt to soften it. It sounded less like the decision of a grown man and more like a frightened child insisting on one specific person after a nightmare.
She studied his face, her confusion written plainly across her own. “Michael..”
“I don’t want her.” His grip loosened, as though he’d only just realized he’d stopped her at all.
“I want you.” The room fell quiet again.
She spoke carefully “..Where is she? Should I call Lisa? You told me you two were on okay terms after..”
He stared at the floor. “She.. took a trip.”
“With work?”
His jaw tightened. “..With her ex.”
(Name) blinked. “I’m sorry?”
He let out a slow, shaky breath. “She went away with him.” The words sounded surreal coming from his mouth and it seemed like he still hadn’t figured out how to make sense of them himself.
“I haven’t..” He stopped, rubbing tiredly at his forehead. “..I haven’t talked to her in almost a month—she told me she would always be there.. it doesn’t feel like it.”
(Name) felt a tightening around her eyes with slightest hesitation in her breathing. The words had landed somewhere old. She knew what it felt like to wait for the phone that never rang. She knew what it was like to tell yourself there had to be an explanation, because the alternative was admitting the person you loved had simply stopped choosing you. She knew the peculiar loneliness of watching someone slowly hand pieces of themselves to another person while insisting nothing was wrong.
For the briefest moment, those memories stirred.
She remembered sitting alone in rooms that had felt far too large. Wondering whether he was alright. Wondering whether he was thinking about her. Wondering whether she should call again or whether one more unanswered message would finally become too humiliating to bear. She remembered all of it. But then just as quietly as it had come, the feeling passed.
She wasn’t that woman anymore. Healing hadn’t erased the memories. It had simply taught her that they no longer had the authority to decide who she became. She looked at him standing in front of her, shoulders folded inward, hair uneven where panic had guided the scissors, and instead of feeling vindicated, she felt something infinitely more complicated.
Compassion. And no, he hadn’t earned it. She had. Because she had fought too hard to let bitterness become the only language she spoke.
She drew a slow breath. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I really am.”
The words weren’t about Lisa. They weren’t even about the haircut. They were about the unmistakable loneliness standing in front of her.
Michael finally looked up and his eyes were red from crying, his face exhausted in a way that reached far beyond simple fatigue. He took a step forward and dropped to his knees in front of her, face buried in her womb as he held her hips.
Then he finally spoke: “..Can you fix me?” He swallowed. “..Like you always do.”
The sentence hung between them with heartbreaking innocence.
The instinct of someone whose worst times had, for years, always ended the same way. She would sit on the floor beside him. She would talk until his breathing slowed. She would make tea he never finished. She would distract him, reassure him, stay awake with him until morning if that was what it took.
His mind had reached backward to the only pattern it remembered.
“..Please,” he whispered. “I don’t know what to do.”
(Name) felt something tighten painfully in her chest because there had been a time when she would’ve. Without hesitation. She would’ve canceled meetings, ignored her own exhaustion, and stayed until the world felt safe again for him. That version of her had loved him with such complete abandon that she never stopped to ask who was doing the same for her.
She scooped up his face, her expression impossibly gentle as she caressed his cheek. “Michael...” She paused, choosing her words with extraordinary care. “I can sit with you.” Her voice remained soft. “I can make sure you’re not alone today.”
premise; in which you can't seem to leave your baby dad alone no matter how much you try to put up a front that you hate him.
contains; flirty!michael, reader having a slick mouth, profanities used, child involved throughout the story, arguing, toxic!michael, eater!michael, p in v, choking, mean!michael sorta, dom!michael, sub!reader, multiple positions (only one described), use of daddy (just maybe once?), porn with plot, happy ending
lovely request .ᐟ
Westlake Recording Studio Los Angeles — 1988
You were standing in the empty hallway with your ex-husband, michael. The man you swore you absolutely couldn't stand, the same man that you swore you hated and wanted nothing to do with. Arms crossed tightly over your chest as you looked at him with pure disgust, but behind that disgust was a strong and deep feeling of pure love for a man you created a life with.
Your daughter three year old naomi sat in michaels chair playing with michaels music equipment talking Bill's ears off trying to keep the child entertained and occupied while the two of you silently argued outside the door in the empty hallway. Of course as a mother and father you both didn't want to let naomi hear that, none of it at all so you two decided to just exit the room to talk about things.
"You always do this shit, michael." You hissed at him, getting fed up entirely with his lifestyle and not being able to do normal family activities like he said he would. Sure he was a great father, but he was always away on tours and other things. Which was explainable due to the fact you knew he was literally the most famous person in the world. You glared at him feeling nothing but anger towards him. "You said you were gonna see her last weekend, what the fuck was i supposed to tell her when she asked?, oh daddies just busy?, oh fuck off." You sucked your teeth.
"I'm a good father, and you know that," he pointed a finger at you, looking down at you. “Yeah I get busy at times, but you can not take away the fact that I’m a good father (name), I love my daughter.” He rested a hand near his heart, your eyes following his hand movement. “And you know I love my daughter, so don’t sit here and act like I’m a dead beat, cause that’s the last thing I am.”
You scoffed and rolled your eyes, “Michael listen okay,” you clasped your hands together forming the fakest smile ever. “Yeah you’re a great dad or whatever, but you’re not here sometimes. You runnin round with that bird bitch Tatiana?, you thought I didn’t see it?” You looked at him, more like looked him up and down. Yeah you weren’t always invested in his love life or whatever but it still….pained you of the thought of him moving on.
He sighed, "How did the conversation go about him not being around enough then to tatiana?" He thought. He took a deep breath, rubbing his hand on his forehead, trying to release some stress somehow. "Why are we talking about tatiana? She was in one," he held up one finger to demonstrate. "Music video, and running around? What are you talking about? I'm barely seen with the woman. And her name is tatiana, not that word you just said. Be polite. I thought i taught you that by now." He grinned at the word "taught," knowing exactly what he meant by it.
you stayed quiet before answering to his smart remarks. "Oh, trust me, I know her name, and I know my manners jackson." You glared at him. "I could give a damn about your love interest. Just start seeing your child more before i start popping up at hayvenhurst or let momma katherine handle yo ass again."
He chuckled softly, his eyes never leaving yours. "Of course, tinka, anything for my two favorite ladies." He smiled
You rolled your eyes again. "I told you stop calling me that."
"I don't wanna." He fake frowned.
You glared at him, crossing your arms very tightly. Your face burning with frustration. But deep down, you knew you'd always love michael. Things were just really complicated between the two of you and made you both part ways after naomi was born. But a piece of your heart always remained with michael and he knew that.
"I have to go, gotta start getting ready for my day." You said breaking the tension running your hands down the side of your hips to hide any nervousness. A damn shame that man still had an affect on you.
"mmh, you don't wanna stay with me today?" He smiled lazily, making eye contact with you which he knew was your biggest weakness. He knew you loved his eyes, "we can have lots of fun y'know."
"Kiss my ass michael." You looked at him with annoyance written all over your face. "Nae! Let's go." You called out to your daughter.
"Well if you insist." He said with a light chuckle. "Ain't nothin i ain't had before, I'd like to take a bite out of it ag-"
"In your fucking dreams." You pointed your finger at him. Then suddenly before you two could bicker again, the door opened. Your daughter stepped out looking up at her two parents with a bright smile on her face.
"Daddy!" She ran towards michael, little legs stomping on the floor making her way quickly towards him. Michael bent down to catch her in his arms, hugging her tightly lifting her up and spinning her around.
"Oh look at you!," he said cradling naomis head before he settled her back down on the ground squatting to reach eye level. "You got so big sweetheart." He kissed her cheek. "How's my favorite girl?, hm?"
"m'good I learning how to spell my name!" She beamed excitedly feeling the excitement rushing through her body after not seeing her father in nearly two weeks. Next thing you know she was yapping about everything she learned and did in the span of two weeks yapping michaels ears off.
He didn't mind at all, he listened with total attentiveness nodding his head and little "mhm" here and there so she could know he was listening. He looked calm around his daughter, like everything disappeared once he was around something that reminded him of home. Even better due to the fact that naomi looked like the woman he loved deeply.....you.
After a few minutes of them talking, you stood there just watching before you finally noticed it was getting late. "Nae we gotta go." You said. Both pair of big eyes looking at you like you just stole christmas. "What?" You said confused fixing your bag that was slipping off your shoulder.
Naomi looked at him, a small frown forming on her lips, she wrapped her arms around his neck hugging him gently. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her in a warm embrace and kissed her head. "Bye daddy." She murmured.
"Bye princess, I'll see you later." He pulled back just enough to look at her. "Don't be sad alright?, I'll see if mommy would like to come to Neverland and we can spend the whole day together, kay?" He smiled looking at her.
"Okay" She nodded happily believing him. She ran back towards you grabbing her coat and putting it on. You helped her not noticing michael stood there watching.
He fake coughed to get your attention which worked. "Ahem" he smiled. You looked at him raising an eyebrow confused. "What?"
"I'd like to spend time with you both at neverland....if that's fine with you." He said holding his hands together. "Or just my daughter, y'know how you get the all the animals out there." He chuckled softly at the thought.
You rolled your eyes, which he seemed to notice. He clicked his tongue, "roll em again. I'll give you a reason to roll em next time." He rubbed the back of his neck. The comment caught you completely by surprise.
"Shut up." You snapped back, you thought for a minute, your daughter giving you puppy eyes to please agree. "Pleaseeeee mommyyy," she grabbed your hand.
You sighed, "Fine, fine, we'll be there."
"Perfect, I'll see you my two favorite ladies later." He smiled. He bent down to kiss naomi on the head. "See ya later, princess." Naomi smiling and saying her goodbye one last time. Michael watched you and Naomi walking towards the exit. A low whistle left his lips when he watched as your hips swayed. "Bye, pretty lady!" He yelled out, a small grin on his face
You stuck a middle finger at him as you walked away, being very intent on not looking back or he'd see how much he made you flustered just by the way he spoke, so soft and gentle.
FIVE DAYS LATERRRRRRRR
The phone was balanced precariously between your shoulder and your ear while you shoved a stack of folded toddler clothes into the dresser.
"I’m telling you, Maya, this is it," you said into the receiver, pulling the zipper closed with a sharp snap. "I am strictly drop-off and pick-up from now on. No sitting on his couch, no 'staying for a quick glass of water,' none of it. We have a strict co-parenting agreement, and I am sticking to it."
Maya sighed over the line, sounding completely unbothered. "You said that last Thursday"
"Last Thursday was a lapse in judgment!" you snapped, pacing across your living room. "He used that quiet, soft-spoken voice he does when he wants something, and I was tired. But today? I’m immune. I’ve built up antibodies to his nonsense."
"Right. And what happens when he steps out in those black leather pants and looks at you like you’re the only thing on his schedule?"
"Then I’m going to look right back at him and remind him that the child support check better clear by the first," you shot back, rolling your eyes. "I’m done, Maya. Completely over the toxic cycle, we both decided it was better If we split ways anyw-"
Click. The line call-waits. You check the caller ID on your landline handset. "WESTLAKE / PRIVATE NUMBER" flashes on the screen.
You sighed, "speaking of the devil, hold on boo lemme call you back, girl." Before maya could even say anything, you hung up ready to talk to your man.....I mean, ex!
"What." You said, putting up the irritated front already knowing damn well your put was about to jump out your chest.
Michael chuckled into the phone before speaking into the phone, voice low, velvety, and amused. "Well, hello to you too, tinka. That’s how you greet the father of your child? No 'hi Michael', no 'hope you're having a nice afternoon."
You rolled your eyes as if he could see you. You sat on the couch, kicking your feet up comfortably. "You’re lucky you got a 'what do you want.' I was in the middle of a very important conversation before you interrupted. So state your business."
He raised his eyebrow not falling for the attitude bait. "Mhm. Let me guess... talking to Maya about how much you hate me?"
"Don't flatter yourself." You said.
"You always get so feisty when you miss me. I can hear it in your voice, baby." He smiled over the phone as if you could see him.
"Michael, I swear to God, if you called me just to run your mouth and act arrogant, I’m hanging up-"
He left out a soft laugh. "Alright, alright, hold on, don't hang up on me. I’m calling because I keep my promises. I told Naomi I’d take her and you out to Neverland for some family time, remember?"
"I remember her begging, and you using her to trap me into saying yes" you sighed.
"It wasn't a trap. I want my two favorite ladies out here. The weather’s clear, the rides are set up, and Naomi said she wanted to see the new baby giraffe. Plus... I kinda miss seeing you roll your eyes at me in person. It’s not the same over the phone."
"Oh, so you just missed having someone around who doesn't kiss the ground you walk on? Go call Tatiana, Michael. I’m sure she’d love to watch you feed giraffes." You scoffed
He took a long pause, then a low, deep chuckle over the line. "There you go with that jealous attitude again. I told you she was just in the video, tinka. You're the only one I’m asking to come to the ranch."
"I'm not jealous, I'm realistic. And don't call me 'tinka'."
"I'll call you whatever I want, pretty lady. Now... are you gonna bring my daughter over tomorrow morning, or do I gotta come pick you both up myself?"
"You’re exhausting. Truly." You bit your lip to suppress a laugh.
"Is that a yes?" He spoke in that gentle, soft voice.
"We’ll be there by ten. But I’m bringing my own car, and I’m leaving the second Naomi gets tired. Got it? No funny business, Michael."
