( i believe it should be common sense that my works should not be used to train ai. also, spare me the bullshit of feeding my works into ai detectors. that shit is still ai and cannot be trusted .ᐟ i have been writing fanfiction since 𝟤𝟢𝟣𝟥 for fandoms like one direction, h*rry p*tter, hunger games, grishaverse and asoiaf. i’ve also been studying french literature since 𝟤𝟢𝟣𝟨, therefore, english isn’t my first language, but i always try to do my best .ᐟ ).
𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦. ╱ 𝖬. 𝖩𝖠𝖢𝖪𝖲𝖮𝖭.
𝙎𝙐𝙋𝙀𝙍𝘾𝙐𝙏 ━━ 𝟭𝟵𝟴𝟰 ╱ 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟵. you met him after your first grammys performance, that's all it was supposed to be ━ a congratulations. instead, it became twenty years of almosts, with crossed paths, late-night phone calls, lingering glances, separate lives and feelings neither of you seemed able to leave behind. ( 𝖲𝖫𝖮𝖶 𝖡𝖴𝖱𝖭 ╱ 𝖲𝖴𝖦𝖦𝖤𝖲𝖳𝖨𝖵𝖤 ╱ 𝖤𝖵𝖤𝖭𝖳𝖴𝖠𝖫 𝖲𝖬𝖴𝖳 ).
𝖱𝖤𝖠𝖣𝖤𝖱 𝖶𝖨𝖪𝖨𝖯𝖤𝖣𝖨𝖠 𝖨𝖭𝖲𝖯𝖮 ( 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗖𝗔𝗡𝗢𝗡 ━━ reader has no name and can be imagined however you want. this was just for fun. marriage date is also voluntary innacurate . . . ).
𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗧𝗦. ╱ 𝖬. 𝖩𝖠𝖢𝖪𝖲𝖮𝖭.
𝙎𝙄𝙂𝙉 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙂𝙄𝙍𝙇𝙎 ━━ 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗥 𝗘𝗥𝗔. some rockstars sign their fans' breasts. you wonder if your boyfriend is one of those. ( 𝖲𝖴𝖦𝖦𝖤𝖲𝖳𝖨𝖵𝖤 ). 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒. flirting, teasing, 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗯𝘀, shy!michael.
𝘽𝙀𝙉𝘿 𝙊𝙑𝙀𝙍, 𝘽𝘼𝘽𝙔 ━━ 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗥 𝗘𝗥𝗔. after wondering if your boyfriend ever signed a girl's boobs, you wonder if he ever spanked someone. ( 𝖲𝖴𝖦𝖦𝖤𝖲𝖳𝖨𝖵𝖤 ). 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒. teasing, 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴, light bdsm, fluff, shy!michael, mention of vitiligo, playful dom/sub undertones, praise kink if you squint.
𝘾𝙃𝙀𝙍𝙍𝙄𝙀𝙎 ━━ 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗘𝗥𝗔. you have a new piercing and you can't wait to show it to your boyfriend. ( 𝖲𝖬𝖴𝖳 ). 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒. age gap, you!25+, 𝗻𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴, sensitive 𖬺 healing piercings, breasts worship, dry humping, oral sex ( f receiving ), dirty talk, brief mention of needle, praise kink if you squint, aftercare.
𝙎𝙋𝙀𝘾𝙄𝘼𝙇 𝙏𝙍𝙀𝘼𝙏𝙈𝙀𝙉𝙏𝙎 ━━ 𝗕𝗔𝗗 𝗘𝗥𝗔. you just had a fight with your boyfriend. unfortunately for you, he's also your boss ━ and you still have a work to do. ( 𝖲𝖴𝖦𝖦𝖤𝖲𝖳𝖨𝖵𝖤 ). 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒. fluff, angst with a happy ending, mild language, jealous!michael, mention of prince ❨ oops ❩.
𝙏𝙃𝙍𝙄𝙇𝙇 𝙃𝙄𝙈 ━━ 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗘𝗥 𝗘𝗥𝗔. as an actress known for her professionalism and talent, you were very well respected by everyone and especially your boyfriend. but when you decided to bring michael to a very special shooting, things get ugly pretty fast ━ it’s time for you to remind him his place. ( 𝖲𝖬𝖴𝖳 ). 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐒. established relationship, sub!michael, dom!reader, jealous!michael, insecure!michael, orgasm denial, 𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗷𝗼𝗯 ( m receiving ), praise kink, masturbation, reassurance.
𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 .ᐟ ━━ 𝗪𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗪𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗘. ╱ reader under the age of 26 for age gap, incest, race play, age play, daddy kink, mommy kink, rape, non-con, any taboo.
Okay so I’m trying this new format, not a whole imagine but little blurbs based on stuff y’all send. Lmk if y’all like it!
Nugget was ten months old, and from the day she was born, she had been Uncle Mike’s favorite. The feeling was mutual—Uncle Mike was Nugget’s favorite, too.
Michael often found himself looking for reasons to visit the little one. He happily volunteered to babysit so Jermaine and Alejandra could enjoy a date night or take the older kids to activities Nugget was still too young to attend.
Currently, every Jackson member was sitting in the living room while they waited for dinner to be served. Nugget was sitting in her uncle Jackie's lap, clapping at whatever random song he came up with. Michael sat down next to them, Nugget's eyes immediately found Michael.
"Ikey!" She squealed.
"No." Jackie glared at him. "What?" He laughed. "It's uncle Jackie's bonding time with Nugget." Michael rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying hi to my girl.” He gently pinched her bottom lip between his fingers, the baby bursting into a loud giggle. "Here we go..." Tito said from the other side of the room.
Michael repeated the gesture over and over, each time earning another burst of giggles. Both he and Nugget were red from laughing so hard.
The laughing stopped and Nugget turned to look at Jackie. With a curious smile, she reached out and gently pinched his bottom lip between her tiny fingers. The moment she did, her giggles resumed.
Genre: Overall, this counts as Horror, but we’re tagging ANGST too. Mike is NAWT famous in this one. Smidgen of fluff (It’s forced, js. Like you really have to squint, sista!)
Warnings: Psychological Horror(?) Mike is dead in this one y'all, I feel like that much is obvious in the pairings but just in case! Supernatural elements. Reader’s dad is dead btw. Possessive!Michael, Manipulation, Michael is technically a poltergeist. He is also nawt to be trusted. Watch him. Technical major character death (?). Happy ending if you squint? Some things don’t make sense on purpose. You’ve been warned.
