In The Shadow Of The Sun (Michael Jackson x Reader)
Plot: Michael Jackson is the biggest star on earth, and somehow that does nothing to stop him from being jealous of an eighteen year old with a good song and his girlfriend's phone number.
Warnings: slight angst, reader is shown as knowing spanish, I don't think I mentioned any kind of background tho, reader doesn't have a set age but is younger than michael
For those who don't know, Luis's story is hard and sad, he had a horrible father, I feel michael would've understand him, also most of the things mentioned here are real!! he really wanted a collab but his father lied to him and never secured it
A/N: this is for mi gente latino!!! in my house we love luis miguel and while he didn't actually wrote his songs on this story he does lol it ended up being more sad and long than I intended to, I promise next fanfic will be love only haha this tumblr is for the drama girlies. Also, new layout!! I'm trying something different, no longer using a single gif but some pictures to give the story context, let me know what you think!!
The Bad Tour had taken more out of him than he expected, multiple nights out there singing and dancing on stage, each time he finished a show exhaustion took over his body, his calls to you were longer and seemed sadder each time and finally on November his vocal cords had inflamed badly enough to push the last five L.A shows to January; Michael was devastated, not once in thirty years had this happened to him. You sat next to him when the doctor explained that resting was mandatory, no escape. The drive home was silent, he was just watching the city through the car window without saying anything.
Little did you know this was the beginning of a long couple of weeks.
----
"Okay but listen “
"Luis, I'm cooking."
"Cooking? Don’t you have someone that does that for you?"
"Luis some people like the feeling of normalcy and being domestic”
There is a pause on the other end, and then he laughs, that specific laugh of his, the one that starts low and then tips over into something more and despite yourself you're already smiling at the stove. You've known that laugh since before either of you knew what you were doing with your lives. You’ve been friends for as long as you were alive, your families knew each other for years and you two bonded over the love of music.
"Two minutes," you say. "Go."
"The verse is wrong." He says defeated.
"Which verse."
"The second one. I had someone listen and they think it works but it doesn't feel right, and I know what it's supposed to feel like, I just —" you can hear him moving, pacing probably, he always paces when the music won't cooperate, probably running his hand through his hair. "you know that thing where the song you can hear in your head and the song you've actually written are two different songs? And there's a gap between them?"
"Yeah," you say, because you do know, your first album was a nightmare to write.
"What does the version in your head feel like?" You ask while putting your weight over one foot, still stirring the food.
He doesn't hesitate. "Like something you've already lost but maybe never had, that feeling of wanting something even though you have it all”
"And the version on the page?"
"Feels like a song."
You stir the food again and you think for a while. "I feel like you are rushing, you're giving people the exhale before they've had time to hold their breath."
Silence. Then, quieter: "Yes. That's exactly it."
"You keep closing the door before the listener's had time to stand in the room."
"Yes. God." He exhales. "Okay. That's it."
"That was more than two minutes."
"I know, sorry (Y/N), thank you." He sighs and he sounds completely honest about it as well.
You soften a little despite yourself because that’s the thing about Luis, he never makes you feel used when he calls for this. There's a genuine quality to his need, the kind that comes from someone who trusts what you say.
And there's something else underneath it that you haven't said out loud to anyone. Luis had barely called for years. Not because the friendship had gone anywhere but because his father had kept a tight perimeter around him, from relationships, friendships to well his entire life. And then this year, at eighteen, he'd finally walked out from under Luisito Rey's management for good, and within a month the phone had started ringing again. Three times a week. Late and easy, like no time had passed at all.
He wasn't just calling about the song, he was calling because he finally could and you weren't going to make a thing of it, that wasn't how either of you worked but you were happy that he was finally free.
"Tell me the lyrics," you say, because you're already in it now, food can wait for a little.
He does. And then you're off, back and forth, pushing and pulling, you telling him where it drops too early, him defending the original, you conceding one thing and holding firm on another. At some point you're half-singing under your breath just following the rhythm he already had, and it comes out in Spanish because that's the language his music lives in and your ear just goes there automatically when you're thinking in his register.