"Whatever you say, mama. I’ll be waiting at the gate for you. Wear that little dark denim skirt I like." He smirked.
"Goodbye, Michael!" You slam the receiver down on the cradle, staring at the phone while your heart hammers against your ribs.
THE NEXT MORNINGGGGGGG
You were standing in front of the full-length mirror in your bedroom, smoothing down the front of a dark denim skirt and adjusting the hem of your top. You hated how much effort you’d put into choosing an outfit today. You told yourself it was for Naomi because you wanted her to have a nice day out at Neverland, but deep down, you knew the truth. You knew Michael was going to be there, looking at you with those dark, perceptive eyes that saw right through every wall you tried to build up around him.
"Mommy, is Daddy's Ferris wheel open today?" Naomi shouted from the hallway, her little light-up sneakers squeaking against the floorboards as she bounded into your room. She was holding a small stuffed rabbit under one arm, her hair done up in two neat little puffs that matched yours.
"I’m sure it is, Nae," you said, kneeling down to zipping up her light jacket. "But remember what we talked about, okay? Daddy is working a lot right now. If he has to answer phone calls or do business, we let him. We're just there to visit the animals and spend a little bit of time, got it?"
"Okay!" She gave you a quick nod, completely unbothered by your strict rules, her mind already set on seeing the chimpanzees and the ice cream station.
The drive out to Santa Ynez felt longer than usual. Every mile closer to the ranch felt like stepping back into a trap you had spent months trying to escape. When the massive wrought-iron gates swung open slowly, revealing the lush green lawns, bright flowers, and the distant gleam of carnival rides, Naomi let out a tiny gasp of pure joy, pressing her forehead right against the passenger window.
You parked near the main house, taking a deep breath to steady your pulse before stepping out into the cool afternoon air.
Before you could even reach round to open Naomi's door, the front door of the main house opened.
Michael stepped out onto the porch, looking entirely too relaxed in an unbuttoned red corduroy shirt over a plain white tee, black trousers, and his signature fedora tilover his brow. His dark curls framed his jawline, and the moment his eyes landed on you, that slow, familiar smirk spread across his lips.
"Daddy!" Naomi squealed, scrambling out of her car seat the second you unbuckled her. She sprinted up the brick pathway, her arms outstretched.
Michael dropped down onto one knee, catching her effortlessly and swinging her up into a huge hug. "Hey, my big girl! Look at you!" He pressed a loud kiss to her cheek, making her giggle hysterically. "Did you miss me?"
"Yes! I wanna see the elephants!"
"We'll see 'em all," Michael promised softly, standing back up with her resting comfortably on his hip. His eyes shifted from Naomi over to you as you walked up the path, holding your shoulder bag tightly. His gaze lingered on your legs before rising up to meet your face, dark eyes flashing with pure amusement.
"Look at you, tinka," he murmured, his voice dipping into that quiet, velvety tone that made your chest tighten. "You actually showed up. And you dressed up for me?"
You rolled your eyes, scoffing as you stopped a couple of feet away. "I dressed up for the California weather, Jackson. Don't let your big head get any bigger than it already is."
"Mhm," Michael chuckled softly, shifting Naomi to his other hip and stepping closer to you. He smelled like vanilla and expensive cologne, a combination that immediately sent a rush of memories straight to your brain. "You always put on this tough front when you're nervous around me. You know I can see right through it, right?"
"I am not nervous," you snapped, leaning back slightly as he stood well within your personal space. "I came here so Naomi could see her father. That’s it."
"Right. Strictly business," he teased, leaning in just a fraction, his voice dropping so only you could hear over Naomi's cheerful chatter. "Just like always. But you still haven't kissed me, hello."
"In your dreams, Michael," you said, crossing your arms firmly. "Show us where the animals are before I change my mind and take her back home."
After a long six hours of playing, getting on ferris wheels, playing with water guns, and meeting his animals the soft, steady sound of Naomi’s small breathing echoed through the upstairs bedroom, her light-up sneakers tossed by the closet and her favorite stuffed animal tucked tightly under her chin. Michael had custom-built this room just for her—fairytale murals hand-painted across the pale walls, a tiny brass tea set resting on a miniature table in the corner, and a plush canopy bed fit for a princess.
Downstairs, the quiet settled over Neverland like a heavy blanket.
After six solid hours of running Naomi ragged through the halls, playing hide-and-seek behind the grand curtains, and feeding her dinner at the dining room table while she babbled endlessly with her mouth half-full of macaroni, she had practically collapsed. Michael had carried her up the stairs on his shoulder, her little head resting heavily against his neck, completely out of energy.
You were sitting on the edge of the deep, plush sofa in the main living room, holding a mug of warm tea between both hands and staring down at the amber liquid. The house was calm, illuminated only by the soft, warm glow of the corner lamps.
Soft, silent footsteps sounded against the carpet before Michael stepped back into the room. He had tossed his hat and heavy black jacket aside earlier, leaving him in a relaxed, white button-down shirt with the top few buttons undone, his dark curls slightly damp and clinging to his forehead.
"Out like a light," Michael murmured, his voice dipping into that quiet, tender register he always saved for home. "Didn't even make it past page three of the storybook."
"I told you," you said, setting your mug down on the glass side table with a faint clink and crossing your arms tightly across your chest. "All that running around was gonna catch up to her. She’s been going non-stop since six this morning."
"Mhm," he hummed softly, a slow, infuriatingly handsome smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he walked toward you. "She had a good day, though. That’s what matters."
Instead of taking a seat on the opposite end of the massive couch like a sensible ex-husband, He slid right onto the cushion directly beside you. He sat so close that the warm length of his thigh brushed against yours, instantly filling your space with his signature scent—warm vanilla, sweet spice, and expensive cologne.
You shifted away an inch, giving him a sharp side-eye. "Michael, there are four other rooms in this house with furniture. Why are you practically sitting on top of me?"
"Because the couch is comfortable right here," he answered smoothly, resting his arm along the back of the sofa behind your head, his dark eyes scanning your face with unhurried precision. "And I wanted to be close to you. Is that a crime, tinka?"
"It should be," you scoffed, rolling your eyes. "I came here for Naomi. She’s asleep, which means my shift is officially over. I should be getting my coat and driving back."
"It's almost ten o'clock at night," Michael reasoned, his voice dropping into a low, velvety purr that rasped softly against your nerves. "You're really gonna drive all the way back in the dark when your daughter is sleeping peacefully upstairs? That doesn't make any sense, baby."
Before you could fire back another slick remark, he reached out, his long fingers catching a stray curl near your face and tucking it gently behind your ear. His knuckles lightly grazed the sensitive skin of your neck, and an involuntary shiver ran straight down your spine.
"Don't start, michael," you warned, though your voice lacked the sharp bite you intended. "I mean it. We made a deal. No games, no funny business. We are co-parenting."
"I'm just tucking your hair back, pretty lady," he whispered, a sly, playful glint dancing in his dark eyes as he leaned just a fraction closer. "You're the one making it into 'funny business.' You always get so defensive when you're trying to hide how you really feel."
"I am not defensive, I am realistic!" You snapped, turning your head to glare directly into his eyes, which proved to be a massive mistake. Being that close to his gaze had always been your absolute biggest weakness, and he knew it. "I know you, Michael. I know that look, and I know exactly what you’re trying to do. You think you can just lay on the charm and act all sweet, and I’ll just magically forget about every single argument we’ve had!"
Michael let out a low, breathy laugh, the sound vibrating right in the small space between you two. "I don't want you to forget anything," he said softly, his expression softening as his eyes dropped to your lips before rising back to yours. "I just want you to stop fighting me for five minutes."
With frustratingly deliberate speed, Michael reached over and gently untangled your crossed arms, taking your hand in his. His other hand slid up along the back of your neck, his warm, broad palm cupping your nape with a firm, possessive, gentle touch that anchored you in place.
"Michael, stop..." You breathed out, your heart hammering wildly against your ribs. "I'm serious. This is wrong. We're divorced, we shouldn't—"
He didn't let you finish. Leaning down, Michael pressed his lips softly against the delicate slope where your neck met your shoulder—striking your exact sweet spot with terrifying accuracy.
A quiet, shaky gasp escaped your throat before you could stop it, your eyes fluttering shut as a wave of warmth surged straight through you.
"Feels pretty right to me," Michael murmured against your skin, his voice deep and rumbling against your collarbone as he placed another lingering, feather-light kiss right on that same sensitive pulse point. His thumb softly stroked along your jawline, tilting your head back just enough to keep you completely helpless under his touch.
"Michael... listen to me," you tried again, your hands coming up to press against his chest. But instead of pushing him away, your fingers ended up gripping the soft fabric of his button-down shirt. "We keep doing this... we get wrapped up in this toxic cycle, and then tomorrow I'm just gonna be furious at you all over again..."
Michael brushed his lips slowly up along your jawline, trailing fire across your skin until his breath was fanning hot against the shell of your ear.
"Then be mad at me tomorrow, baby," he whispered, his soft, gentle tone utterly destroying whatever piece of restraint you had left. "But right now... just stay here with me."
The next thing you know, you were in michaels bedroom, the door locked. Your mouth on his lips fighting for dominance, "of course this fucker is winning" you thought.
He shoved you onto your back on the bed. You looked at him, breathing ragged from all the kissing. "You just gonna stand there? Hurry up before I change my mind."
"Be quiet sometimes." He hooked his hands into your waistband, pulling your skirt and panties down. Your clit glistening from all the wetness between your legs. He spread your legs, pushing them up to your chest, earning a soft gasp from your lips. Your pussy was wet, exactly how michael wanted it to be. it looked exactly how it looked the last time he saw this part of you, of course.
But this time was different, way different because he was finally having it again. It looked like a pretty lotus flower. "Looks so pretty, Mama..." He cooed lowly. His thumb finding your clit rubbing a slow circle on your clit remaining eye contact with you.
Your hips jerked, which instantly caught his attention. You bit your bottom lip to suppress any moans from slipping out.
And boy, did he not like that. He knew he had soundproof walls, but he really wanted to see how long you could last acting like he didn't satisfy you.
He slowly dropped to his knees, going between your legs, holding your thighs apart with his hands under your knees, keeping them apart.
Suddenly his tongue dragged through your folds without warning, licking and sucking at your clit with aggressive hunger. The wet sounds filled the room as he ate you out like a man starved, his tongue pushing inside you before moving back to circle your swollen nub.
"Ahh—fuck—Michael," you moaned, your hips bucking against his face as he sucked your clit between his lips. Your fingers gripped the sheets as pleasure shot through you.
You hear him hum, the vibration against your clit making your hips jerk. It felt like he was sucking the life out of you, your back arching. Your hands pushing at his head trying to create some distance. "Stay." He pulls away from your pussy just enough to talk, spreading your quivering thighs wider. He drops his mouth back onto your pussy, causing your head to drop back in plessure.
"oh fuckkkk....I can't—baby" you whine, when you feel his tongue circling your clit, before he sucks it into his mouth with a wet sudden pop. "ohmy—ohmygoshh!" You gasped, your legs staring to twitch around his head.
"You had an attitude," he sucked harder. "All day."
"ahhh—ohmy....fuckkk" you babble, not being to form any correct words at the moment. Your fingers gripping his head trying to push him away from your pussy.
"Stay fuckin' put (name)." He drags you back toward him, his tongue working on your clit even harder, sucking up all your wetness that was mixed with his spit.
Your breaths are shaky as you feel that same feeling you felt multiple times whenever michael went down on you. Heat and pressure building up in your stomach. Your toes curl, and you throw your head back, gripping onto his hair for dear life.
"Im.....oh fuck baby....im—" you hiccup, "I'm gonna cum mikey....." You swallowed. Your breathing becoming heavier and ragged.
Suddenly, he pulls away completely, denying your orgasm, you sob. "what the fuck....?" You looked at him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before he un buckled his pants and unzipped his pants.
"Let's get somethin straight, Mama." Michael says, his voice low and firm as he pulled his pants down, freeing his long, pretty dick. Stroking himself a bit with his palm, pulling you closer towards the edge of the bed as he stood over you. "You've been havin that attitude all day and you think I'm gonna let you cum just like that?, absolutely not baby."
You open your mouth to fire back another bratty remark, but before you can. Michael, spread your legs with his right hand. His other hand held his dick. He started slapping and rubbing his tip all over your puffy clit. "Y'know, I don't like you havin' an attitude with me, baby...." He stops rubbing his dick over your pussy. "Make me feel....sad." He smirks gently slapping your pussy with his dick causing your hips to jerk.
He pressed his dick against your entrance. His dick thick and hard, before he thrust in deep with one swift motion.
"oh god.....fuckkk yes," you cried out as he filled you completely, your walls stretching around his thickness. His hand wrapped around your throat, squeezing just enough to make you feel something. "I know I know baby....just relax f'me, okay?" He cooes. His hips snapping forward with a perfect rhythm.
"You sorry for all that attitude you was givin me earlier?" He asked.
"Yes! I'm sorry—ahh—I'm sorry daddyy," you gasped, the word slipping out as his dick pounded into you.
"Louder," he demanded, his grip tightening on your throat as he fucked you, his pace starting to get faster and rougher.
"I'm sorry! Fuck–I'm sorry!" You moaned, your voice strained from his choking.
He grabbed your legs, pushing them up and holding them wide apart, his hands pressing under your knees to keep you spread open for him. His dick drove deeper at this angle, hitting spots that made you see stars.