Summary: After months of searching, y/n finally found a beautiful home that fit her budget. The house needed a little love, but it was enough for a girl who was just starting out. And, sure, it was a little odd to find a property this nice marked at such a low price, but who was she to question a blessing? The bank that held the deed was over the moon when the young woman put in an offer, and called the very next day. After waiting for about a week, signing a few papers, and shaking hands, y/n had officially become a homeowner. What she didn’t know was that something…or someone, was waiting for her.
W.C: 10.2k (Seatbelt on honey, you’re in for a ride!)
Author’s Note: Hey lovelies, I wanted to write something different! I know, I knowww. Bee's been a little MIA. In my defense, I was working on this monster of a fic, AND handling school! That being said, we should be back in full swing now, Sistas! Anywho, We’re gonna try a different pov for this one, I think it fits better with what’s going on. Let me know what you think in the comments, reblog if you love it, and as always, happy reading!
-Love, B. 🤍 ↪ The Archive.
[June 18th, 2026]
The downpour is torrential. A dark shade of grey blankets the sky as the clouds crack open again and again, and deafening roars of thunder roll over the city like the drums of an army marching toward battle. By all accounts, this day is nothing short of gloomy. It's an afternoon that sends people scurrying into coffee shops for warmth and artificial light.
Something leaves the air rather melancholy, a particular heaviness that settles into bones and makes even the simplest tasks feel like wading through syrup. It weighs down everyone.
Everyone except y/n, that is.
She beams with a smile so bright it almost makes up for the lack of sunlight. On a simple silver ring, resting in her palm like the most precious jewel in the world, sits a set of keys that open the door to her independence.
The girl’s mother stands by her side wearing a warm, kindred smile, heart swollen with pride and terror in equal measure. Her baby girl just bought her first house.
The older woman cried when her daughter signed the last dotted line. They weren’t the delicate tears made for television either. Oh no, more so the ugly, shoulder-shaking sobs that leave someone breathless.
"My baby's all grown up," she'd kept saying.
All in all, it was a heartwarming moment, but, for young y/n, there isn't a moment to waste. She thanks her real estate agent, shaking the man's hand so vigorously that his teeth probably rattle, and makes a beeline for the door. She all but sprints through the parking lot. Her worn sneakers kick up water with each step, not caring that she's already soaked to the bone.
The door of the moving van is nearly torn off the hinges as she throws herself inside and calls for her mother to hurry. Her voice carries that particular frequency of excitement that makes dogs whine and parents wince. The older woman shakes her head as water drips from the umbrella she'd been adamant about bringing, and waves off her daughter's elation with the practice of someone who has survived twenty-two years of this exact behavior.
In the passenger seat, the older woman sits wondering how the hell her child passed a driver's test. The grip she has on the overhead handle is firm, turning her knuckles an almost pristine white. Her wedding ring, the one she never took off, not even after eight years of widowhood, digs into her palm.
Her eyes are screwed shut while she mutters prayers under her breath like she's trying to negotiate with the heavens, her lips moving in silent conversation with Saint Mary, her late husband, or literally anyone else who might be listening.
The fact that there aren't any red and blue lights trailing close behind is the only sign that someone hears her. Though she's not entirely convinced that y/n's guardian angel isn't simply exhausted from overtime. When the car jostles at a sharp left turn that probably isn't legal, her mother loses her cool entirely.
"Y/n, that damn place ain't going anywhere!" She yelps, voice sharp with panic, her eyes snapping open just in time to see them narrowly miss a fire hydrant.
"Lord Jesus, take the wheel! Not you, baby, I didn't mean—"
Y/n laughs and ignores it, mainly because there's something buzzing under her skin that feels like champagne bubbles. This is it. In a few more moments, she'll be home. After nine long months of overtime cramped in a cubicle, picking up extra shifts when her supervisor practically begged her to, and a severely unhealthy relationship with caffeine that has her heart doing funny things at random hours, she feels like she can finally breathe.
But like her mother, she too is fear-stricken.
Not because of the haphazard driving, though she probably should be. No, it's the realization that settles somewhere between her ribs as they crest the final hill, the understanding that there will be no one looking after her anymore. No footsteps padding toward her bedroom late at night when she's crying over a breakup, a bad day, or nothing at all.
No voice floating through walls asking if she'd eaten that day, or if she's taking her vitamins. No one there to celebrate her victories with the ferocity of someone who knows exactly how hard she fought for them, or to rescue her when she falls with the unconditional certainty of someone who has loved her since before she had a name.
Even though she'll miss it, and God will she miss it, y/n has to get out.
Not to say she hated living with her mom; their apartment had been warm and loud and full of the kind of love that makes home feel like a state of being rather than just a place. But at the age of twenty-two, it was time for y/n to spread her wings.
Plus, the money's already been spent, every penny of her savings and then some, so any regret she may have had is swallowed as soon as it rises.
After several illegal maneuvers that lead to her mother threatening legal action, the property comes into view. A few more feet up the winding road, past an abandoned gas station and a house with the collection of garden gnomes that seems to multiply weekly, a small home rests at the top of a hill.
Y/n parks near the curb with a squeal of brakes that makes her mother flinch, and flies out of the driver's side to get a good look at her new place in all its glory.
A dingy white fence cages everything in, the paint peeling in strips that remind her of sunburned skin. The lawn is overgrown after not having been maintained for quite some time. Tall grass bends under the weight of the rain and wild things that she probably doesn't want to identify rustle about.
The faded blue exterior and deteriorated brick foundation point to the age of the structure, to decades of weather and neglect and stories she doesn't know yet. Leaves and shrubbery nearly camouflage the whole thing as nature slowly reclaims what someone else abandoned. Cracked concrete leads to the front door, which is a dusty brown that might once have been red, she can’t quite tell.
To anyone else, this would be a pretty underwhelming sight. A fixer-upper, certainly. Maybe even a mistake. But for y/n, it's enough to bring tears to her eyes. Somehow, (and don't ask her to explain) she sees the vision. The house fully restored in her mind's eye like a photograph developing in a darkroom.
The lawn will be lush, cut low with wildflowers that line the fence in colorful bursts. She'll repaint the siding a soft green, sage or mint depending on what the hardware store has on sale. She might even go as far to replace the damaged brick.
A birdhouse will hang over the porch, swaying gently in the breeze, painted light blue with a little door that actually opens. Y/n might get a cat, just because she can, an orange tabby who’ ll sit in the windowsill and judge her life choices.
Before she can continue to plot about where she'll bury a tree, an flat voice cuts through her reverie.
"Young lady. This…is what you spent your inheritance on?" Her mother exclaims, far from impressed, arms flailing around in disbelief. "Really? This is what you nearly killed me for?"
Y/n rolls her eyes and waves her hand, rain still dripping from her fingertips. "Mama, you're dramatic."