“Tengo todo excepto a ti…” You sing softly without thinking about it and he gasps.
"Wait," Luis says. "Do that again."
You do, a little softer this time, following the original idea he had, about a song yearning for someone you want.
"Yes," he says quietly, and you can hear that he's got it, the gap closing. "That tone, that’s where it needs to go."
"I know you and your love for sappy songs”
“You are so annoying I swear, says the one who has an entire album about a certain King of Pop”
“Shut up!” you reply laughing and shaking your head, that little shit.
What you don't see, because your back is to the doorway:
Michael, standing at the edge of the kitchen.
In the clothes he fell asleep in, hair loose, having come down for water or maybe just because the house felt too quiet without you in it. He'd stopped when he heard your voice, lower than usual, concentrated, the way it gets when you're fully inside a musical problem. He's watching you lean against the counter with the phone tucked between your ear and your shoulder, completely at ease, and then you sing, in a language he can't follow, in that sweet tone he always loved about you and something feels wrong about it, like he’s missing something because he can’t understand.
He stands there until you laugh at something Luis says again, then he goes back upstairs without the water.
---
He doesn't say anything that night, he waits until the next morning, both of you slow over breakfast, the quiet that was waiting for something to explode.
"What were you singing last night?" he asks casually, he wanted to paint a picture before thinking too much; even if his brain was already spiraling.
You look up from the magazine you had "Mm?"
"On the phone; I heard you sing in Spanish”
"Oh." You wrap both hands around your mug. "It wasn't really a song yet, I was just throwing some words out for Luis to put together."
"Right." He looks at his orange juice. "What did it mean? The words."
You tell him, something about having everything in life except the one thing that makes the rest of it matter. The absence at the center of a full life. He nods, slowly, and something passes through his expression that you can't catch before it's gone, and you file the moment away without thinking much about it.
"That sounds beautiful” he says but it sounds tight, like he wanted to say more.
"It is."
That's all, he finishes his juice, asks what your schedule was for the day and the morning moves forward. You don't think about it again until later, when you finally put the pieces together.
---
The calls keep coming. Not excessively, twice a week tops, usually evening, sometimes later. Always Luis, always the song, always some new angle on the same problem he's been living inside for months. You start taking the phone to the other room not because there's anything to hide but because Michael needs to be resting and the conversation gets loud when you disagree, which is often. This turns out to be the wrong thing to do entirely.
What you didn’t know was that Michael was at the kitchen table one afternoon, alone, with a copy of Billboard Latin that someone on his team had delivered at his, entirely casual, purely professional request. Running his finger down the charts and stopping at his name.
Luis Miguel. "La Incondicional." Seven weeks at number one.
Reading the small column of biographical detail the way you read something you already know you'll keep thinking about.
Born 1970. Performing since age eleven. Grammy Award at fifteen.
He sets the magazine down just to pick it up and start reading again, a heavy feeling on his chest.
El Sol de México, the article calls him. The Sun of Mexico. There's a photo as well, Luis at some industry event, easy in his own skin in the way that only the very young or the very unbothered can manage, dark eyes, that specific quality of someone whose face the camera loves without effort.
Michael puts the magazine away before you get home and doesn't mention it.
But that night when you're asleep, he lies on his back in the dark and stares at the ceiling and thinks about a word he'd read. Beloved. The piece had called Luis beloved, by the press, by the public, by the Latin market that was still making up its mind about whether it liked Michael or found him too much. Not weird, or unsettling or whatever the press called him, just beloved.
He thinks about you singing in the kitchen without knowing he was listening and an ugly thought crossed his mind; how easy that life with Luis looked for you.
---
You notice the shift almost immediately; you’ve been with Michael long enough to notice the difference when something was not okay.
Michael doesn't get cold, he’s still there, still present, still himself in most of the ways that matter; but he is not the same, he laughs a beat later than usual. When you come to bed he's already on his side, not in anger, just away, and he doesn't reach for you the way he normally does, he stays the same throughout the night.