"Feels s'good," he groaned, sweat beading on his forehead causing his curly hair to stick to his forehead. He watched his dick disappear in and out of you. His eyes widened a bit as he saw the bulge forming in your stomach with each thrust. "wow mama....look at that," he said in awe.
You looked down at your stomach, seeing the perfect tip of his dick hitting deep inside your guts. You watched in complete awe your mouth forming a silent 'O'
"Wanna try somethin..." he pressed one hand down on your stomach and thrusted in deeper. That caused a loud gasp to leave your lips. "Ohmygoshhh!–" you threw your head back, your eyes rolled to the back of your head seeing complete stars.
"Right there mikey!" You moaned out, your thighs trembling. He fastened his pace, his breathing ragged.
"Right there mama?, I gotchu baby," he drilled in deeper, his pace starting to slow down hitting perfect angles. "Lemme feel ya baby," his pace still slow and deliberate. His head thrown back, jaw clenched tight. Each thrust punching a moan or sob from your throat. "all ova—mhm—all ova mama," he repeated, rolling his hips slower with each word, the deliberate drag of his dick against your falls forcing broken sounds from your lips.
"That's it baby, let me hear those pretty moans," he panted, sweat dripping down his chest as he maintained his pace. "atta girl, you doin so good f'me..."
Michaels rhythm shifted, his hips rolling in deep, deliberate strokes instead of anything fast. Each thrust dragged his thick dick along your walls with agonizing slowness, making your pussy clenching around him with every measured push. Sweat glistened across his chest and shoulders as he loomed over you, his breathing heavy and ragged.
"That's it baby," he murmured, his voice low and rough. "Feel that?, feel every inch of this dick I'm givin you?" His hands stand firmly under your knees, keeping your legs spread wide and pushed back as he sank into you again. The bulge in your stomach appeared with each slow thrust, his dick visibly stretching you from inside.
Your moans came out broken and needy, each one punched from your throat as he bottomed out. "mmnghm—fuck michaelll," you gasped, your voice trembling with every deliberate stroke. The wet sounds of his dick sliding through your soaked pussy filled the room, mixing with the creak of the bed.
"You feel that?" he asked, rolling his hips slower, grinding deep before pulling back. "I love the feelin of you...so warm and tight baby." Each time he rolled his hips, his dick dragged against that spot inside you that made your vision blur. Your moans grew lower, more desperate.
"please michael pleasepleasepleasee!"
His grip tightened on your legs as he maintained the torturously slow pace. "Gonna fuck a baby in you....you want that?" He grunted, his jaw clenched tight. "Wanna feel you cum on his dick, give it to me mama....come on" he cooed.
You moaned, your walls fluttering around him as the pressure built. Your hands gripping his forearms, nails digging into his skin as he kept that steady, deep rhythm.
"I know baby let go f'me," he cooed, his pace never quickening even as his dick throbbed inside you. "Cum all over me, please baby."
Your orgasm hit hard, your pussy clenching and pulsing around him as broken moans tore from your throat. "hmnghh—Michael—ahh!" Your body shook beneath him, legs trembling in his grip, toes curling.
Michael groaned deep in his chest, his hips stuttering as he buried himself to the hilt. "Fuck—gonna cum—" he grunted, his dick pulsing as he emptied inside you, filling you with thick ropes of cum. His sweat-slicked body pressed against yours as he held you pinned, both of you shaking through the shared release.
"atta girl, you did s'good for me," he panted, his forehead pressed to yours as his dick twitched with the last of his cum. "You look....so beautiful"
You laid there breathing heavy trying to catch your breath. Michael eventually pulled out of you with a wet pop, your cum and his cum dripping out your puffy pussy lips. He watched in complete awe.
He ended up wandering off to get a wet towel, he came back and cleaned you up just enough for the night. He threw the towel in the dirty clothes before climbing into bed next to you pulling the covers over you. He stayed quiet for a few minutes then finally spoke.
"can we have a serious conversation tomorrow about everything?" He asked.
You looked at him through half-lidded eyes, a soft smile spreading across your lips. "I'd like that."
He smiled and pulled you closer to his chest. "Good."
warnings: explicit sexual content / smut Rough sex Mating press / folding in half Manhandling Breeding kink language Creampie Dirty talk Light restraint (legs held in place) To the point smut
pairings: mean Jackie x black reader
era: victory tour
You’re on your back in your bed, legs spread, Jackie climbs over you. He’s bigger than he looks on stage—broad shoulders, heavy arms, that same sharp Jackson jaw now set with pure intent. He doesn’t bother with soft kisses or slow teasing. One strong hand hooks under your knee and shoves it up toward your chest. The other does the same until you’re folded nearly in half, knees pinned by your ears, ass tilted high and completely open for him.
“Look at this,” he mutters, voice low and rough. “All folded up and dripping already. You wanted it like this, didn’t you?”
He lines himself up and thrust into you in one hard, deep thrust, burying every thick inch balls-deep. The stretch is brutal. You cry out as he groans, hips already moving.
Jackie fucks you hard—long, punishing strokes that slam against your spot every single time. The position leaves you nowhere to go. Your thighs are pressed tight against your own chest, your hands scrambling for anything to hold onto while he fucks you into the mattress. The wet, filthy sound of him pounding into your soaked pussy fills the room.
“Take it,” he growls, thrusting in harder. “Take every fucking inch. You’re so tight like this… clenched around my dick like you were made to get folded open and used.”
His hands stay locked on the backs of your thighs, keeping you bent double while he works you over. Sweat drips from his chest onto yours. The bed creaks under the force of his hips. Every thrust punches a broken, high-pitched moan out of you, and he only goes harder, chasing the sound like it feeds him.
“Gonna fill this pussy up,” he pants against your ear, fucking you so deep it makes your eyes water. “Gonna breed you right here in your own bed while you’re all folded open for me. You want that? Want me to pump you full wanna have my babies? Say it.”
You can barely form words between the relentless thrusts, but the desperate, fucked-out noises you make are enough. He keeps pounding, the wet slap of skin on skin loud and filthy, hips snapping faster now. One of his hands slides up to pin your wrists above your head for a moment, holding you completely open and helpless while he drives into you even harder.
“That’s it… take it like a good girl. You’re squeezing me so fucking tight.”
He thrust in one last time, burying himself to the hilt, and comes hard—thick, hot pulses flooding you while you’re still pinned and trembling underneath him. His body shudders with every spurt, hips grinding deep like he’s trying to force every drop as far inside you as possible.
Even after he finishes he doesn’t pull out right away. He stays buried deep, breathing heavy against your neck, still holding you folded in half like he’s not ready to let you close your legs just yet.
an: I see why he got hit with that car lmfao but after this I have one for Michael then some request but I'm thinking about going all sad mode and write something depressing in my last fic I think I'm gonna kill her off so yeah bye
summary: after five years with jackie, you never had to question your future, until your feelings for his younger brother became increasingly difficult to ignore. after a drunken confession, and a proposal closer than you anticipated, you finally realized you chose wrong too late.
a/n: this was originally supposed to be a short oneshot, but now it’s two parts and has a whole plot so… enjoy the heartbreak!!
part 1 | part 2
part one - say yes
Michael knew which one you would choose before Jackie finished opening the second box.
It wasn’t the largest one. It was the one that had the intricate detailing in the sides of the metal, a smaller diamond, an oval-shaped one, one that would catch the light in a soft, almost intimate way.
Jackie liked the bigger one. A diamond so large it would physically feel heavy on your ring finger. It was flashy– almost tacky. Michael knew you would call it excessive. Your nose would wrinkle as you watched it sparkle under fluorescent lighting, convinced it was far too flashy for everyday wear. Then, you’d spend the next ten minutes convincing Jackie it was beautiful.
“Which one do you think?” Jackie asked, holding the black velvet box of the first ring.
Michael looked between the two, pretending it took more thought than it actually did. “The other one.”
“Really? You don’t think it’s too small?”
“She won’t.”
Jackie grabbed the other box, now carefully examining it. “I just want everything to be perfect. I don’t want her to think I’m half-assing her ring.”
Michael wanted to say more: how the other one would sit on their nightstand every morning, until he finally noticed you weren't wearing it, and then you would slip it on. How you would hide your left hand under your sleeve, almost embarrassed by the rock. He chose not to, though. “Trust me.”
Jackie looked back, finally agreeing with Michael. He nodded towards the store worker, closing the velvet box and handing it over. “This one, please.”
The clerk nodded quickly, taking the box to the back to get it wrapped up and bagged. Jackie tapped on the glass of the display, resting his jaw on his hand. He turned towards Michael, smiling. “I’m glad I brought you. It feels like you know her better than me sometimes,” he joked.
Michael almost audibly scoffed, but swallowed his reaction quickly. Instead, he just smiled back, even though there was probably truth to what Jackie said. I do know her better than you. If you knew anything, you’d remember when she literally told you she hates flashy jewelry.
You had been La Toya’s friend before Jackie’s girlfriend, but after five years, there wasn’t much of a distinction anymore. Jackie liked to say he knew you first, even though the logistics didn’t really matter. For most of your adult life, Jackie was always there. He was kind, selfless, and noticed how you would get quiet when you were uncomfortable. That's what made you fall in love with him.
His family absolutely adored you. The first night you met the rest of his family, you were practically buzzing with anxiety, but when Jackie introduced you, Katherine immediately brought you into a tight hug. His brothers teased about Jackie finding ‘such a good-looking girl’, and even little Janet gave you a warm hug. As your and Jackie's relationship progressed, you were already considered part of the family.
From the very first night, though, someone stood out to you. Michael. He was quiet, observant, and an incredible listener. You had walked to the bathroom halfway through dinner, mostly just to get a breath of air. He followed you just to make sure you were okay. He sat in the hall with you, just talking, until La Toya came to fetch you two. He remembered everything you told him that night the next time you saw him.
Sometimes, at night, lying in bed awake next to your boyfriend sleeping soundly, you wondered if you chose the wrong brother.
By the time you had arrived at Hayvenhurst that evening, Jackie had checked the hiding spot under his bed four times. You walked through the front door, immediately hugged Katherine, and offered to help set up the table for dinner. She gave you a stack of napkins, forks, and knives and thanked you.
Before you started at the table, you caught a glimpse of Michael in the kitchen, helping his mother. You walked over, leaning on the counter and watching him whisk something, his sleeves pulled up lazily to his elbows.
Michael felt you behind him, your eyes practically burning into the back of his head. “Were you looking for me?” he smiled, turning his head slightly over his shoulder to look at you.
“Don’t get too excited,” you said, walking closer to examine what he was making.
“I’m trying not to,” he joked.
Your gaze landed on his sleeves. You brought a hand out to carefully refold them correctly. You did it almost absentmindedly, but you being this close, doing something so incredibly domestic, made his heart hammer.
“You look nice,” you said, your eyes following up to the collar of his shirt.
“Do I?”
“Don’t make me repeat it. Your ego is big enough as it is.”
Michael looked back, sarcastically offended but still laughing. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Your eyes lingered on his for a moment longer before you squeezed beside him to reach for the glasses for the table. “That maybe one day I’ll remember you’re the handsome one,” you said lightheartedly, moving back over to the table.
Thank God you had left, because his cheeks were now radiating heat, a soft shade of crimson painting them. He turned to tease you again, but by the time he turned his head, he saw Jackie walk into the room, kissing your forehead as you smiled, setting down a fork.
Jackie hugged you from behind, just admiring as you did the mundane. He was absolutely smitten, overly giddy thinking about what he had just bought for you today, and what your relationship was about to change into.
Michael had to consciously snap himself back. You were his older brother’s girlfriend. You did not like him back. You were teasing, not flirting. For Christ’s sake, he just picked out your engagement ring earlier today.
“Need any help?” Jackie asked, still holding you against him.
“You could help set the table.”
“I could,” he agreed, but made no attempt to let go.
You laughed, nudging him off with your elbow. “Then why aren’t you?”
“I’m making sure you’re doing it right.”
“You’re distracting me is what you’re doing,” you smirked, walking to the other side of the table.
Jackie walked over to the kitchen, watching Michael cook, or attempt to. “What are you making?”
“Nothing anymore,” Michael answered, relaxing and finally realizing that he had beaten the mixture far too hard without thinking about it.
You laughed from across the room, standing on your tiptoes to try to glance inside the bowl. “What’d it do to you?”
“Made him angry, apparently,” Jackie answered.
“I’m not angry,” Michael shot back, harsher than he anticipated.
Jackie scoffed, laughing and turning back to you. “Seems like it.”
By the time everyone sat down for dinner, Michael tried to convince himself he wasn’t angry.
The table was loud, overlapping conversations, plates passing between two brothers, and Janet trying to say something while three of her older brothers corrected her. The Jackson family was, in no doubt, lively.
Michael found himself watching you more than trying to engage in the other conversations. He was always the quieter one in the bunch.
After enough time, you finally questioned it. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
Michael went to speak before realizing you were talking to Jackie. His gaze fell back to his food.
“Like what?” Jackie smiled, unable to make himself not seem suspicious.
You narrowed your eyes, trying to decode something in him just by his expression. Jackie turned to Michael, slightly nodding, but saying nothing.
You grabbed your boyfriend's arm, sitting beside you. “What was that?”
“What?” he asked obliviously.