The older woman's eyebrows nearly come off her head as she moves to stand near her daughter, shoes squelching in the mud.
"Dramatic? Were we in the same car? Did we not just participate in the same vehicular manslaughter attempt?"
Y/n can't help but giggle as she turns to face the matriarch, taking in the sight of her mother. Soaked, indignant, and utterly unimpressed.
"I couldn't help it! Look at it! Isn't it beautiful?" She laughs out.
The older woman stands for a moment, eyes raking over the estate with the critical assessment of someone who has spent twenty years maintaining a home on a nurse's salary. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. She offers a drawn out response, the kind that y/n has learned like the back of her hand.
"It's...something."
"It's mine." Y/n quips back, swelling with pride. The words taste like possibility.
Not wanting to waste anymore time, the young woman opens the gate, which screams on its hinges, and practically skips to the door, mud sucking at her shoes with every step.
The older of the two moves with the grace of a snail, or perhaps a very reluctant tortoise. Y/n pauses at the entrance, key hovering just in front of the lock, suddenly aware of her own heartbeat. She's seen the photos, of course, the ones the real estate agent had taken with wide-angle lenses and generous lighting.
But, being here is an entirely different ordeal. Who knows when they were even taken. Who knows if the leak in the roof had already started then, or if the crack in the foundation was already spreading like a hairline fracture. It definitely didn't help that there wasn't much history on the house either. Just one previous owner in the records, someone named M. Jackson, who had owned the place only five years before the bank reclaimed it.
The records on whoever that was had been sealed forever ago. Something about a legal complication that the agent had waved off as ‘standard for foreclosures,’ so she can't exactly ask why they were so quick to get rid of it, or why they'd left so suddenly that half their furniture was apparently still inside.
Whatever, it doesn't matter. She shakes the hesitancy off quickly when she remembers this is her moment, the one she's been working toward for the last four years.
She turns the key and slowly pushes the door open and steps inside. A smile grows on her face at the sight of the entryway, immediate and involuntary. Cobwebs and dust bunnies are the only occupants, and the first thing she sees is the banister of a staircase that leads into what appears to be an abyss.
The walls are lined with a fading pattern that could have only come from the eighties, some geometric nightmare in mauve and teal that makes her think of her grandmother's bathroom. Dark hardwood floors are in less than stellar condition, scuffed and stained but beautiful in their imperfection, real wood that you can't buy anymore, not at any price.
Something scurries across the room in a haste, a mouse or squirrel, disappearing into a crack in the baseboard. Still, all she sees is the beauty of ownership.
"Oh! No. Ma'am. We are going back for a refund, right now!" Her mother says, peering into the house as if it were a certified biohazard, her hand over her mouth like she's trying to filter the air.
"There are creatures in here, y/n. Living creatures! That you will have to share a space with! Did you consider that?"
Y/n snaps her head in the older woman's direction and points her finger with a mean scowl, the one that used to make her little cousins cry.
"Mama, one more word about my house."
The matriarch scoffs and raises her hands in surrender before turning around and starting back in the direction of the truck.
"Fine, but don't call me if you wake up dead. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies, and I grew up in a house that I'm pretty sure was haunted by my uncle's disappointment."
Y/n huffs with a roll of her eyes, already moving toward the kitchen to assess what she's working with.
"Mama, the faster you help me move in, the quicker I can get you home to your creature-less apartment."
With that, they begin the long taxing process of attempting to bring the house back to life. Y/n figures it would be best to deep clean the place first, before they start hauling furniture into filth. So, she attacks the kitchen on a mission to make it sparkle, or at least look like someone tried.
She scrubs, wipes, sprays, and dusts until the fumes from the various brightly colored bottles start to test her willpower. Until she's lightheaded and giggling at things that aren't funny and her mother has opened every window despite the rain.
After which, begins a heated argument about which way to bring in the sofa.
"No, turn it to the left!" y/n screeches from the doorway, her voice echoing through the empty house.
"Girl! It can't go anymore left without being right!" Her mother retorts, her end of the sectional digging into her hip.
"Physics, Mama! Heard of 'em?"
The cat-fight continues until they eventually brute force the thing into the living room. Dirty looks are thrown from both sides as heavy breaths fill the space between them, the kind of looks that say ‘I love you but I might kill you.’
The lights flicker overhead, ‘old wiring,’ y/n thinks. She'll need to check that. The pair continue their standoff, neither wanting to be the first to break. But, the lights flicker again and the older woman cracks first with a large smile.
"That's your daddy. He's saying you should've bought a smaller couch." she hums.
Y/n scoffs and shakes her head, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
"I don't see how he's saying anything, considering he's taking a long dirt nap."
Her mother's face drops, thoroughly offended. The smile slides off like water on glass. It's been eight years and she still insists that the patriarch of the family is hovering around like a lost puppy, checking in on them, messing with lights, and moving objects. All signs that y/n has learned to dismiss as coincidence or imagination.
She understands that grief is weird, that it changes people in ways they couldn't have ever imagined, warping the world until it fits around the hole that loss has left. And yeah, occasionally she'll speak into the void as if her father really were listening. At his grave, mostly, or when she's drunk and alone, but she doesn't believe it, not really. It's more to self-soothe than anything. To y/n, they’re just words thrown at silence because silence itself is worse.
As for her mother, well, there have been moments she seriously considered having her evaluated, moments when the line between coping and delusion seemed to blur.
"Just because you don't care to keep up with him doesn't mean I won't” The matriarch starts with a pout.
Y/n knows where this is headed, and starts to regret making the tasteless joke in the first place. She opens her mouth to try and put out the fire she’s lit, but it’s too late.
“He's still here, you don't need to see someone to know that." The older woman grumbles out, running her hand along the arm of the chair like she's petting something.
Y/n folds her lips inward, unprepared for the pang in her chest. She lowers herself onto the sofa slowly before speaking again.
"I miss him too, mama." She says with a shaky breath, the words barely audible over the rain that's started drumming against the roof again. "But...do you seriously believe he stuck around?” Her mother nods once, firmly, jaw set the same way y/n inherited.
"Of course I do. You'd feel the same way if you stopped ignorin' all the signs. He was here when we pulled up, I felt him. He's curious about the place, same as us."
The conversation is uncomfortable, the kind that leaves y/n shifting her weight in the seat, wanting to be anywhere else right about now. The younger of the two just can't understand what the hell her mother is about.
To be fair, she has never understood, and probably never will. When someone dies, that's it. There's no second wind for them, no astral coffee shop where they hang out waiting to flicker lights at their loved ones. And they certainly don't come back just to watch you grocery shop or judge your furniture choices.