You try dig into the issue, but he says he's fine but just tired. The shows, the voice, the waiting. You understand, and you back off, and another week passes.
Then one evening you're reading on the couch and he's in the armchair across from you with a book, the phone rings, and you see his eyes go to it before you've moved.
You watch his face in the half-second before he catches himself and goes back to reading.
Oooooooh, you think, that’s it.
You let it ring once more, watching him pretend to read, and then you pick up.
"Hey," Luis says. He sounds lighter than he has in weeks. "I think I have the whole bridge."
"Yeah?" You settle back into the cushions. "Tell me."
He does, and it's good, genuinely good, better than the last version and the version before that, and you tell him so, and you can hear him sigh with genuine relief. You talk through it, refining the edges, and at one point he hums the chord progression, and you hum back the line that wants to follow, the melody finding itself.
“What if you add something like: me sobra juventud, me muero por vivir, pero me faltas tu; I think it really adds to the emotion” ("I have youth to spare, I'm dying to live, but I'm missing you”)
"Yes," Luis says softly. "That's it. That's the whole song right there."
"That's what it's always been about," you say. "A person who has everything. Money, fame, the whole beautiful impossible life but they're still empty because the one person they want isn't there so it’s just pointless."
Luis is quiet for a moment. "Yeah," he says, and his voice has something in it you recognize, not just the songwriter's satisfaction but something more personal, something he doesn't seem to want you to know. "That's exactly it."
"It's a great song, Luis." You add softly, tilting your head to the side and Michael just stares at you, this was your element, he was enamored by your gentleness with life itself.
"It's going to be a great song," he corrects, and you can hear him smiling. "It's not done yet but I can see the end of it now." A pause. "Tell me something and be honest, do you think it'll cross over? The American market, not just Latin"
"Yes," you say, without hesitating. "Something that sounds like that doesn’t need translation”
He exhales. "Good. Okay. Thank you, truly (Y/N), I’m glad to have you in my life."
"Me too Luis but you did all of this, I’m just your emotional support friend." And you hear him laughing quietly on the other side of the line.
"You always say that."
"Because it's always true."
"Goodbye," he says warmly. "Say hi to Michael."
"Say it yourself one of these days."
He laughs and hangs up, you set the phone on the cushion.
Michael has not turned a page in twelve minutes, so you count to five, letting the silence settle in between again.
"Luis says hi," you say, perfectly even.
"Mm." He turns a page and smiles, yet it doesn’t reach his face. "That's nice."
You watch him and he is putting all that he has into looking like he was reading that book, that upside down book, mind you.
"Michael." You call and he lifts his eyes enough to see you.
"Mm."
"That book has been upside down for the past ten minutes."
His eyes widen, there’s a pause as he looks down at the book that was in fact, upside down and he sighs and puts the book on the coffee table.
The silence that follows is the kind of silence you don’t want to disturb, you know he is gathering his thoughts, so you just wait, your own book open in your lap, the lamp illuminating his face in an angelic way.
He lasts about four minutes.
"The magazine called him El Sol," Michael says softly and looks at you again “The Sun of Mexico." There’s something strange in his voice when he does, not jealousy but a deep sadness that filters through his soft voice. "Since the eighties that's what people call him."
You wait.
"He's eighteen," Michael continues, and it comes out softer than he intended. Almost like it slipped out before he could decide whether it even made sense. "He's eighteen and he's — and the press loves him, genuinely loves him. Not the way they—" he stops and closes his eyes. "Not the way they cover me, his whole life is just." A breath. "Clean, nothing weird to call him out for, just clean."
He finally looks at you and there it is , the thing he's been holding for weeks, right there on his face, unguarded and a little raw, and it costs him something to let you see it. Michael Jackson who sold out Wembley seven nights running, looking at you like he's afraid you see it too.
"You were singing to him," he says quietly. "In Spanish and I'm standing in my own kitchen and I can't even understand what you're saying."
"Michael—"
"I don't have a right to feel this way." He says it first, before you can. "I know that."