“That look.” You scanned between the two of them. Michael never looked up at you. You assumed it was because he was trying to hide whatever guilty smirk he had painted on his face. You didn’t know it was because he was actively trying to swallow the now-formed lump in his throat. “You two are hiding something.”
“I think you’re going crazy, baby,” Jackie laughed, taking your left hand and wrapping his fingers in between yours. Michael watched your hand fall beneath the table. Even though your ring finger was currently bare, in a week from now, it wouldn’t be.
One week later, La Toya showed up at your door in sunglasses, even though it was late afternoon, and practically barged into your apartment. She walked past you, into your bedroom, and started rummaging through your closet. You quickly shut the door, running over to your room to stop whatever she had in mind. “Hello?” you called out, snapping to get her to look at you.
La Toya didn’t answer, but instead reached deep inside your closet, finding a small, sexy, black dress and throwing the hanger onto your bed. “Wear this tonight.”
She hunched on your bed, finally taking off the glasses and smiling. You slowly picked up the hanger, scanning the dress. “We’re going out tonight?”
“Of course!” she yelled in a tone that almost gave her away.
You huffed a laugh, amused by her excitement. “What’s the occasion?”
She softened both her tone and her expression this time. “No reason. Just missed you. Thought it’d be a good night.”
You believed her, shaking your head and bringing the dress to the bathroom to go change. What you didn’t know was that over the last week, almost the entire Jackson family had now found out about your future engagement. Katherine knew. His brothers and sisters knew. Even Janet knew, which Jackie had to bribe her four different times to not tell you. You had no idea what was about to come in the next 24 hours.
La Toya volunteered to keep you occupied for the evening, not really even because Jackie wanted you out of the house, but as she put it, “a woman deserves one night to herself before she is expected to spend the rest of her life with one man.” Jackie asked if La Toya was insinuating that you should cheat tonight. She never gave a definitive answer.
As far as you were concerned, you were going to have a fun night out with your best friend.
You stepped out of the bathroom, tugging at the end of the dress to try to get it to cover more of your thighs. La Toya looked up and immediately smiled. “Jackie doesn’t know what he’s missing out on tonight.”
You turned towards the mirror, smoothing your hands over the fabric. “You think?”
She watched you in the reflection, walking over and meeting your eyes. “I know so. Michael too.”
You turned, meeting her eyes directly instead of in the mirror. “Michael?”
“Oh, please. You know he’s had a crush on you forever.”
“So then it’s just a little crush,” you shrugged.
“Little?” La Toya repeated, walking over to where your shoes lived within your closet, pulling out a pair of silver heels. “Maybe when he was still 19, sure. I wouldn’t say it’s ‘little’ now.”
You acted dumb when someone brought it up, but you knew. Michael had never confessed, not fully, but he never denied it either.
The first time you really asked was three years ago, after catching him staring at you from across the living room. Jackie got up to take a call from the phone hanging in the kitchen, and you finally called Michael out.
“What are you looking at me like that for?”
“Can I not look at you?”
You had shook your head, trying to focus on the movie playing, but his gaze never broke.
“Do you have a crush on me or something?”
“Would it matter if I said yes?”
You probably should’ve said yes, but the way he sat there staring at you– like seeing you could never get old, softened something deep in your heart. Every word, every look, every moment you would accidentally brush each other's arms, it felt more and more vulnerable. More like someone you could really, truly lov-
“No,” you had caught the thought off early.
“Then why ask?” It felt less of a question and instead him letting you off the hook this time.
Neither of you brought up that conversation again. You didn’t have to. You both knew what it meant.
After spending years together, the teasing became natural, practically second nature. You’d compliment him just to watch him get nervous and stumble over his words. Before he’d leave the house, you’d fix his collar, even if it didn’t need it. You liked feeling his breath hitch as your skin would linger on his neck a second longer than necessary. You’d tell him he was your favorite Jackson when Jackie was out of earshot.
Everyone knew about Michael’s crush, including Jackie. He’d even openly joke about it sometimes. Nobody considered it a threat. You had chosen Jackie for five years in a row, and Michael had never crossed the line. It could comfortably stay a joke during dinner conversation.
“You’re smiling,” La Toya interrupted.
“I am not.”
“I mentioned Michael having a crush and now you’re smiling.”
You walked over, grabbing the heels in her hand. “Can we get ready to go out or are you gonna examine my facial expressions all night?”
Less than an hour later, you two were squeezed in a booth at the back of a bar, the same silver heels already making your feet ache. You held an already empty drink, the ice not even having time to condensate on the side of the cup. A waitress passed by the table, yelling loudly while taking your cup. “Another one?” You nodded quickly, already drunk.
“He’s looking at you,” La Toya said.
“Who?”
“Over there,” she discreetly pointed to the bar. “He’s cute.”
You followed her gaze, finally locking eyes with the man. He smiled, waving softly. You offered a polite smile back as the waitress set down a new drink in front of you.
“You talk to him then,” you replied, bringing the straw to your lips.
La Toya laughed. “You’re no fun.”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“You’re allowed to talk to people.’
“I am talking to you.”
“Men,” she clarified, rolling her eyes.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because tomorrow–” she cut herself off.
You looked up. “Tomorrow what?”
“Because tomorrow… you’ll complain that no one flirted with you.”
“I don’t need strangers to flirt with me,” you said, already finishing off your next drink, shaking your head as you tasted the alcohol at the bottom that hadn’t fully been mixed in.
“Clearly. You get enough attention at home.”
“From Jackie?”
La Toya shrugged. “That isn’t who I had in mind.”
His name fell from your mouth before you could catch it. “Michael?”
“You said it, not me.”
Your hand reached for a now empty glass. “God forbid a boy has a crush.”
“Maybe… but you like it.”
You laughed along with her. “It’s not my fault your brother’s easy to mess with.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
Before you could argue, the same man from the bar approached your table. He stood in front of you, looking down with a smirk on his face. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I think I’m cut off,” you laughed.
“Then maybe a dance?”
You looked at him properly now; tall, handsome, well dressed, and confident enough to come up and get rejected. He looked just like the kind of guy La Toya wanted you to entertain for ten minutes.
“I have a boyfriend, sorry,” you tried to let him down easily.
He nodded, respectful the whole time, before backing away. La Toya watched him go. “Not even one dance?”
“No.”
“I’m sure Jackie wouldn’t mind.”
You tried to take a sip of your drink again, out of habit, but it was only melted ice and whatever little was left. “Maybe I didn’t say no because of Jackie,” you said under your breath.
She still caught it though. “What?”
“I said I’m too drunk,” you lied.
She laughed softly, deciding to not push you any more. “That much is true.”
The night continued on, getting blurry at the edges. The music grew louder, La Toya became funnier, and the silver heels ended up abandoned by the table as you both made your way to the dance floor. You danced, drank, and rejected two more men before even learning their names. You told yourself it was because of Jackie.
By the time you guys left, you had actually been cut off from the bar long ago. Still tipsy, but coherent, chewing a piece of mint gum from La Toya’s purse, and sitting in the back of a black SUV taking you back to Hayvenhurst.
The house had grown dark and quiet hours ago. La Toya carefully unlocked the door, tiptoeing on the hardwood floor. She shushed you, bringing a finger up to her mouth before stumbling into a nearby wall. You held a hand up to your mouth, trying to contain a laugh.
“Quiet,” she whispered, breathily laughing too.
“I am being quiet,” you said louder than she asked.
She hit your arm, bringing up her pointer finger again. “Shush!”
You two abandoned your heels at the bottom of the stairs as she guided through the end of the hall to the guest room. She stood by the door, leaning on the doorframe to hold herself up.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
“Don’t throw up.”
“I could say the same to you,” you smiled as she went to shut the door behind her. Her footsteps grow farther down the hall, then the click of her door.
You sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment, before rising over to the open window to get a breath of fresh air. There was a dim figure in the corner, next to the fountain, just sitting. You immediately knew it was Michael. He’d always go sit out there when the world got too loud.
You carefully opened the door, closing it behind you so slowly that no one could even hear the lock sliding into place. As you stepped carefully down the stairs, you saw the heels lying at the end of the staircase. You decided to abandon them and walk out barefoot without much thought.
The cool outside concrete met your feet as you walked through the property. The sound of the fountain got louder as you approached, replacing whatever ringing from the music was still in your ears. Michael was sitting on the edge of the stone, his face cupped in his hands, resting on his knees, looking down.
“What are you doing out here?” you asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.” He looked down at your feet. “Where are your shoes?”
“I didn’t want to walk out in heels,” you smiled.
“So?” Michael asked again.
“I couldn’t sleep. I saw you out here, and I wanted to talk to you.”
Michael barely blushed, finally getting used to your empty flirting after years. “How was your night?”
“Boring. La Toya had more fun than me,” you admitted, scanning around the outside. “Three guys tried to dance with me.”
“Tried?”
“I said no.”
“Jackie would be happy to hear that,” he nodded.
“I didn’t say no because of him,” you said, not regretting the weight of your words yet. Michael looked up at you, confused, trying to search your expression.
“I said no because of you.”
Michael stiffened, trying to rack his thoughts. You had never been this bold before. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t say things you know I’ve spent years waiting for you to say.”
You looked back at him, realizing how intimate this conversation had gotten. “What if I do mean them?”
“You never do,” he said, starting to get upset. “You call me handsome, and then you go home with Jackie. You tell me I’m your favorite, and then you kiss him right in front of me. It feels like every time I think you’re genuinely giving me a chance, you remind me he’s the one you chose.”
You sank next to him, sitting on the stone surrounding the fountain. “What if I’m choosing you now?”
“You don’t get to do that.”
“Why not?”
“I know you.” His voice sharpened. “You’ll wake up tomorrow, and regret this conversation. You’ll say I’m an idiot for believing you, and fall right back into his arms.”
“I would never call you an idiot.”
Michael shrugged his shoulders, looking for something to say. “You don’t have to. You don’t even know what you want from me right now.”
“I know I wanted to find you.” Michael didn’t answer. “I know that I spent the entire night wishing you were there. I know I rejected three different men just because I wished I was home with you.”
“This isn’t even your home.”
You started growing increasingly frustrated. “It’s not about the place, Michael! It’s about you.”
His expression softed a little before he could stop it. “You don’t mean that.”
“Why do you get to decide what I mean?” you asked, practically yelling.
“Because tomorrow you’ll say something different.” The lump in his throat had grown increasingly, and he had to physically turn away from you so you couldn’t see the unshed tears lingering in his eyes.
“Then ask me tomorrow.”
He shot back, examining you closely. “What?”
“Ask me tomorrow if I still want you.”
Michael opened his mouth to start saying something, but you quickly interrupted when you grabbed the side of his jaw, pulling him for a kiss. He froze, his hands stuck at his side, resisting every urge he had to pull you in after all these years.
You began to pull away, opening your eyes to smile at him, but his hands shot up to your waist, his lips crashing into yours with a hunger that he no longer could hold back. The second kiss wasn’t surprised or careful. He kissed you so intensely like he was scared that once he pulled away, you’d be gone. You brought your free hand up, resting it against his chest and grasping the loose t-shirt that he had on.
Once you both pulled out of it, heavy breathing, his eyes caught yours. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” you admitted.
His grip loosened around your waist. If you admitted to what you were going to say next, he was officially a total fool. A fool that waited for you to get home until one in the morning just to be used because her boyfriend wasn’t there. “That’s not enough.”
“I know. But give me until tomorrow. I know what I want, Michael, I always have. Let me figure out what this means. Let me figure out what I’m supposed to do.”
He pulled back enough to fully look at you, a smile finding his lips, feeling both relieved and incredibly terrified. “Tomorrow?”
“Give me one day to give you an honest answer. The first honest one I’ve given either of us.”
Michael examined your face for a long moment. He knew he should have said no. Told you that there was nothing to consider, and that you’d already made your choice years ago. Instead, he nodded, fully leaning into whatever he had just put himself into. “Tomorrow.”
You smiled, watching him buzz with anxiety. As you stood, you leaned over his stiff body to lay a kiss on his forehead. “Tomorrow.”
Michael watched you cross the courtyard barefoot, before disappearing back into the house. For a second he let himself believe it, exhaling shakily as he tried to recuperate. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow she finally chooses me.
His bliss lasted all of five seconds, before a memory of earlier that day hit him like a physical blow in the stomach, knocking out the air he had just so desperately tried to steady. Jackie’s excitement in the ring store, how he asked where you would never check to hide it, the entire family waiting for tomorrow. The proposal.
Michael’s stomach dropped. You had asked for tomorrow without even knowing it had already been planned for you.
The headache woke you up before the sunlight did. You rolled onto your back, groaning, as the dull ache sharply sat beneath each side of your temples. Your mouth was dry, your lips chapped, and a missing earring sitting beside the pillow.
Pieces of the night returned slowly; La Toya at your apartment, the booth in the bar, the different men, walking barefoot in the backyard. Your heart almost stopped when you remembered the end. Michael.
His hands against your waist, your fingers lining his jaw, the way he looked at you. “Tomorrow.” It had come much faster than you anticipated.
You finally stood up, catching yourself on the bed frame and rubbing the sides of your head, sighing. You became somewhat presentable, throwing on one of La Toya’s sweaters and rubbing whatever leftover mascara sat under your eyes with a splash of water.
The house was eerily quiet as you descended the stairs, now on a mission for some water and pain reliever. When you passed La Toya’s bedroom, you saw her still sleeping through the crack in the door. You walked into the kitchen, rubbing a knot out of your shoulder, when you heard ceramic scraping in the kitchen.