They decompose in the ground, become worm food, and eventually return to the earth in the only way that actually matters. Still, y/n hates to rain on her mother's parade.
After all, some days, it's the only thing that keeps her mom going, the belief that her husband is still somehow hers.
"Alright mama, alright." Y/n coos with a small grin, hoping to break up the steadily building tension, the charge in the air that has nothing to do with the storm.
"Well, if that's the case, he should've helped instead of fussin'! Could've used some ghost muscles about ten minutes ago."
Her mother chuckles and shakes her head, the tension draining from her shoulders like water. "Baby, all he ever did was fuss. It was a sport for him, and you know it. Fussed about your grades, your boyfriends, your driving—"
"My driving is fine," y/n interrupts, but she's smiling, they both are. Steadily falling into the familiar rhythm of memory and deflection.
"He'd have loved this place, though. All the things that need fixing. He'd have been in heaven." The girl hums.
"Don't I know it," her mother agrees, voice soft as prayer.
This time, y/n doesn't argue, just reaches out to squeeze her hand. They sit together in the half-empty living room, and listen to the rain falling outside.
Y/n thinks that maybe this is what independence means. Not being alone, but choosing who you stand with, where, and for how long. Again, she squeezes her mother’s hand, feeling the band of the ring press against her palm.
"Let's get going," she whispers, "Before it gets dark."
"Before the ghosts get restless," the older woman teases.
They both pretend she's joking. Like they don't feel the temperature drop just slightly, see the lights flicker once more, hinting at the presence of something watching...waiting.
Y/n grabs the keys and heads back out into the rain with her mother's laughter following close behind.
Y/n makes her way over to the staircase, dragging her feet across the wood dramatically. Twenty four steps mock her as she peers up. A theatric sigh fills the space as she begins her ascent. Her hand slides along the banister, collecting dust and something sticky she chooses not to examine too closely. The rain softens to a persistent drizzle by the time Y/n finally climbs those twenty-four steps, each one groaning just as dramatically as she had.
When she returns, she ponders whether she should enjoy the fruits of her labor and plop down on the couch, or if she should take a shower before sleep decides she’s done for the day. While thinking, she stretches. Her arms reach toward the ceiling, as she comes up on the tips of her toes. A whiff of something less than pleasant hits her nose.
Yikes.
Shower it is.
The second floor stretches before her down a long hallway of closed doors. The light from a single grimy window at the far end casts everything in a shadow. She counted four doors on each side, plus one at the very end that seemed to absorb what little light dared approach it. Nine rooms, then. Maybe a bathroom tucked somewhere in the middle.
The real estate agent had mentioned something about the original floor plan, how the previous owner had made "extensive modifications" that weren't entirely up to code. Y/n hadn't paid much attention, she'd been too busy calculating whether she could afford the down payment without selling a kidney.
She felt the weight of those modifications pressing against her chest. The house felt much larger than it should, the ceiling higher and the corners darker. She shook her head, laughing at her own imagination.
This was freedom. This was peace. This was what she'd been saving for. The very thing she had been dreaming about in the fluorescent-lit hours of overtime.
Of course it felt strange.
She'd spent her entire life in a two-bedroom apartment where you could hear someone breathing from the frint door.
Her TV is perched on top of it, the only sign of modern life in the house. The windows face the backyard, and through the grime, she can make out the shapes of overgrown bushes pressing against the glass as leaves moving in the wind like hands waving for attention.
She chooses the door closest to the stairs, reasoning that if the house decided to collapse in the night, she'd have the shortest route to safety. The knob turns with a squeal that makes her wince as she walks into her new room.
The bed stands in the center, and in the corner, a dresser with one drawer missing and the others sticking out at angles like broken teeth.
The floorboards creak behind her, and she spins around, heart hammering, only to find nothing.
But the light found its way in. Even through the dirt, rain ,and several years of neglect. It's the kind of light that photographers are paid fortunes to replicate.
Y/n crosses to the window and rests her palm against the glass, feeling the cold seep into her skin. She could make this hers.
Nothing but the open door and the hallway.
She laughs again, louder this time, forcing the sound into the empty space.
"Just the house settling," she tells herself. The words echo slightly...wrong somehow.
The previous owner had left a folding chair in the center, positioned to face the door. Y/n backed out without touching it, telling herself she'd deal with it tomorrow, or next week, or...never.
She explores the rest if the second floor quickly, finding a bathroom with mickey-mouse fixtures that made her groan out loud. Then, a second bedroom barely larger than a closet that she had already decided would become an office.
And finally, a third room that seemed to serve no purpose at all. No windows, a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and walls painted a deep burgundy that felt less like a color choice and more like a warning.
The last room on the right at the end of the hallway resists her touch, the knob stiff with disuse or perhaps something else. Something that almost felt intentional.
When it finally gives, the door swings open and Y/n finds herself staring into what could only be described as an attic, uh...conversion.
Though, 'conversion' suggested a level of finishing that this space had clearly never achieved. The ceiling sloped dramatically on both sides, meeting in a ridge that forced her to duck if she moved further inward.
Whoever owned this place was clearly…different. The floor is bare plywood, and in one corner, someone piled up boxes upon boxes, a tower of cardboard and forgotten things that leans slightly, as if considering collapse.
"Margaret, 1987. If you see him, pretend you don’t."
But, it's the walls that throw her off. Every inch, from the dilapidated ceiling to the makeshift floor, has been covered in writing. Not graffiti, not exactly, though it has that same desperate energy.
The words are written in different handwriting and ink, some faded to near-invisibility, others dark and fresh enough to have been added yesterday. A disturbing collection of names, dates, and fragments of sentences that hardly make any sense.
"Skylar, 1993. He watches. Be careful."
"Jamiee, 2006. He moves quickly. Don't let him see you go down after dark."
"Janine, 2015. Don't let him catch you in here."
One scribbling in particular, sends a chill down y/n's spine. No name or date like the others, just a warning etched into the wall haphazardly, like whoever wrote it was running out of time.
"If you're reading this, it's probably too late. This house isn't yours, it never will be. Chances are, he's watching you now. When you finish reading, pretend everything's okay. It'll be your best chance at survival."
"God has abandoned this place, and left a monster here to rot. His name is Michael. No matter what he says, or who he mentions, do not trust him. Get him to trust you. Play along. Study the maps whenever you can, he can't see them. Whatever you do, don’t piss him off. When you’re sure you have a chance, run. If you make it out, turn this place to ash."
Y/n steps closer, unable to peel her eyes away from the drywall. Beneath layers of warnings, and what she told herself was nonsense, there are drawings. Diagrams, almost.