"That's not what I was going to say, baby”
"I know what you're going to say." And it sounds sharper than he intended to.
"Do you?" You close your book. "Because you're about to tell me what I mean before I've opened my mouth, and I haven’t even said a thing”
His jaw shifts, he knows you’re right, but his heart sits heavy on his body.
You stand up and cross the room to where he’s sitting, he shifts when you reach the armchair making space for you like he always does and you settle in beside him, half in his lap, close enough that he has to look at you or make a deliberate choice not to.
"Can I tell you something?" you say.
He looks at you, in the low light he looks tired and unguarded and entirely himself. "Okay."
"Luis's life is not clean," you say. "I know things about that family that would break your heart open. Things he's never talked about publicly." You grab his hand and look into his eyes "But that's not even the point, so let me tell you the actual point."
He's very still but nods a little.
"I want to tell you what I see," you say. "And I need you to not argue with me while I'm doing it."
A breath. "Okay."
You lift your hand to his face and turn him toward you the way you know you have to because he'll find anywhere else to look when he's trying to hold himself together. His jaw is warm under your hand. His eyes, when they meet yours, are very dark and very serious, looking deeply into yours.
"I think about your face," you tell him. "Not the photographs, not the album covers but this face, with whatever light is on it, whatever it's carrying. I know every version of it." You trace it, the line of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the shape of his mouth and he goes very still like he's not sure what to do with himself.
"I have looked for this face when I walk into rooms for longer than I'm going to admit right now. There is no version of this where I see someone and think about them, my mind is filled with you”
His throat moves; he gulps slowly.
"And your hands," you say. You take one of them from where it rests at your waist, hold it in both of yours. "I know you don't think about your hands, but I think about them constantly. The way they move when you're explaining something, the way they look when you're dancing or when you are holding me." You hold it tighter. "I have loved these hands for so long, Michael”
"You're going to make me blush" he stops you, his voice is lower than usual and not because of the vocal cords.
"I'm not done." You say gently, he closes his mouth. "You think Luis has everything clean in front of him. And from the outside I understand why it looks that way. Young, beloved, the press adoring him, his whole life a beginning." You meet his eyes. "But I know that at eighteen years old Luis had already spent years being managed like a resource by someone who was supposed to protect him. His father controlled everything, who he spoke to, who he spent time with, what he signed, where the money went. And the money went everywhere but his own account. He's only just starting to understand the full shape of it." You keep your voice even. "His father decided who Luis was allowed to call, we barely talked and then this year he finally walked away, and within a month my phone was ringing again." You grab his face again and he leans into your touch, his eyes looking at your entire face. “He is calling because he finally can, he’s no longer alone and you can feel it in his voice”
Michael's expression shifts, something in it goes quiet in a different way, not defensive quiet, but listening quiet, like he was relieving parts of his own life.
"There was also something specific he wanted," you say, quieter now. "A collaboration. Something he'd asked his father to arrange for over a year, his father told him it was happening, but it wasn’t, he was just dragging the inevitable and Luis found out, that opened a door for him, a huge door”
"He wanted a duet," he says slowly.
"Yes."
"With who."
You look at him and something in your face must’ve given it away because understanding moves across his face in a slow wave.
"His father told him it was being arranged," you say. "It wasn’t and that summed to the already sketchy things his father was doing, he fired him a couple of weeks ago" You sigh and you want to think he finally understands. "That's who's been calling me about chord progressions."
Michael is very quiet, his hand, still in your hand twitches slightly.
"I didn't know," he says almost sounding sad about it.
"You didn’t have to, baby”
He looks at the middle distance for a moment, and you watch something work through him, the jealousy and the insecurity rearranging themselves around new information, his mind working overtime with the similarities he had with this kid he didn’t know.
"He's a kid," Michael says finally and it doesn't sound condescending, it sounds like a realization.
"He's a kid," you confirm. "A very talented one, who is figuring out how to be himself without anyone to show him how and he calls me because we’ve been friends since forever."
Michael nods slowly, he's still looking somewhere past you, but his hand is holding yours properly now, and the wall he'd been building for weeks is quietly coming down.