Michael sat, eating his breakfast alone. He looked ready for the day, already dressed, his soft curls still damp from a shower, with a half-eaten meal and a glass of orange juice in front of him. When he heard you he looked up, and smiled. Not the cautious smile he used when Jackie was around, or the smile he’d give for the paparazzi, but just a genuine, relieved smile.
You grabbed a glass from the cabinet, walking over to the sink to fill it. Michael watched you the whole time, still smiling.
“Morning,” he finally said.
“Good morning,” you sighed, sitting at the island with him, but a respectful three chairs apart.
Michael went back to eating, but he still comfortably leaned his elbows on the counter. His shoulders were relaxed. You had never seen him like this, and it hurt to know exactly why. “You look tired,” he said, glancing up.
“Thank you,” you scoffed. “I am. I’m never letting La Toya choose my drinks again.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s obvious vodka and tequila shouldn’t be mixed in one night,” you laughed softly.
“You were drinking?” His back straightened as he set his fork down on the ceramic plate.
You looked up from your glass, furrowing your eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“You were chewing gum,” he said softly, mostly to himself.
“Michael, my breath smelled like alcohol.”
You watched his face change, recounting the night. The clues. It was so obvious.
“Wait, you didn’t know?” you continued.
He didn’t answer immediately. “How much did you drink?”
“Why does it matter?”
He raised his voice, just slightly. “How much?”
You said it almost like a confession, because you knew how it would hit him. “Enough.”
Michael scoffed. “You kissed me.” He wasn’t afraid if anyone was in the house listening.
You were breathless, opening your mouth to look for something to say. “I must’ve thought you were–”
“Jackie?” he stood, leaving his half eaten food to get cold. “That’s a joke. You said my name.”
He walked around the island, fully standing in front of you. You’d never seen him so upset, so heartbroken, so humiliated.
“You looked right at me before you kissed me,” he continued. “You confessed to me.”
“I remember,” you said quietly, not meeting his eyes.
“Then why would you say you thought I was Jackie?”
You said nothing. He scoffed loudly, backing up. “I can’t believe you made me look stupid again,” he said, slowly walking away and leaving his plate. “I’m sorry you couldn’t find your fi-” he caught himself. No matter how upset he was, he wasn't going to say it. “Your boyfriend, and I was the next best thing.”
Your eyes burned with unshed tears as you stood to follow him out of the kitchen. “I’m just so confused, Michael! Can’t you understand that? You expect me to have an answer in twelve hours?”
Michael stopped, slowly turning to look towards you. Under the anger, you could see the tremble of his lip from the tears he was suppressing. “You said today. I’ll give you today,” he said bluntly, walking out of the front door and closing it harder than usual.
You stood in the middle of the foyer, finally letting the tears fall. You didn’t know where Jackie was, but it didn’t matter right now.
You thought Michael was just giving you a deadline. You had no idea that later today, you’d be genuinely presented with a choice: Jackie or Michael. If you said yes, it’d be the final sign.
Michael selfishly hoped you’d say no.
۶ৎ
tag list: @cupidslyrics (inspired by!! thank you!) @smoothcriminalgf
please read part 1 & part 2 if u hadn’t yet ! STILL WORKING ON PART 3
⤷ sugar talking series guide
𖦹 summary : michael witnesses a side of you he never seen before— and he can’t stop thinking about it.
𖦹 word count : 2.2k
𖦹 a/n : aw man this was supposed to be short but i kinda got carried away… also part 3 is still on hold (‼️i might post it next week idk guys‼️) i’m beyond grateful for all the love and support you guys show of this series its crazy!! (also don’t mind the layout/small gaps i wrote this on my notes app).
SIDE STORIES ARE NOT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER IT HAPPENED BETWEEN PART 1 AND PART 2.
⤷ masterlist.
the morning in the studio had started badly. very badly. the rehearsal room erupted in chaos, because the girl who supposed to perform ‘the way you make me feel’, just got fired by the label today.
“we perform in two weeks!”
“we need someone who already knows choreography.”
“someone who’s comfortable on stage.”
“someone who can learn learn quickly!”
the choreographer sighed.
“…we’re doomed.”
everyone started throwing out names.
“what about—“
“she’s already doing smooth criminal.”
“okaaay. what about—“
“she’s out of town.”
“then what about—?”
“too short.”
the room grew quieter. they all had no idea, no replacements. then the rehearsal room doors opened.
“good afternoon, everyone!”
you walked in carrying a clipboard against your chest. you smiled brightly at the room.
“i brought the costume adjustments from wardrobe!”
silence.
every single person turned toward you, including michael. you stopped walking after reading the room.
“…oh.” you looked around. “did i come at the wrong time? did… something happened?”
nobody answered. the choreographer slowly looked at michael. then at you. then—
ding!
the choreographer smiled.
“oh.”
you looked around again.
“why are you all looking at me?”
one of the dancers spoke first.
“…sunshine.”
“mhm?”
“can you dance?”
you blinked.
“dance?”
“yeah.”
“oh!”
you smiled.
“i did ballet.”
“…really?”
“my whole life.”
a few eyebrows shot up.
“you did… ballet?”
one of the dancers asked. you nodded happily in response.
“mhm!”
“…your whole life?”
“mhm!”
“you never mentioned that.”
“it never came up.”
“…”
“i stopped a couple years ago. but…” you shrugged. “i still dance.”
you continued, still confused, and still smiling brightly as ever.
“…why did you ask?”
another long silence.
then the choreographer clapped once, making you jump a little.
“found her!”
you blinked.
“found…” you looked around. “…who?”
𖦹
before you knew it… you were standing back in wardrobe. but this time, you weren’t holding the costume— you were the one wearing it.
you looked at yourself in the mirror, still processing the situation.
“wait… me?”
you pointed at yourself.
“yes.”
“for ‘the way you make me feel’?”
“yes.”
“i’ll be performing… on stage… with michael?”
the choreographer only nodded.
“oh.” you paused and looked around the room. “—THAT SOUNDS FUN!”
while everyone had been panicking earlier— you just looked like you’d been invited to disneyland.
you looked down at the black dress.
“…i made this.”
one of the seamstress adjusted the shoulder.
“you did, sweetheart.”
“…this is weird.”
the seamstress only laughed. you smoothed the skirt down, then smiled.
“it’s nice.”
𖦹
michael happened to walk in for his own fitting. then stopped when he spotted you. you turned to him.
“oh! hi, michael!”
you gave a little wave, and michael forgot why he’d walked into the room.
“hi.”
you were standing on the fitting platform in the black dress they altered for ‘the way you make me feel’. the hem swayed just above your knees, black heels adding a few inches to your height.
but it wasn’t even the dress (maybe a little), it was you. you look so excited.
“so…”
you looked down at yourself before looking back at him.
“what do you think?”
michael looked for a moment— and immediately had to look somewhere else.
“it…” he cleared his throat. “…looks very nice.”
you beamed.
“i think so too!”
you looked down again, smoothing the fabric over your waist.
“the dress is really pretty.”
“…it is.”
one of the dancers standing nearby hid a grin. michael’s ears had turned pink.
𖦹
the choreographer clapped.
“alright! let’s get to rehearsal.”
you followed everyone into the rehearsal hall. you’d walked past these doors hundreds of times
you would always carry garment bags, dropping off costumes, but never fully going inside.
you stepped onto the taped rehearsal floor, looking around like a curious kid. michael watched you, unable to stop smiling.
the choreographer called everyone over.
“we’ll start simple.” he looked at you. “just walk.”
you blinked.
“walk?”
the choreographer simply nodded.
“yes. walk confidently— like you own the stage.”
you nodded seriously.
“okay.”
you took exactly four steps. then looked back at the choreographer.
“like this?”
the dancers immediately burst into laughter.
“no, no—”
the choreographer smiled, then pointed at you.
“less…” he searched for the word. “…happy.”
you looked horrified.
“…less happy?”
“yes.”
“oh… i don’t know if i can.”
michael laughed loud enough for everyone to hear.
“i believe her.”
you hid a smile before taking a deep breath, and attempted the walk again. you put one hand on your hip, now more confident. you even showed a little smirk. then three steps in—
you accidentally smiled when you caught eyes with one of the dancers. the choreographer sighed dramatically.
“there she is again.”
“…who?”
you looked around.
“sunshine.”
you made an ‘o’ shape with your mouth, and sheepishly smiled.
“oops.”
𖦹
an hour had passed, and to everyone’s surprise— you had picked up half the choreography already.
the room stared.
“wow.”
one of the dancers said.
“she’s learning this way too fast.”
“…ballet.”
another nodded.
“definitely ballet.”
they took a break shortly after. the you wandered over to michael, smiling from ear to ear.
“this is so much fun.”
michael’s eyebrows shot up and looked at you. he hummed.
“you like it?”
“i love it!”
you looked around the rehearsal hall.
“i finally get to see what happens in here.”
michael smiled.
“it’s usually less exciting.”
he said, you laughed.
“maybe, but i think…” you looked around again. “it’s kind of magical.”
he flowed your gaze. the big mirrors on every wall, the lights, the taped floor… he had spent countless of hours in here.
to him, it had become ordinary, but seeing it through your eyes— made it feel new again.
𖦹
rehearsals became surprisingly fun for everyone.
by the end of the week, you have manage to hide your smile easily now. the confidence came naturally.
years of ballet have never really left your body. you remembered turns, timing, and posture. the muscle memory quietly waking up after years of sleeping.
one afternoon, the choreographer stopped the music.
“again.”
you nodded, and did it again. but this time, you caught michael’s jacket— pulled him just a little closer, and held eye-contact.
then… casually let go and walked away.
the room went completely silent, and michael was convinced you could hear his heart pounding. he just stood there, forgetting the next eight counts.
“…mike?”
the choreographer snapped his fingers.
“you’re supposed to follow her.”
“oh.”
he blinked, and shook his head.
“…right. sorry.”
one dancer whispered to another.
“sunshine got to him.”
“…she absolutely got him.”
one snickered quietly.
the funny thing was that right after rehearsals ended, you became you again.
“that was fun!!”
you laughed, then looked at the time.
“oh God! i have six costumes to alter— i gotta go!!”
before anyone could stop you, you were already halfway back to wardrobe.
everyday followed the same routine for you. rehearse. wardrobe. then rehearse again. until everyone started wondering when exactly you slept.
the thing was that you didn’t. well… not much.
𖦹
one afternoon, a seamstress walked into the wardrobe room. it was strangely quiet, which meant one thing—
“sunshine?”
there you were, curled over one of the cutting tables, your head was resting on folded arms, and you were still holding a pencil.
a half alteration list lay under your cheek. when you turned your head, a sticky note was clinging to your forehead.
nobody had the heart to wake you up. the seamstress smiled.
“she’ll wake up in a minute.”
someone whispered.
“…let her have five minutes.”
the others quietly worked around you, lowering their voices without even realizing it.
moments later, you stirred awake and sat up immediately.
“i wasn’t sleeping!”
you announced with complete confidence to absolutely nobody.
blink.
blink.
the sticky note stayed attached to your forehead. you looked around the room, and yawned. you stood up and picked up your clipboard, and headed to the door.
michael had spotted you first down the hallway. he blinked.
“…honey.”
you slowly blinked and turned to him.
“hm?“
he stared for a second.
“you’ve got…”
you immediately reached for your cheek.
“glitter?”
“no, it’s—“
“my hair?”
“no—“
“did i spill coffee on myself?”
you looked down on at yourself.
“honey…”
he laughed softly.
“…c’mere.”
you nodded and obediently stepped closer.
“like this?”
you tilted your chin up expectantly. michael looked down at you for a quiet moment, the sticky note was still stuck at the center of your forehead.
‘…cute.’
the thought came so naturally it startled him.
he smiled to himself before carefully lifting a hand, his fingertips brushing the edge of the paper as he gently peeled the sticky note away.
“…it followed you from here.”
you stared, then slowly looked at the sticky note in his hand.
“oh.”
your face turned pink.
“i’ve been walking around like that?”
“you have been.”
he nodded. you covered your face in embarrassment, and michael just patted your head in comfort.
“oh God.”
𖦹
despite everything, running around back and forth from rehearsals to wardrobe duties— you never complained, never stopped smiling, and somehow… you never stopped encouraging everyone else.
and finally… performance night arrived.
the backstage buzzed with nervous excitement. the dancers stretched, makeup artists hurried from one person to the next, and stagehands rushed props into position.
the black dress swayed around your thighs as you stretched. you bounced lightly on your heels, unable to keep still.
“i can’t wait!”
one of the dancers laughed at your enthusiasm.
“you nervous?”
“maybe a little. but mostly excited.”
you respond. a voice spoke behind you.
“you’ll do great.”
you turned around to see michael, already dressed for the performance.
the blue shirt caught backstage lights, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms, black trousers tucked into polished loafers.
his curls framed his face perfectly, a few falling over his forehead exactly the way they always seemed to during rehearsals.
and he looked… different. not because of how he was dressed tonight. but because of the performance had already settled into him.
there was an easy confidence in the way he stood, relaxed but ready, like the stage was already calling for him.
and for the briefest moment— you looked at him, and something fluttered quietly in your chest.
“…”
huh.
it felt strange, not bad, but different. you smiled anyway.
“thanks.”
his smile softened.