Rooms where rooms shouldn't be, and spaces that extend far beyond the boundaries of what's possible. She continues to read, unsure of where this could be going.
Her eyes glance further down, and what she finds leaves her more than confused. Those ‘maps’? They don’t make any sense. A basement maybe, a spare room that seemed to connect to something else, and something deeper, drawn in red ink that she can’t make out to save her life.
For some reason or another, she decides to heed the creepy warning, and gets up slowly.
She turns on her heels and walks out of the room quickly. Once past the threshold, y/n pulls the door shut with more force than necessary, hears the click of the latch, and glides back down the hallway with a deliberate slowness. She activley refuses tonacknowledge the feeling of eyes on her back, or the sense that something in that room had given her its full attention.
"Weird roombupstairs. Great" Y/n huffs, words escaping into the air, directed at no one. "Full of creepy writing...double great"
The kitchen greets her with its dated appliances and the smell of mildew hiding beneath lemon-scented cleaner. The girl thinks for a moment. She had been under the impression that the house only belonged to one person before her.
The agent mentioned old furniture.
Furniture.
Not scribbles. She makes her way back downstairs, each step an exercise in normalcy.
So why were there so many scribbles on the walls in the first place? And who the hell is Michael? There were a thousand questions running through her head. Could there be some deranged man living in the walls?
Yeah right, as if anyone would risk being crushed by a loose support beam for the sake of terrorizing others. The house has been uninhabited for quite sometime, maybe it was some girls playing a little joke. You know, one where you trick your friends into believing the boogeyman exists?
Y/n shakes the thoughts from her mind, and moves to open the refrigerator. All she finds is the bottle of water she placed in there earlier. 'I'll head to the store in the morning.' she thinks, and closes the door softly. The sound moves through the house in a strange way, bouncing off walls that seem to drink in noise rather than reflect it.
Y/n pads back toward the stairs, and again huffs. She only came down to escape the oddity she’d just encountered, but that doesn’t mean anything to the grime resting on top of her skin.
The second trip up feels longer than the first, each step a small mountain she must convince herself to climb. She keeps her eyes forward, refusing to glance at the door at the end of the hallway, the one with its secrets pressed against the wood like a held breath. Instead, she focuses on making it back to the bedroom. Once there, Y/n opens her suitcase and pulls out whatever she can find, now solely focused on getting to sleep as fast as possible. She collects a towel, her toothbrush, some clothes, and the rest of her night time routine.
The bathroom is childlike, to say the least. Those Mickey Mouse fixtures from before are almost an endearing sight after the weight of what she'd seen just moments ago. Y/n turns the shower on, and watches steam fill the small space. Only then does she allow herself to shiver. The shower does very little to ease the tension that has settled between her shoulder blades, a physical manifestation of the warning she’d red.
She scrubs at her skin until it stings, as if she could wash away the knowledge of Margaret, Skylar, Jamiee, and Janine. As if the stream could dissolve the image of that folding chair positioned like a throne for some invisible audience. She can't get it out of her head.
The diagrams, the rooms that shouldn't exist, the basement marked in red. It all feels like something she should take note of. Once the water runs cold, y/n leaves the shower. She wraps herself in a towel that has seen better days, and stands in the mirror. The low light catches something there in the steam. She squints, and leans in closer. More writing. This time though, it nearly stops her heart.
‘Missing something? :)’
The smiley face is what does it, that casual punctuation mark turning the words from observation to threat. Her eyes dart around quickly, scanning the bathroom to see what's been disturbed. Toothbrush? Check, still in its case on the sink. Skincare? Check, the bottles are lined up like soldiers. Clothes?
Shit.
She knows she brought them in. Y/n knows she folded them over the towel rack. She knows she placed them there with her own hands not even twenty minutes ago.
So where the fuck are they?
Her heart is now trying to break through her ribs like a trapped bird throwing itself against the bars of its cage. She can feel it in her throat.
'Ain't no way,' she thinks, but the words feel hollow, childish, the kind of thing people say in movies right before the monster appears.
Y/n's first thought is to lock the door and bunker down for the night.
Problem number one?
The bathroom door has no lock, she realizes, staring at the empty hole where a mechanism should be.
Whoever wrote that can't still be in here. The steam is dissipating, taking with it her cover, revealing more of the small space with every passing second. The shower curtain hangs, with no sign of movement. Under the sink is a cabinet she hasn't checked, but a small child couldn’t even fit there, let alone a full-grown person. The linen closet, barely big enough for a body, stands ajar. All clear, but she can't stay.
Problem number two?
She left her phone in the bedroom.
It's only ten feet away, surely she can make it and set up camp there. Ten feet of dark, ominous hallway past that door, the one she's been avoiding. Ten feet to the relative safety of four walls and a window she could break if she had to.
With a deep inhale, and false courage manufactured out of pure desperation, the young lady cracks the bathroom door open, and peers around. To her left, she sees nothing but the stretch of hallway leading to stairs she doesn't want to descend. The right side is almost the same, save for the door at the end watching her.
Fuck it.
She takes her chances and all but leaps across the hallway,feet slapping wood, towel barely clinging to her damp body. The door to her bedroom is open, and she crashes through it in what could only be described as a panic.
Once she's safely inside the confines of the room, she spins around and makes quick work to lock the door. The click of the mechanism is the sweetest sound she's ever heard. Y/n presses her forehead against the wood, breathing hard, counting to ten, to twenty, even to fifty. For now, just waiting for her heart to remember its proper rhythm.
When she turns back, she finds a young man in a white t-shirt and plaid pajama pants lounging on her bed. One arm behind his head, casual as Sunday morning, and the other holding up the stolen clothes.
Her clothes. The ones she'd left in the bathroom.
He's beautiful really, the kind of beautiful that makes her think of old paintings and galleria art. The kind that doesn't belong in this sagging house with its Mickey Mouse lights and its murder room upstairs. The man flashes a perfect set of teeth at her, and stares with the gaze of a predator who has already eaten and is simply enjoying the afterglow.
Terror floods through her veins as he sits up a bit, dangling the clothes out in front of her, like a question with no good answer.
"Did you lose these?" He asks, brows flitting up ever so slightly, the perfect picture of innocent concern. His voice is warm and intimate, as if he has every right to be here, in her bed, with her things.
Y/n looks at him, then the clothes, then the doorknob. The locked doorknob. Then, her eyes flicker to the window. She’s on the second story, and there’s no fire escape. The walls are thick, no one would hear her cry for help either.
'Fuck!'
The word rattles inside her head, silent and desperate.
An ear piercing scream is the only response she offers. It tears out of her throat before she can think to stop it, raw and ragged. Y/n’s just hoping that someone, anyone, might be close enough to hear.