"Tengo todo excepto a ti," you say softly. The words you'd been singing.
He focuses back on you. "What does it mean?"
"I have everything except you." You watch him. "That's the song. A person who has the whole world and it means nothing because the one they want isn't there. All that fullness with this one absence at the center of it."
Michael absorbs this and takes a deep breath.
"That's a good song," he says quietly almost to himself.
"It's going to be a great song."
"He's going to be big I mean, if that's the kind of thing he's writing at eighteen"
"He is a bit dramatic” you laugh quietly but he doesn’t, he still looks like he’s thinking deeply.
"He's going to be very, very famous."
"Yeah," you say. "He is."
And then you do what you've been needing to do for weeks, you pull him in all the way, arms around his neck, and you feel him exhaling against your shoulder like something that's been held too long finally releasing. His arms come around you and he holds on to you, he closes his eyes and breathes in your scent, he feels relaxed for the first time in weeks.
"I'm sorry," he says into your hair, eventually.
"Don't apologize for having feelings." You pull back just enough to look at him. "Just, next time? Come find me instead of reading the magazine alone at the kitchen table."
His expression shifts. "How did you—"
"Michael I know where you keep things." You tap his chest once over his heart. "Including the Billboard Latin that mysteriously appeared in the recycling."
Something sheepish crosses his face, you are putting him apart slowly.
"The book," you add. "Upside down, ten entire minutes”
"I was—"
"You were not."
He drops his head back and laughs , that real one, the unperformed one, the laugh that you were privileged to hear, you laugh too, and the armchair is truly not designed for two people but neither of you mentions it you just tangle even more on it just letting the night go by.
---
Three days later you come downstairs in the morning and find Michael at the kitchen table.
And that by itself is not unusual, what is unusual is that he has the phone in his hand and he's looking at as if he is deciding what to do with it.
"What are you doing?" you ask.
"I'm going to call Frank," he says. Frank DiLeo, his manager. "I want to find a way to get a message to Luis Miguel."
You stop in the doorway and lift your eyebrows.
"I want to offer him the duet," Michael says simply. He looks up at you. "Properly, a real session, not just a phone call, something he can put on a record." He says it like it's obvious and natural, not like he spent weeks spiraling about this person. "He's been writing about absence and longing and having everything except the thing that matters, and he's eighteen, and he's been he's been carrying a lot” he sighs “And he's good, he's genuinely good. And I've got time right now whether I want it or not, so."
He shrugs like he just said nothing, but your heart was already beating like crazy the minute he started talking.
You stand in the doorway and look at this man.
This man who three weeks ago couldn't sleep because a teenager was calling you about chord progressions. This man who read a magazine alone at the kitchen table and lay in the dark feeling like something was being taken from him. And now he's sitting there in the morning light wanting to give that same kid the thing his own father stole from him.
"What?" he says, reading your face.
"Nothing," you say but it comes out a little unsteady.
"You're doing a face." He says looking straight at you.
"I'm not doing a face."
"You're absolutely doing a face, angel"
"Michael." You cross the kitchen. You take the phone out of his hand, set it on the table, and hold his face in your hands the way you did in the armchair, the way that makes him go still, makes him actually look at you instead of around you. "You were jealous of this kid three weeks ago."
"I wasn't—"
"You were. And now you're going to give him the one thing he wanted more than almost anything and couldn't get, and you don't even see what that is, and I just—" you stop. Take a breath. "I love you, I love you a completely unreasonable amount, you understand that?"
He looks at you for a long moment, his beautiful shy smile full on display for you.
"He deserves the shot," Michael says simply. "That's all, every kid deserves a shot."
And that’s what makes you love him even more, he's not being grand about it, he is not doing this out of pity, he just woke up, thought it through, and got to the conclusion that this decision is the most obvious one.
You kiss him once, deeply, in the way Michael loved where you grabbed his face on your hands and caress him at the same time, his hands around your waist pulling you closer to his body.
"Call Frank," you say when you pull back, big smile on your face.