“i mean it. you’ll be amazing.”
you heart gave another tiny, inexplicable skip.
“…thank you.”
you decided it’s probably just pre-show nerves. that had to be it.
…right?
before you can think about it any longer, the stage manager called.
“places everyone!”
the room sprang into motion. you took one excited breath.
𖦹
the lights dimmed. the arena disappeared into darkness. then the crowd erupted as soon as the opening notes of ‘the way you make me feel’ blasted throughout the arena.
“you’ll be amazing.”
michael had only said it minutes earlier. he’d believed it. truly. he just didn’t expected to be this right.
you walked onto the stage. michael nearly missed his cue. because sunshine was gone— or at least disappeared the second the spotlight found you.
you walked across the stage in black heels with ease, confidence. every step was deliberate. you looked over your shoulder, caught his eyes, then looked away again with the tiniest grin.
michael followed behind you, without even thinking. you stopped just long enough for him to catch up. your fingers caught the front of his blue shirt, pulled him closer, and your eyes met his.
then, with a teasing smile, you let go. turning gracefully on your heel— and walked away. not rushed or flustered, but almost daring him to come after you.
and he did. exactly on cue.
the audience screamed.
what surprised him the most is how effortlessly you disappeared into the role. every movement was precise. elegant.
years of ballet hidden beneath pop choreography. even the way you turned your head felt effortless.
then during one section that almost made him lose composure.
you looked over at him. still completely in character. one eyebrow lifted ever so slightly, as if silently asking—
you keeping up?
michael laughed. actually laughed, right on stage. the audience roared louder, thinking it was part of the performance.
by the final chorus, you had become impossible to look away from. you were confident, playful, bold enough to tease him, yet elegant enough to make every move effortless.
you floated across the stage, only to slip away out of reach just before he could catch up.
michael knew it was acting. just before the performance, you were worried whether you left the iron plugged in. somehow, watching you now, he couldn’t convince his heart of that— and that only made him admire you even more.
after the song had ended, you immediately hurried backstage— and you immediately broke character.
“DID I DO GOOD?”
you practically bounced over to the dancers. your eyes were sparkling.
“did you guys see the audience?! oh God, that was amazing! they were so loud—! i almost forgot the cue.”
you rambled, jumping a bit in your heels.
“i forgot how much i missed performing!”
you were almost hopping in adrenaline, while the dancers laughed at your thrill.
while michael walked backstage a few moments later, already preparing for the next performance. but all he could think of now you.
one moment, you were the sweetest girl he’d ever met. the next… you had the entire arena, and him, wrapped around your finger without even knowing it.
Summary: You and Michael have been together for years. Your lives are perfect; the days are long but successful, and most importantly, your relationship is thriving. In the years together, Michael is healthy and as adorable as ever, but with a new album and a forced tour, will this happiness and stability be able to stay?
Era/Pair: History/Mature Era!Michael x SuccessfulCEOBlackfem!Reader
Tags/Warning: Eating disorders; Fluff and Smut; Masterbation; hurt/comfort; Chubby Michael; improper weight loss; TLC; pet names-mama, Bambi, mommy- is used; angst with a happy ending; fighting with Michael
Part 2: Part 3: Part 4: Part 5: Part 6:
Michael didn't mind touring; he has spent his entire life touring. Of course, he wasn't a big fan of going through the entire process; however, the actual thought of touring didn't turn him off... until now.
Sitting in a worn rolling leather chair that's a little too tight for comfort, he takes a sip of orange juice just to hide his grimace. Clearing his throat, he swallows his pride as he's told that this was happening. He needed to go on the road, although it was more like a plane. With the dates they were throwing at him, Michael felt as though he might as well be getting prepared to move.
He protested as politely as he could, his voice having a hint of a defeated laugh, "I don't have to tour. The album did really well. Not ‘Thriller’ well, but enough for me. That should be enough for you guys, right? I don't understand why you guys love doing these things to me."
The executive tried to give him his best smile, but everyone has been sitting in this meeting for hours already. They clearly didn't try to cater to the legend any longer; they refused to anger the one who kept their lights on.
"Michael, please. The best thing for you to do is to tour. There are children and past fans who will be able to see you for the first time. Don't you want your new fans to see you?"
Michael hesitated, rubbing his hands on his thigh as those words turned over in his head. He was happy for once. He had gained a lot of weight, sitting pretty at 185 pounds, the most he's ever weighed.
Ever.
It wasn't exactly distasteful either; all he gained was a little ass, thick thighs, and love handles. He was still self-conscious about it, except he knew who he was, and he was comfortable. Plus, he has had a long-time girlfriend who saved him. He loved her and didn't want to add to her stress by being gone for six months to a year.
He didn't have a choice, though. The executives had already made their decision, only giving him the courtesy of trying to 'convince' him. They had already picked out the dates and begun using the old pictures of him to create prototype advertisements. He knew he didn't have much power besides his name, and he knew that they were growing more cautious of him in terms of his buying power and brand.
Michael may look gullible, but even so, he wasn't stupid.
His fame was a phenomenon, and his talents were as well. He knew that he needed to be careful around these men. Looking at them sitting around this table, they reminded him of government officials rather than music executives. Just soulless.
They even spoke to him like he was still a child and not a man in his late 30s. Even in his presence, they rarely spoke to him as a man, just a commodity like a toy they could wind up and collect coins from. Always speaking about him in the third person to his manager and anyone who was around him at that time.
All Michael was to them was pure cash. So he just nodded and asked quietly in his melodic voice, "So when can I start?"
In his heart, he knew that this was a decision that he would come to regret. Especially when he was in a long-term committed relationship. These thoughts immediately turned to you and how you would feel knowing he accepted a deal that he should have turned down.
Across the city, you spend the day in the office, wondering if Michael is okay. You wanted to phone him on your lunch break, but your assistant came in, waving her hands frantically about how one of the idols you were managing had shaved their head and refused to talk to their personal manager. By the time you had returned to the office and sat down at your desk, the emails and paperwork were piled too high for you to do anything else other than scream and get to work.
Michael stayed on your mind constantly as you worked. He was called to Sony early this morning. He didn't sound too happy about it, yet after being with him for 3 years, you noticed that he's never that happy about being called to the company. From what you understood, they weren't exactly the most civil with him. You offered to accompany him, only for Michael to brush you off, giving you his signature boyish smile with a promise that he would be fine. In his own words, "He was a big boy now."
A statement that made you chuckle even now that he wasn’t in your sight. Another laugh escapes as you remember how you patted his now protruding stomach, "Yes, you are, baby."
Laughing harder than ever when he covered his stomach and blushed before scurrying out the door like a shy deer.
You smile down at the paperwork on your desk at the thought of this morning's interaction.
Gods, he was cute. You loved that man with every fiber of your being. Which is why you couldn't shake the fact that something was wrong after not hearing from him.
It wasn’t until you got home after work that your suspicions were confirmed. Looking back, you should’ve insisted that you were going with him.
Now Michael has come home around 7. Slamming the door to the second story of the main bedroom open, only pausing to see you lying in bed with your book. He was almost shaking with anger and practically chewing his fingers off as he paced back and forth.
"They're making me go on tour! A TOUR! Baby, I can't do that. They didn't even ASK me. They TOLD me. Me. MICHAEL JACKSON! Someone who has been touring since before I even knew what touring was. I made that company millions!" His pacing became faster as he ran his hands through his fairy mullet.
You couldn’t help but notice that even when he's stressed, he looks perfect. His upper arms were now swollen with extra meat, and his tummy was straining in his button-up. His pale skin glowed and was blemish-free, reminding you of the beautiful patches that graced his chest, arms, and thighs.
Your man was a masterpiece.
"Michael," you call out softly.
Stopping his pacing momentarily, you set aside your book and move to the edge of the bed, "You're okay, love. I'm sure this will be a good experience. Your fans must miss you."
He whines, flopping down next to you, cringing when the soft bed gives a low moan. "But you-"
"I'll be fine, baby. I'll miss you, but it isn't like we're living in the dinosaur ages. You can call me every day, no matter the time. I'll wait for you."
Placing a kiss on his forehead and squeezing his thigh, you continue to watch him bite his lip before poking it out, still not convinced. Michael knows that this tour was nothing but bad news, just as you did in your heart.
A week later, he's packing to go off for rehearsals in Florida for 4 months before the first leg of the tour starts in Russia. You sit on his bed, listing out the things he might need and you know he was prone to forget, "You have your toothpaste?"
"Um… yes," he says, looking through his Louis Vuitton carry-on.
"Toothbrush?"
"Yep."
"Sunscreen? Your makeup? "
"Karen's gonna be there, but uh yeah."
You keep your eyes from rolling before continuing down the list, "Deodorant?… Rash cream?" You ask, knowing he would need it in Florida's humid weather, especially with how sensitive his skin is; now that he's bigger, the chafing can get a little bad, leading to him being in pain from the constant rubbing.
He blushes at the question before grabbing the cream off the nightstand. He turns to you sharply, "I got it, I promise. This isn't my first tour."
"I know, baby." You sigh, looking at him with a little sadness in your heart, "I just want to be sure that you’re never going without something. Make sure you eat lots. You'd better not lose one pound! Not after I spent all that time fattening you up so well!"
He giggles hesitantly, rubbing his stomach defensively, "I'm not fat."
"Okay, my pretty chubby baby." You laugh, leaning forward to kiss the hand that's still rubbing his stomach.
He pulls you off the bed, kissing you deeply. Your body relaxes naturally at the taste of him; the kiss was full of enviable longing. His lips are always soft, and the kisses are a little wet as he begins to get excited. Those large hands you love come to cup the back of your head, letting him take as much as he pleases.
You pull back first, his lips chasing yours before letting out a high whimper, then taking in a sharp inhale at the complete loss of you. A sequence of sounds that just proves that the Lord was too cruel to make Michael. Trying to refill your lungs with the air you occupy yourself by placing butterfly kisses all over his face, relishing in the smile and sighs it pulls from him.
Placing one last kiss on his Adam’s apple, you reach a hand to tug his hair behind his ear, "Have a safe trip, baby. Don't forget to call me when you land."
He nods, then moves quickly, shocking you by stealing another kiss before you both walk down the stairs.
By the time you come down the main staircase of the house, while holding his hand. His manager and personal assistant are already rushing around you, grabbing his things from his bodyguards. They rush him to the car, audibly complaining about how much time he's used up with you. The last thing you hear before he shuts the car door is his voice, loud, strong, and proud, yelling out, "I LOVE YOU!"
warnings: angst, intense emotions, arguing, raised voices, hurt feelings, relationship tension, emotional vulnerability, crying, fear of separation, and themes of needing reassurance, he prays.
pairings: mature era x emotional wife
era: any era you want tbh
request: How about Michael and the reader gets in an argument and she tells him she’s leaving but he pleads for her to stay but she ends up leaving anyway and he just sits on the stairs all night waiting for her praying she comes back
requested by: @bxunyx
The front door slammed so hard the picture frames on the hallway wall rattled.
Silence followed.
Just minutes earlier, the house had been filled with raised voices—well, one raised voice.
She stood in the middle of the living room, chest rising and falling with every angry breath. Weeks of bottled-up frustration spilled out at once.
"You never tell me anything, Michael!" she snapped, pacing across the rug. "You disappear into your studio for hours, you let everybody else speak for you, and when I ask what's wrong you act like everything's fine! It's exhausting!"
Michael stood a few feet away, his hands folded loosely in front of him. He wasn't glaring. He wasn't yelling back. His expression looked tired more than anything.
She hated that look.
"I am talking to you!" she shouted. "Can you at least say something?" He blinked slowly before speaking in the calmest voice imaginable. "...Are you done?"
Her mouth fell open."What?" "Were you finished?" he asked again softly. "I didn't want to interrupt you."
His voice wasn't sarcastic.It wasn't mocking.That somehow made it worse.Her eyes widened in disbelief.
"Oh, so that's it?" she laughed bitterly. "That's all you have to say after everything I just said?"
"I wasn't—" "No!" she cut him off, pointing a finger at him. "Don't even bother now." Michael rubbed the back of his neck.
"I just thought maybe... if you got everything out first, then we could actually talk."She shook her head furiously. "You know what? Forget it."She stormed toward the front door.
Michael's eyes widened. "Baby..."She grabbed her purse. "I'm leaving."His calm demeanor finally cracked. "No, don't do that." She ignored him. He hurried after her."Please."
She reached for the doorknob."Can we just sit down and—" "I don't want to sit down!" The words echoed through the house. Michael stopped just behind her. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "If I upset you, I'm sorry." She opened the door.
"Don't leave angry," he pleaded. "Please... don't leave like this." She refused to turn around."I need space."His voice grew smaller."Just stay tonight."She stepped onto the porch."We'll talk in the morning."She shook her head."No."
The door closed between them. Not loud. Just... final.
Michael stood there for several seconds, staring at the wood grain of the front door as if willing it to open again. It didn't.
Slowly, he locked it before walking toward the staircase. Halfway up, his legs simply gave out.
He sat on the third step with his elbows resting on his knees, staring toward the front entrance. Maybe she'd come back in five minutes. Maybe she'd forgotten her keys. Maybe she'd realize she didn't really want to leave.
Every set of headlights passing outside made him look up hopefully. None of them stopped. The house had never felt so empty.
Bill, one of his bodyguards, quietly peeked around the corner sometime after midnight. "You alright, Mike?" Michael didn't even look away from the door.