Before the gentleman can make any type of move, she starts hurling whatever she can get her hands on in his direction.
Her shoes, the box of miscellaneous knick-knacks she hasn't unpacked, even toiletries. She throws with the precision of a sharpshooter, and the strength of someone who has nothing left to lose.
The young man dodges each one with ease, laughing as if this were all some sort of game to him.
"Who are you?" She questions, still hurling inanimate objects at the intruder. "What are you doing in my house?"
He catches the remote that she's launched at him, and raises one of those perfectly arched brows.
"Your house? You must be confused." The young man chides.
Y/n pauses her onslaught, just for a moment. That's all he needs though, in an instant, he stands in front of her, peering down. She didn't even have time to blink. The stuffed bear that was sure to be cannon fodder next, falls from her hands. She backs away, but that only makes him take a step forward.
"I'm not. You need to go. I'll call the police." She tries to be firm. Oh how she tries.
The waver in her voice gives her away quicker than the tremble of her body.
Again he laughs.
"Call 'em mama," He dares, not breaking eye contact, "let's see how that works out for you."
Y/n slides to the right, before speaking again "What do you want?"
The strange man pretends to think for a moment, then snaps his fingers as if he just remembered a crucial detail.
"Well, I'd like to know how you managed to buy this place. After Nicole, I was sure they'd take it off the market." He then rubs his chin while moving back toward the bed. The intruder plops down and smiles knowingly, as if he's just figured something out.
"Oh, I get it. They tricked you, huh?" He chuckles to himself, and continues.
"Doesn't matter. I also wanna know what you did with my stuff."
What the fuck is this guy talking about?
Y/n isn't dead yet, so maybe there's time. She gauges the distance between him, her, and the exit. She'll make it there faster. No longer wanting to entertain this bullshit, y/n makes a dash for the door.
It's three steps away, so why is she still running?
The hallway stretches. The walls breathe outward, then contract, the wood paneling groaning like tired lungs. She catches glimpses of impossible things. A window where there shouldn't be one, showing night instead of the afternoon she left behind. A door she doesn't remember, slightly ajar, revealing a staircase leading up. Up? The house only has two floors.
Safety stretches farther and farther, until she grows tired. What is happening? It was just right there.
When y/n stops to catch her breath, her eyes squeeze shut.
When they open again, she’s certain this is some kind of fever dream.
The young woman is standing right where she was three minutes ago. But something's different. Her coffee cup, the one she'd left in the kitchen, sits on the windowsill beside her. And on the wall, a photograph she doesn't recognize: herself, asleep in this very bed, taken from above. Which is anything but possible.
She fixes her gaze on the floor, as she swallows gulps of air, not wanting to acknowledge any part of that.
"Is that outta your system now?" The man asks, rather condescendingly.
"What— what did you just do?" Y/n rasps, knowing full well that she was sober, and definitely not dreaming.
"Manners are important y'know." The man shrugs. "You tried to leave before you even introduced yourself. How rude."
He then waves in front of him and looks at her expectantly. When she doesn't give him an answer, he rolls his eyes and scoffs.
"Okay...guess I'll start us off. Hello, I'm Michael Jackson. Nice to meet you"
The name hangs in the air between them like smoke, thick and suffocating and utterly impossible. Y/n feels the blood drain from her face, feels her knees go weak beneath her, feels the towel she's clutching slip another inch.
Michael Jackson. As in M.Jackson? The owner from what, fifty years ago? This man has lost it.
"That's not funny," she whispers, but her voice sounds distant, disconnected, as if someone else is speaking through her mouth. "That's not...you're not—"
"Not what?" He tilts his head, genuinely curious, that smile still playing at the corners of his lips.
"Not Michael Jackson? Not the man who owned this house before you? Or not the person whose name is on half the documents you had to have signed without reading?"
He reaches into his pocket and (Wait...when had he gotten clothes with pockets?) and produces a faded driver's license, holding it up for her to inspect. The photo is unmistakably him, a little younger perhaps, with the same sharp cheekbones and pretty doe eyes. The same beauty that makes her want to look away and stare simultaneously. Beauty be damned though, that isn't what really catches her eye.
It's the date of birth. 1958. She looks a little closer, the license was issued in 1981. Alarm bells are ringing but y/n can't bring herself to believe what she's seeing. Not knowing how to handle the situation, she settles for comedic relief.
"You look...good for sixty-seven." She says in a rather dry tone.
He looks at the girl in front of him incredulously.
"That's all you have? A compliment?" Michael questions.
Her face falls flat. How has she managed to enter a back-and-forth with a complete stranger claiming to be forty-five years her senior?
"I mean honestly, I could be some psycho!" He continues to rant, seemingly unaware of the irony in his exclamation.
"You could be, which is why you need to leave." Y/n deadpans.
Michael tuts and shakes his head, "Funny thing about being dead, girl. You're stuck wherever you die. At least I am."
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Y/n's sure now that this man escaped some kind of facility and wound up in her house.
"Are you on something? If you need help I can dial 911 for you." She tries the gentle approach. Best case scenario, this young man is just crazy.
Again, he rolls his eyes. "You don't believe me. None of you ever do."
Y/n lets out a frustrated breath. It's surely nearing one in the morning now. She's tired, naked, and currently in a standoff with a loose patient. Triple great.
Michael senses her frustration, and decides to show mercy. "Why don't I leave you to get dressed, and we can talk after?"
A window of opportunity.
The young woman thanks whatever god is listening and nods frantically, itching to lock him out of the room. It's her turn to wait expectantly. Instead of moving toward the door, Michael simply smiles a little harder and disappears.
Out of thin. fucking. air.
Plumes of his being are left in the air.
"Hell no!" Y/n screams, stumbling toward the pile of clothes while looking around for the little box that will bring her salvation.
She dresses quickly, being sure to throw on a pair of tennis shoes just in case. Her next mission is her phone. As soon as y/n reaches for it, Michael reappears. The girl lets out a yelp in surprise.
"You don't need that," Is all he says before it disappears too.
Y/n feels the weight of the device linger in her hand, almost like a phantom limb. It's very clearly gone tough. She looks at Michael, and at this moment, her brain finally decides it's time to stop pretending.
"There's a ghost...in my house." She mutters to herself, trying to grasp what she subconsciously knows to be true. She continues to process out loud. Just a little longer before
Michael speaks up again, this time with a tone that indicates he's losing patience.
"You still haven't introduced yourself." The girl pauses, and remembers one of the writings.
'Play along.
Okay…Okay. She can do that. Y/n takes a breath to steady herself, and stands up straight. Her eyes meet his, no doubt full of fear.