---
You are in the other room when he makes the call. You can hear the shape of the conversation without catching every word, Michael's voice, lower and more business-like than his regular register. At one point you hear him laugh at something, short and genuine, and the sound of it moves through you warmly.
When he comes to find you, he's got the smallest smile on.
"Frank's reaching out today," he says.
"Yeah?"
"Said it won't be complicated. Luis has been—" he pauses, and something careful moves through his expression "Apparently he's been trying to make this happen through other channels for a while, so it won’t take too much”
You nod still smiling.
He sits down beside you and takes your hand, interlacing his fingers with yours.
“It’s a nice thing what you are doing here, baby” you say to him softly, afraid more sound will shatter the peaceful morning. “I love you and your big heart, your soul and the kindness you have”
You see his cheeks go slightly red under your words, he doesn’t say much, he just leans his head on your shoulders while he hugs you.
---
Luis calls two weeks later.
You're in the kitchen again, same stove, same low light. Michael is on the couch watching television. Or watching television in the way that actually means listening toward the kitchen, which you've made your peace with.
"I got a call," Luis says and he sounds strange, quieter than usual, and not in a bad way or at least you would like to think. “A business call”
“Mhm, something reached my ears” a small smile crept its way into your face.
"Did you" he pauses. "Did you have anything to do with this?"
"No," you say honestly. "That was all him, Luis."
Silence on the other end and then Luis says, so quietly you almost miss it: "I've wanted this since I was sixteen."
"I know."
"My father told me—"
"I know, Luis."
Another silence, this one way longer than before.
"He doesn't know me," Luis says finally. "Michael doesn't know me so why would he just do this"
"Because he looked you up," you say, "and he listened, and he recognized something in you, that’s all” You lean against the counter. "He's going to be a pain in the studio, by the way, he has opinions about everything." And you swear you can hear Michael scoff and whine in the background.
Luis laughs, and it breaks the moment open in the best way.
"I can handle opinions," he says and you can feel the smile in his voice.
"Good, you have enough of your own."
"Annoying," he says warmly. "You're always so annoying."
"And still, you always call, dork”
He says goodbye and hangs up, and you stand for a moment with the phone in your hand, looking at nothing, there’s a warm feeling on your chest.
---
Michael finds you a couple of minutes later setting the plates on the table, he leans in the doorway and watches you for a moment with that look he has, the fond one reserved just for you.
"He's a good kid," Michael says softly.
"He is, I told you." You say while you sit down facing him, your face press into your hand.
"You did." He crosses the kitchen and stops in front of you, you have to look up to see his face clearly. "He talks like you, I can see why you are good friends"
His hands find your waist, not pulling you anywhere, just holding, the way he does when he doesn't need anything except to know that you are there. You lean into him, your face pressing into his belly, he lowers to press a kiss into your hair.
"I think I owe you an apology," he says into your hair. "A real one, not the kind to just get over this, but a sincere one."
You quickly look back at him trying to stop him "Michael—"
"Let me." You feel him breathe. "I spent three weeks being quiet about something instead of just coming to find you, and you knew the whole time and instead of talking to you I just assumed the worst” he takes a deep breath before continuing " I even imagined your life would look better with him by your side”
You want to protest, you want to shut him up with a kiss and smooch his insecurities away, but you let him continue, you feel this is important for him.
“I know life by my side has to be difficult, the schedules, the press and the pressure building every second” he looks down at you again, his eyes finding yours “But I’m too selfish to want to give you away and for once I’m putting myself and what I want first, I want to be by your side for as long as you would have me”
You feel your eyes fill with tears and you let the tears fall without fighting them. His arms tighten around you, and you pull back just enough to look at him, eyes wet and honest. "I want you, Michael, for as long as you'll have me and then some." His breath catches, and then he laughs, soft and a little undone, and pulls you back in like he's never letting go again.
---
"Tengo Todo Excepto a Ti" — Luis Miguel, released April 16, 1990. His longest-running #1
The Bad World Tour finished on January 27, 1989, Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