"...She'll come back."Bill hesitated. "You should get some sleep." "I can't." Another hour passed. Then another.The lights in the house stayed off except for the lamp in the hallway.
Around three in the morning, Michael rested his forehead against his clasped hands.His voice was barely above a whisper.
"Please, God..."He closed his eyes."Please keep her safe."His shoulders trembled."I don't care if she's still angry."He swallowed hard."I don't care if she yells at me again tomorrow."A shaky breath escaped him.
"I just... want her home."He looked toward the front door once more."Please let her come back."
The clock ticked.
Four o'clock.
Five.
The sun slowly began to rise through the front windows, painting the foyer in soft gold.Michael was still sitting on the stairs in the exact same spot.He hadn't slept.He hadn't moved much at all.
His eyes stayed fixed on the front door, hoping to hear familiar footsteps on the porch.Hoping to hear the lock turn.Hoping she'd walk back inside and tell him she was ready to talk.Because if she did..
He'd listen this time.He'd let her finish every sentence.He'd apologize before saying a single word.He'd hold her until she believed him.He just prayed he'd get the chance.
an: omg, this is short, but when I write requests, I want them to be straight to the point, y’know? Also, I do like comments, so don’t be scared to comment—I won’t bite. I also need you ho's to tell me when my stuff is trash y'know so uhh bye.
I lovvvveeed the fic with mature Michael x Regina George-esque reader. I also agree that reader seems like she'd be older as well (around his age) could we have a part two of sorts with the reader getting married to Mike?
( ˶°ㅁ°) !! 0.5k, fluff ) mature!michael jackson x fem diva!reader <3
michael knew you'd never let the wedding be anything less than extravagant. in truth, he'd been expecting you to become a bit of a bridezilla, knowing how assertiveness can quickly become bossiness, and leadership, tyranny. instead, he was face with an extremely calm, collected, and surprisingly sappy version of yourself. as the wedding date grew closer and closer, you became more and more overwhelmed with emotion, crying tears of joy into his chest at night and grinning all over yourself everyday.
maybe he should've expected this. after all, you'd nearly blushed the first time the words "my fiancé" left your lips in casual conversation. regardless, michael's overjoyed to see your sentimental side, enjoying how you're making decisions not with your usual sharpness but with a softer certainty.
"do you think we could brighten this shade, here?" you ask the wedding coordinator as she shows off the palette she's created. "i love this one," you muse, pointing, "you're doing a great job, honey, really. i think a brighter shade would match the vision even more."
it's hard for anyone, much less michael himself, to object to the wants of such a calm, happy bride. "a bigger venue would be nice," you point out, a small, knowing smile along your lips, "but i'm not complaining." of course, a bigger venue was arranged, paid for in full by your darling fiancé. "mikey-baby, i know we agreed on berry chantilly cream cake, but i think the kids might prefer something without the fruit... maybe white velvet?" a smaller, two-tiered white velvet cake was quickly ordered, a place cleared beside your main cake for this second one. a new wedding dress? new heels? new hairstyles? no problem, not for him, not when you're asking so nicely.
the day itself was one he'd never forget. everything was perfect, every flower full of life, every guest properly dressed, and oh, how you looked so beautiful! nothing could compare to the sight of you walking down the aisle. your stride was confident, your eyes focused ahead; he could tell after your first five steps, though, that it was more or less a facade. you'd be crying before you made it to the altar, or shortly afterwards if you were lucky.
though he'd never before enjoyed the thought of you crying, michael couldn't help finding it cute when you finally made it to him all teary-eyed.
"'m sorry," you sniffled a little, your hands moving to wave-dry your face, "i'm so happy, baby."
"i know," he smiled, taking hold of your hands as soon as you were close enough, running the pads of his thumbs along your knuckles.
...it was a wonderful wedding, by all accounts. you'd both covered every base, with michael using his musical contacts to find the perfect dj while you managed the catering and drinks.
and now?
now he's on his honeymoon with you, relaxing in bed next to the greatest and final love of his life. with soft, admiring eyes, he watches you snore, grinning as he kisses your forehead. if he'd done nothing else right in life, he'd done this right. michael sinks back down into the sheets, his hips meeting the curve of your butt as he snuggles in close to you. ups and downs aside, opposites had truly attracted, and now you were his and he was yours. he can't think of anything more beautiful than that.
looking for more?
ok i left this kind of vague bc i feel like weddings are VERY personal more often than not, i know some people who have dates, seasons, catering, dress code all figured out and they dont even have partners yet! fill in details as you like, i just figured this would be fluffy and fun to think about. diva!reader being so sappy during the marriage and build up to it and then denying she was ever THAT sappy after. michael points at their wedding photos and goes "remember how much you cried?" and she's all "i dont think i cried, no. poor old man, your memory's going :(." (theyre the same age)
Summary: Michael suffers from insecurity after gaining a bit of weight, so you, as a good wife, help him see his beauty.
Content/Warnings: fluff fluff fluff, 18+ themes (MDNI!), oral sex (m!receiving), dad body michael arghhh he's so cute, insecurities. reader in her late 30s, being a mom of two hehe. no use of y/n!
W/c: 1,4k+
“Prince! Prince, get over here, let me strap your kneepads on... Prince?”
You sighed deeply, folding your arms across your chest. A flash of blonde hair darted past your field of vision, lost among the perfectly planted hedges of the decorative labyrinth not far from the estate’s entrance. Leaning your shoulder against the doorframe, you observed the boy tearing through the foliage, silently counting down the seconds until he tripped. You were certain it was bound to happen.
Smiling at your own thoughts, you shook your head and looked over at quiet Paris, who was softly babbling away to Bubbles. The contrast was truly amusing – less than a year apart, yet your children’s personalities couldn't have been more unbearably different.
Lost in your thoughts, you didn’t even notice Prince rushing up to you and wrapping his arms around your leg with a beaming smile.
“Mommy, can I come with you today?”
You gently took his small hands in yours and crouched down, bringing yourself eye-to-eye with Prince. Softly running your hand over his fair hair, you pecked him on the nose, coaxing a bright giggle out of him.
“Daddy said this is an adults-only event, remember? Now, if you were... mmm...” You held your hand just a few inches above his head, dramatically pretending to ponder, “about this much taller, we could’ve brought you along.”
Prince stared at you in silence for a few seconds, processing your words. You tried to fight back a smile at how striking his resemblance to Michael was at that very moment. It warmed your heart so deeply that alongside the smile, you had to blink back tears.
“So if I grow this much,” he mimicked your gesture, holding his tiny hand just above his head, “I get to go with you next time? I promise I’ll grow!”
You laughed at his innocent attempt to bargain with you and planted a kiss on his chubby cheek.
“Ask daddy next time, deal?” Receiving an affirmative nod, you continued, “Now let’s get those kneepads on you so the nanny doesn't have to patch up your scrapes, you little troublemaker.”
Prince giggled and finally cooperated. Phew.
The house was remarkably quiet in the pleasant cool of the summer evening. The sun was already dipping toward the horizon, beautifully painting the rooms through the lace curtains. You strolled over the expensive parquet in kitten heels, a steady rhythm tapping against the floor. From the master bedroom, the soft sound of exertion blended with a quietly hummed tune drifted out. A smile touched your lips. The more time you shared with Michael, the more familiar his mannerisms became, and the more devotedly you loved him. Gently touching your wedding ring out of habit, you stepped into the room, instantly locking eyes with Michael through the mirror.
You found it impossible to suppress a broader grin at the sight of him clad in trousers that contoured his thick thighs with exquisite perfection, immediately catching your gaze. Gliding your eyes higher, you caught the subtle strain on the buttons of his waistcoat.
You swallowed, feeling your mouth pool with saliva.
Over these past few years, Michael had put on a bit of weight, pouring every spare moment into family life and abandoning dancing or workouts for weeks at a time. You recalled the very first time you met him on the music video set for Give In To Me, how in the blink of an eye he had pressed you against the wall of a storage closet, how you used to shower kisses over his sunken cheeks and razor-sharp cheekbones, counting his ribs beneath his black shirt with your fingertips. Undoubtedly, he had been breathtakingly handsome.
But truly, nothing in the world could compare to those delicious thighs and that slightly soft tummy peeking out from under his t-shirt whenever Michael helped you reach something on the top shelves. You wanted to kiss him, bite him, leave your mark. To lick him all over, all the way down to the waistband of his sweatpants, and...
“Oh, I don’t know!”
A half-frustrated, half-downcast exclamation snapped you right out of your fantasy, making you unconsciously clench your thighs against the sudden flare of heat between them.
“What’s wrong, love?” You stepped closer to him, trying to keep your voice sounding natural.
“Just take a look,” he sighed, gesturing toward his mirror image. “I look... God, I really need to start watching my shape.”
“You look...? How? Breathtaking? Magnificent? Like a wonderful husband and father?” You embraced him from behind, the height of your heels enabling you to rest your chin on Michael’s shoulder. “You look mouthwatering.”
Michael shook his head in frustration, placing his large palms over yours.
“No, its you who looks utterly gorgeous, sweetheart. Beside this beauty, I just feel... too large.”
You pressed a tender kiss to his neck, trailing upward toward his earlobe. Your hands began to roam over Michael’s body, coaxing ragged breaths from him.
“You look breathtaking,” you whispered, giving one of his buttocks a playful squeeze despite his disgruntled murmur “ Just look.”
Stepping away from his coveted frame, you moved directly in front of Michael. Nestling your back against his chest, you stared at your reflection in the mirror.
“We are perfect together.”
Michael met your gaze in the reflection and gently held your chin between his fingers, tilting your face toward his for a kiss. It was infused with such sweetness that you felt on the verge of melting right there in his grip. Surrendering to a sudden impulse, you parted your lips from his, sinking slowly onto your knees in front of him.
“Sweetheart...” he murmured, resting his hand gently on your shoulder, “we’re running short on time...”
“Just a quick one. I want to show you how beautiful you are,” your hands reached for the fly of his trousers, unzipping them with a sharp rustle, “look at yourself, Michael.”
He covered his face with his hands, hit by a sudden wave of shyness. A tender pink flush spread across Michael’s cheeks as you pulled his hardened length from his boxers and gently licked the tip to taste him. Purring with satisfaction, you took his cock into your mouth, leaving a ring of red lipstick on the skin.
Michael groaned softly, raising his head to lock eyes with his reflection. Flushed, eyes glistening, his chest heaving with rapid breaths. Words in your voice echoed in his mind: “Look at how beautiful you are... just look at yourself... so obedient for me...”
You continued licking Michael with your nimble tongue, long accustomed to his impressive size. You took his length into your mouth in an attempt to take all of him, but he was simply too big. The weight of Michael’s cock resting on your tongue felt like pure euphoria, blended with the ragged groans drifting down from above.
Michael felt waves of heat surging through him, his head spinning from the overwhelming rush of sensations. He wanted to bury his fingers in your hair, pull you close, push deeper. His hands trembled with restraint, but his conscience wouldn't let him ruin your hairstyle. Michael stared at his reflection, furrowing his brows in pleasure that washed over him in continuous waves. His slightly tousled hair and glistening eyes looked impossibly striking in the light of the setting sun. For a split second, he saw himself through your eyes, and his lips twitched into the faintest smile.
Sensing the rhythm of his pulsing against your tongue, you released a soft breath through your nose, allowing Michael to sink as deep into your throat as he could, holding yourself perfectly still. With a long, drawn-out groan, Michael released deep within, as your hands squeezed his firm thighs in an irresistible impulse.
“You’re completely crazy... a crazy woman...” he whispered, gently guiding you to your feet. Glancing down, you smirked with deep pleasure upon seeing the entire base of his length painted with red lipstick. Tenderly, you zipped his trousers, restoring Michael’s pristine look.
He bent down to press a soft kiss to your lips, a wordless token of the quiet gratitude nestled in the depths of his heart. It had little to do with sex or the comforting words, but everything to do with your unwavering readiness to accept and cheer him up.
“I love you,” he whispered, gently thumbing away the smeared lipstick on your chin.
“I love you too...”
“Daddy! Are you wearing the brooch I made for you? You promised!”
You let out a soft chuckle, melting into Michael’s arms as Paris bounded into the room to inspect his promise.
“I want hugs too, me too!”
You gazed lovingly at Paris throwing herself into her father’s arms, brushing a tender kiss against his cheek.
༄summary: Inspired by this post. It's the first show of the Wembley concerts, and you're here to support your “best friend,” Michael. You try to enjoy the show - despite only being able to see his back and an occasional side profile- when you hear extremely distracting conversations going on behind you.
༄contains: angst, slow burn, friends to lovers, reader is extremely anxious lol, mentions of infidelity, may not be entirely historically accurate SORRY! My readers will always be Black, but everyone is open to read. I took four years of AP Lit, where I was taught to use dashes. AI had nothing to do with this fic! Not that much dialogue.
༄a/n:heyyy you guys! it's been sooo long since I've written something else. The last time I wrote something was like for Black Panther, I think? But I've decided to pick up my pen - for now! I hope you guys enjoy this! Thank you for reading! 😁
“ Michael! Michael! Michael!”
You could feel the whole building shake from the excited stomps. You could audibly hear the cracks starting to form in the stadium. You even smelled the smoke that was started to drift backstage. You saw policemen and security attempting to restrain amped fans, carrying the few that have already fainted. You, yourself, are trying not to pass out.