"I'm y/n, nice to meet you."
Michael finds it in himself to smile, and nods "I like that. Y/n." He tests the name on his tongue like he's committing it to memory, like he'll need it for later.
"Okay, y/n. It's late, you should get some sleep. See you in the morning."
Like hell he will. As soon as he vanishes, y/n starts packing her shit. Anything she'll actually need. Her wallet, keys and purse. That's it. To hell with everything else. The girl waits patiently, for hours, letting the sun rise high enough to shine through the house.
Once the coast is clear, she quietly heads out of the room and down the stairs. From the living room window, she can see the car parked in the driveway. Twenty more steps, only twenty. The front door opens with no problem, but the sight before her quickly becomes one.
It's dark. Well, dark might be an understatement. It's pitch black outside. Not only that, but the same car she just laid eyes on, is missing.
Actually, the entire front yard is missing. In its place is a bottomless pit. She turns back toward the house, but finds the same thing over her shoulder. All she has is the porch, and its steps. Y/n's ears are ringing. What could she possibly do in this situation?
Cry, that's what.
There on the steps, a twenty-two year old woman sobs (violently might I add) with her head in her hands. Is she dead? Is that what this is? Will she ever see her mom again? These are all questions y/n doesn't have the answer to.
Her chest feels tight as she realizes that any conventional means of escape don't exist here.
Where even is here?'
Her shoulders shake a little harder. How did she end up in this place? With that thing pretending to be a man.
"Y/n, are you okay?"
Speak of the devil.
The woman’s eyes snap open, and she finds herself seated at the bottom of the house's staircase. Not even five minutes ago, she was stranded in literally the middle of nowhere, and now she's back inside, safe and sound, with Michael taunting her.
"No! I'm not o-fucking-kay! What was that?" she grills, long past small talk. Michael shrugs, extending very little comfort.
"You haven't slept, I didn't want you on the road like that." Michael responds, less than amused.
He did that?
Made the whole damn house disappear?
What kind of ghost is he?
"One that finds you to be incredibly rude. I was just looking out for you." He mumbles arms folded with a serious look of disapproval.
Y/n laughs. It starts small, but soon develops into some wild unhinged cackle. Of course, he moved the damn house. Of fucking course. The cackles die down to a sigh.
"Alright, Michael. You win."
But she's already planning. Making a serious mental note of the scribbles, and at the forefront of her mind, that warning from before: "Study the maps whenever you can, he can't see them."
She'll play along. She'll smile and make nice and learn the geometry of her cage, and when she finally understands how he bends the halls, she'll run.
Three weeks. That's how long she lasts.
Three weeks of "Good morning, Michael" and "Could you pass the salt?"
Almost a month of watching him watch her with those pretty, patient eyes.
Y/n spent that time finding reasons to be in the same room, asking innocent questions about the house's history, studying the maps in her head when he thinks she's asleep, and pretending the warnings on the walls upstairs don’t even exist.
Most importantly, y/n spent twenty-one days noting how the house breathes heavier when he's irritated, of learning that the geometry shifts with his mood. The calmer he is, the more normal the house behaves.
But alas, as time continues to progress, she starts to forget.
Not all at once. Gradually, like a cold you don’t quite notice until it hurts to swallow. She forgets that the floorboards groan with his anger, and that a fifth door appears when he's jealous. She forgets that he stole her clothes, her phone, and her reality on her first night here.
Instead, she sees a man who makes her coffee exactly how she likes it. One who remembers that she hates mushrooms but loves onions. A man who listens to her talk about her job, her real job, the one she hasn't seen in weeks, and speaks as if he truly understands.
Y/n learns that Michael is kind and gentle. Or at least, he can be.
Eventually, the house settles around them, and after a while, she forgets that it ever moved in the first place.
"You're different," he tells her one morning, sliding a mug across the kitchen table.
"The others never settled in. Always fighting. Always trying to break things."
"I'm not settled," she lies, blowing steam from her coffee. "I'm just... practical."
He smiles like he knows better. "You miss your mother."
The words hit her chest like a stone. She hasn't thought about her mom in days, not really. The worry is there, background radiation, but she's stopped actively remembering to escape.
"She's probably worried," y/n admits, staring into her cup. "I should call her."
Michael's hand stills on his own mug. "You don't have a phone."
"I know, but... maybe I could borrow one? Go into town?" She looks up at him, and her voice carries genuine pleading now, not strategy.
"Just for an hour. Just to let her know I'm alive."
The house groans in response.
It's subtle, a low creak in the walls, a shift in the floorboards beneath her chair, but she hears it. She'd forgotten she could hear it.
Michael's expression doesn't change, but his eyes have hardened in a way that puts the young woman on edge.
"You want to leave," he says.
Make no mistake, this isn’t a question. He’s testing for something.
"I want to see my mom." Y/n says as she reaches across the table and touches his hand before she can think better of it.
"She's the only family I have. You understand that, don't you?"
Michael looks at her hand. His skin is warm, alive.
"Family," he repeats, voice low. "Yes. I understand family."
Relief floods her. "So I can go? Just for a little while?"
His fingers turn and capture her hand in his grip. His hold is soft, something meant to show sympathy.
"I told you," he says softly. "This is your home now. You don't need to go anywhere else."
"But my mother—"
"Will forget you."
His voice remains gentle, even kind, but the walls are bending now, expanding and contracting with a rhythm that reflects how Michael truly feels.
"They always do. The outside world moves on, honey."
Y/n pulls her hand back. "That's not true."
"It is true." He stands, and the chair behind him doesn't scrape—it simply isn't there anymore, swallowed by the shifting floor.
“You’ve asked me about everything you could think of. Not once did you mention the attic though. Why is that?” Michael asks, only blinking once.
It’s at this moment that y/n realizes she’s been caught. Really, this is the point where she finds out she’s just like every other girl in a horror movie. I mean, why wouldn’t the guy who can bend the laws of time and space with the snap of his fingers know about a room he created.
Those girls didn’t know any more about how he works than she does.
Michael cuts through her epiphany with a sigh. "You've been happy here. I know you have. Don't ruin it now."
Y/n stands too, backing away with caution.
"I'm not ruining anything. I just wanna see my mom."
"Y/n. I’m your family now,"
His voice carries warning, and the hallway behind him stretches, darkens, the familiar four doors multiplying into eight, then twelve, then into a corridor that has no business existing.
"Please, don't make this difficult."
She doesn't bother to listen to another word, already moving before he can register what's happening.
Not toward the front door, she knows better than to go where he would expect. Instead she heads toward the back, to a side door in the living room. The one that leads to the yard (and possibly freedom). Her feet know the path. She's planned this for weeks, even mapped it in her head while pretending to make conversation over breakfast.