You tried to distract yourself from the anxiety sitting heavy on your chest like a fifteen-pound plate. You looked around, up at a random light that looked like it was about to go out, down at your boot that's almost tapped a hole in the ground, a cord that leads to a sea of cords. And in front of you was the man of the hour, well, more like the man of the decade. Jumping on the balls of his feet, as if he were a boxer, hyping himself up for the fight of his life. He doesn't look back, and you don't call for him either. You distract yourself even more by counting each buckle down his tight black jacket. By the time you restarted the third time - no thanks to his constant moving- you hear the crowd getting louder. He runs out and gets in formation with the rest of his stage crew. He simply stands there for a moment, maybe soaking in the moment, or allowing himself to calm down his brain; you would ask him which one later. “You have to let it simmer,let them feel you” he told you on a random night after rehearsals.
He strikes a pose to signify to his band to start the song. They begin playing a sped-up temp of “You Wanna Be Starting Something.” As if it's possible, the crowd has gotten louder; at this point you think, “do they even know what they're cheering for?” Despite only being able to see his back, you do understand the possible trance his fans are under. Before this, the last tour you went to support was the Triumph Tour. He was just as magnetic then, blooming into the man you are looking at today. As soon as he started to sing, gritty and full of emotion, the weight that was on your chest was slowly rolling down your body, becoming non-existent. Your foot was now tapping along to the music, and your eyes were focused on the man performing. Even from behind, you could tell he was giving his all. You were able to see glimpses of his face whenever he spun around, so fast that to this day you're still amazed by his ability not to get dizzy.
Your brain was kind enough to allow for the rest of your body to enjoy the concert that you remembered you were attending. You bopped along to the beat of the song, and even sang along to yourself. You were actually enjoying yourself; you even yelled, “Let's goooo Michael!” Just your luck, those three minutes of peace were cut short. You didn't notice it at first, but behind you were two stagehands. They made their way right beside you, giggling badly, attempting not to glance at you. You were so lost in the show, but your brain, being your enemy today, decided to alert you to the conversation being had.
“No, I don't think she started as a groupie; I think they're actually friends,” one of them said. “How did she become friends with him?” the other argued back. They shrugged, and from your peripheral, you see them start to enjoy the show. You try to tell yourself maybe they're talking about someone else, someone they read about in a nasty tabloid. You almost believe yourself, until you notice one gives you a slow look up and down. You look back in front of you, you're breathe catches in your throat; he's looking at you now. He's performing for you now. His hips are moving along to the beat, feet moving in a way that makes your eyes dizzy. His jacket is off now, and you can see the silver fabric wrap around his lean body, seeing every crevice of his body. His curls are framed perfectly around his face, thanks to you. His hair tie is coming out, something you told him would happen. (When you guys are in the van back to his hotel later on, you make it your mission to say “I told you so.”) On his face is a small smirk, and he wiggles his eyebrows in a way to taunt you, before he turns back around to the thousands of fans in front of him. Your eyes follow him as he runs to one end of the stage, his decades of practicing coming in clutch.
You almost lose yourself again, until your ears alert you to the two stagehands. “Is it true she cheated on her fiancé with Michael?” The other responds, “I heard that too! Even heard that Michael objected at the wedding. Left the poor man by himself at the altar.”
“I heard they kissed in front of him-”
“ I read the man punched Michael-”
“I read she was secretly pregnant by Michael and was gonna have the husband raise it-”
“I read she fainted-” You've heard enough. You whip your head so fast, your grown-out bixie hits you in the face. “If you're gonna talk shit about me, at least be fuckin’ ladies enough to either be quieter, or not be around me when doing so. I mean, where the fuck do y'all do that at? Is this what y'all do here in London?” Your usually kind brown eyes are squinting at them in annoyance. You usually don't speak to people like this, but you felt your body react in fight or flight. And right now, you feel like fighting.
Their snickers die down and are replaced by looks of shock. One of them tries to save face. “We-” “You two are being extremely rude! Did you want me to hear you? Because how the fuck are guys louder than fucking him?” You gesture towards Michael, who's taking a bow before his second intermission. They try to apologize, but look even more shocked when Michael starts to approach you guys. His broad chest moving up and down, trying to catch his breath. On his face is a big smile, faltering as he sees your tense shoulders. He accepts a towel from someone before he rasps out, “What's going on here?”
༄second a/n: That's the end of the fic, I hope you guys enjoyed it! I know it ended on a cliffhanger, but trust, I plan to make these two a recurring “couple, where you get to learn about a bit of their lore; hint, it's inspired by one of my moots posts. (It will include thrad Michael, we cheered!)
comments, likes, and reblogs are appreciated! if you want to be tagged, please comment below🤍
Scenario; reader gets nipple piercings without Mike knowing, cheeky girl.
Tags; MDNI suggestive (no actual smut), age gap (mike is 46 and reader is 25), reader is giggly asf, michael is slightly concerned (just about if she's in pain or not), some breast touching, cursing, some fluff, nothing wild!
Wc; 0.8k
A/n; hihi!! i hope you guys like this, personally - i think it's quite cute lol. enjoy reading! i love you all.
You did something—and you’re nervous about what your boyfriend’s reaction will be..
You made a decision recently that for your twenty-fifth birthday, you’d get a piercing. But the problem was, you wanted your nipples pierced—And your handsy boyfriend would have to be careful with your beloved breasts for months.
But—surprisingly—you managed to go through with it. The pain not being as unbearable as you were dreading when you’d gotten them pierced by the most incredible piercer you’d ever met.
Now—it was time to show Michael.
You enter Michael’s home, kicking your shoes off and placing them neatly on the shoe rack near the door. You walk through the house, greeting the nanny sweetly that is currently trying to feed Blanket some mushed up carrots. You ask the lady where Michael was, and she tells you that he’s in his office.
You smile and thank her, making your way upstairs. As you reach his door, the butterflies in your stomach flutter like a flag flowing in the wind on a rainy day. You gently knock on the door to his office, opening it quietly—not wanting to interrupt if he was busy with something important.
“Hey, Mikey.” You speak softly, a small grin on your face. He turns in his office chair when he hears your sweet voice, his face brightening instantly. “Hi, baby.”
He narrows his eyes slightly when he sees the look on your face, “What did you do?” He asks, a quiet chuckle escaping him. You giggle, acting dumbfounded. “‘Dunno what you’re talkin’ about.”
He hums in amusement, crossing his arms as he looks at you from his desk. You step further into the room, closing the door behind you softly. “..I did something.” You start, twiddling your fingers as you walk over to him.
“Bad something or good something?” He raises his eyebrows, smiling. You tilt your head, meeting his gaze. “Well, it kind of depends on how you react to it.” You giggle, gaze moving to look down at your hands.
He huffs playfully, his tongue prodding at the inside of his cheek unconsciously. “C'mon, tell me.” He urges, tone soft. You sigh softly, meeting his loving gaze. “M'nervous..”
His lips curl into a soft smile, shaking his head. “You don’t 'gotta feel nervous around me, mama.” He reassures, staying impossibly patient. “I promise.” He leans forward slightly in anticipation.
“..Okay. Alright.” You finally gain the courage—his reassurance helping with your nerves. “Don’t freak out.” You add before moving your hands.
He nods instantly, his gaze falling to your hands. Your fingers hook into the hem of your top, exhaling once more before lifting the fabric. The fabric slides up, revealing your chest—the soft flesh of your breasts now bared to his curious gaze, and more importantly—the two metal gem-clad bars that now adorn your nipples. The shift in the air is instant.
You could practically feel the air leave his lungs, his gaze locking onto your gorgeous boobs. “Oh my..” He trails off, his gaze trailing over your now-pierced peaks of your breasts. His eyes dilate like an owl seeing something shiny, the irises being swallowed slightly by the void of his pupils. “Y/n. What the fuck..”
You instantly let out a laugh, the profanity leaving his lips out of shock making your heart swell. “Do you like them?” You ask softly—his gaze instantly snapping to yours like you personally offended him. “Do I like..? Baby. You know damn well I’d love this.” He chuckles, shaking his head as his gaze leaves yours—returning to your pierced nipples.
Something flashes in his mind, and you can see it on his face. He shifts his gaze back to yours, concern curling his eyebrows. “Do they hurt?” You could honestly melt at how cute he is when he’s worried. You shrug, “Yeah, a little. But that’s normal after piercings. It’s fine.” You reassure.
“..Okay, I’ll believe you—but, if they start hurting worse, please tell me.” He asks, his hands moving up to gently rest on your bare waist. You nod. “Okay, baby.” You give him a soft smile, and he returns it.
His gaze travels back down to your still-exposed breasts, and he tilts his head. “Can I.. can I touch them?” He asks quietly. You giggle softly, nodding. “Gently, yes.” His face brightens even more. “Thank you.”
He brings his hands up, sliding up your torso until he’s gently cupping the undersides of your boobs. He chuckles softly, “You’re so pretty. Sneaky—but pretty.” He lifts his gaze to yours, his hands gently massaging your breasts.
You melt slightly against his touch, slowly becoming putty under his hands. You giggle, your cheeks warming. “Y'think so?” He grins instantly. “Pffft- I know so.”
The both of you stay like that for a couple of minutes before he sighs in endearment, “What am I gonna do with you?” He smiles, leaning forward to press the softest kiss to the centre of your chest. You hum, your eyes crinkling with the smile on your face. “Love me, feed me, never leave me.” You rhyme.
warnings: feminine/ girlish reader, calling michael “daddy”, petnames: “doll” “princess”, possessive!mikey, use of vibrator, slight exhibitionism, over the knee, bratty reader, fluffy, biting
requests: open
a/n: for this request <3 ; kept these pretty much only suggestive so that if you lovies want me to expand on any, i can.
sugar daddy!michael who… buys only the most expensive lingerie for his lovely girl. you’ve a whole part of you closet dedicated to the most beautiful undergarments.
“another one,” you asked mikey, holding up a pink nightgown that featured pops of crystals throughout.
he smiled, pulling you in by the waist, “c’mon, princess, y’know i like dressing you up…”
he did, you were his little doll. michael kissed you on the nose before you headed to your shared restroom to change for him. every time you got a new piece, you knew you were in for a rough night.
sugar daddy!michael who… loves giving you massages. always as you lay on the sofa, michael can’t help but kneed the heels of your feet. you’re a little ticklish, which he finds absolutely adorable, but it’s relaxing for the both of you. typically, this escalates. your daddys’ touch is too sensual for your mind not to wander elsewhere…
sugar daddy!michael who… takes you out shopping with a vibrator in you. it’s a combination of his two favorite things: spoiling you, n making you feel good.
whenever you would speak with a store clerk he would turn up the setting.
“mikey,” you always hissed at him.
he’d smile boyishly, he loved teasing you. not to mention, watching the way you tried to keep yourself from absolutely falling apart in public.
sugar daddy!michael who… indulges in your late night conversations.
as you press tender kisses to his bare chest, you peer up at him through your lashes, “what color should i do my nails next, daddy?”
he caresses your head, “mm, i think that beautiful red you did once looked beautiful.”
you pursed your lips together, “i d’know daddy…”
“the hot pink you have now looked very nice around me the other night,” michael smiled at the memory.
lifting yourself up to look at him, “it did, didn’t it?”
“it did, princess,” however, your expression was still unsure, “but… you liked the baby pink you usually do- right?”
you smiled, finally hearing what you wanted too, “i think that ones pretty nice!”
michael laughed, “me too, princess.”
you climbed on him and kissed his forehead.
sugar!daddy michael who… does not deal with your attitude. since he always spoils you, you don’t take no for an answer very well. sometimes money is tight, or he simply finds one of your needs ridiculous (it’s very rare he denies you). you stomp, shove him, yell at him- but not for very long.
he pleas for you to stop… caressing you, running his hands along your angry body, but if that doesn’t work- you’ll be over his knee apologizing for your unnecessary temper tantrum.
honestly, he usually ends up getting you whatever you wanted anyway.
sugar daddy!michael who… is very very possessive of his doll. he lets you dress skimpy from time to time, classy- but sometimes in a dress far shorter than necessary. everyone knows you’re michaels girl and so people usually don’t come on to you- but from time to time there’s always someone who tries. he’ll try to cover your near-bare ass by resting his hands on you, which of course isn’t enough. the entire event is spent with his hands roaming your body, bringing you to sit on his lap, random passionate kisses.
sugar daddy!michael that… loves to have random photoshoots with you. he’ll lay out his favorite pieces he’s bought you on a nice clothing rack- or sometimes a brand new lewd costume, and his camera on the dresser. michael is an amazing creative director, which applies to these photoshoots.
“spread a little more f’me, i wanna see the wet spot between your legs,” he winks as he lifts camera to his face.
he always makes you flustered, but you comply. his hands sometimes peer through every photo, he can’t keep himself off of your darling body.
these photos are kept in a small box on his nightstand…
sugar daddy!michael who… always bathes with you. he sets up the sweetest baths, pink glittery bath bombs and rose scented bubbles, all candlelit and sensual.
before you even get in the water it’s an experience. he kisses along your collarbone before removing your top and braw, nibbling at your waist before removing your lacey underwear… he worships you like a goddess.
and he just adores the way soap falls onto your breasts, its intoxicating.
“y’know i just love you,” he’ll bite the skin on your shoulder, “so much.”
you sigh into his touch, the two of you both needing more.