All of that planning falls apart when she crashes through the doorway and finds herself in the attic room, the one with the warnings, the one she hasn't opened in days. The folding chair is gone and the walls are bare. No writing, no names, no desperate instructions from women who escaped…or didn't.
"That's not right," she breathes, spinning. "That's not—"
"You're not supposed to be here." Michael's voice booms, from everywhere. "You were never supposed to be here."
She runs back through the door and emerges in the basement. All that waits for her are concrete floors, damp air, and a single bulb swinging from a cord that wasn't there before. The stairs lead up, she knows they lead up, but when she climbs them she finds herself in a hallway she's never seen, with walls painted a sickly green and.
"Michael!" she screams, hating how frightened she sounds. "Stop this!"
"You stayed," his voice echoes, patient as ever. "Took care of my house. Of me. And now you want to leave?"
The hallway loops. She recognizes it from the walls. The labyrinth, the folding of space, the geometry that responds to his mood. She walks past a window that shows night, then afternoon, then dawn in quick succession. She passes a mirror that reflects her running but doesn't reflect him behind her, though she can feel him there. He’s always there.
She turns a corner and finds the front door. Relief washes over her as a shaky hand reaches for the handle. As she turns the knob, His fingers close around her wrist.
She didn't hear him approach.
Didn't feel the floorboards shift.
He's simply there, beautiful and terrible and smiling like she's disappointed him.
"Y/n," he sighs, and the house sighs with him, walls contracting, air growing thick. "I was nice."
"Let me go." She pulls against his grip, but his hand is stone wrapped in warm skin. "Please, Michael, I just want—"
"I know what you want." He steps closer, close enough that she can smell whatever aftershave he's imagined for himself, something clean and old-fashioned. "You want to leave me. Like they all do. Like Skylar, and Janine. Like my brothers–"
"I don't care about them!" She twists and feels his grip tighten, feels the bones in her wrist grind. "I care about Mama! I care about—"
"You care about a life that doesn't exist anymore."
His other hand rises, traces her jaw with something like tenderness.
"I can give you a better one. I can give you anything. You just have to stop fighting."
“Michael, you’re dead. And you’re here for an eternity. I can’t sta–"
Sunlight.
That's what wakes her. Real, warm, ordinary sunlight streaming through a window, across her face, onto sheets that smell like lavender detergent.
Y/n opens her eyes.
She’s in her bedroom.
The sage-green siding of the house is visible through the window. Already painted, and the wildflowers are blooming in neat rows outside. The birdhouse hanging over the porch, baby blue, swaying in a breeze she can feel on her skin.
She sits up, slow, waiting for the catch.
The house is silent. Not breathing or groaning, just silent, the way houses are supposed to be. She presses her hand to the wall and feels plaster and wood, solid and inert.
"Michael?" She calls, testing the waters.
Her voice sounds strange. Almost like it’s too loud for the space.
She moves through the house like it's made of glass, expecting any moment for the geometry to shift, for another door to appear, or for the hallway to loop back on itself. But, the bedroom door opens into the hallway she remembers. There are four doors on each side, the bathroom is at the end, and everything is where it should be.
She checks the attic and finds it…finished. There’s dusty boxes, and old insulation, but no warnings. No impending sense of doom
She heads down the stairs, checking everything twice, and walks out the front door. A car sits in the driveway, not the used sedan she bought at twenty, but something older, boxier, and bright red. The yard exists. The street beyond is ordinary, a neighbor walking a dog, cars passing with a wave because everything is normal.
She stands there shaking, waiting to wake up properly.
She feels something in her pocket. Her phone, charged and functional, shows three weeks of daily texts from her mother, each one more panicked than the last. The date at the top of the screen makes her stomach drop.
She's lost three more weeks.
But…the sun is shining, the world is normal, and she can’t find a shred of evidence that Michael Jackson was ever here.
None of it makes sense though. Six weeks have gone by without her noticing? The house couldn’t have been fully restored in that amount of time, and even if it had been, y/n sure as hell didn’t do it.
The young lady tries to call her mother, to tell her she's fine and loves the house, but the phone simply won’t cooperate. It’s something she’ll have to deal with later. For now, she’s just glad to have survived whatever mental exercise the last month and a half have been.
Y/n takes a deep breath, and that’s when she notices the smell.
Coffee, bacon, and something floral she can't name.
She walks back into the house, following the scent to the kitchen, telling herself she's being paranoid, that she's traumatized and that six weeks of captivity would break anyone's grip on reality.
Unfortunately for y/n, Michael’s standing at the stove.
He’s in different clothes now. A soft yellow shirt, and jeans that flare slightly at the ankle.
"Good morning, sleepyhead," he giggles out, not bothering to turn around. "Eggs are almost done. You want toast?"
Y/n freezes in the doorway. "What—"
"Scrambled, right? You hate runny eggs." He finally spins, wearing a warm, domestic, utterly unconcerned smile.
"Though the doctor said you might forget things for a while. The episodes, you know. They scramble more than eggs."
"I don't—" She swallows, pressing her hand to the doorframe to steady herself. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Michael's expression shifts. Not angry. Worried. The perfect performance of a concerned husband.
"Oh, y/n." He sets down the spatula, crosses to her, touches her shoulder with gentle familiarity. "Not again. We just talked about this last week."
"Talked about what?"
He guides her to the table—her table, her chairs, but the checkered linoleum is wrong, the avocado fixtures are wrong, everything is wrong in ways that feel almost right. He sits her down, presses a cup of tea into her hands. The cup has her name on it. Y/N. The letters feel familiar and foreign all at once.
"You're confused," he says softly, kneeling beside her chair. "That's okay. That's why I keep the calendar. So when you forget, I can help you remember."
He pulls something from his pocket. A calendar, the kind with kittens on the corners, dangling from a wire hanger. He flips to the current month and points to the bold numbers at the top.
1981.
"That's not—" Her voice fails. "That's not possible."
"Oh, it's possible." He sits across from her, studying. "It's happening right now."
"My phone—"
"Doesn't work the way you want it to." His smile turns sad, pitying. " And it won't. Not out here. Not in the life we built together."
"We didn't build anything—"
"We're married."
He says it like a fact, as if it’s something she should already know.
"Three months now. You had some trouble…adjusting to the new house. The doctor said your memory might play tricks. But you're home now. You're safe, I promise."
Y/n shakes her head, and immediately starts reminding herself of what she knows to be true.
"No…No! My name is y/n. I just moved in, I’m twenty-two–"
"You're twenty-three." His voice is gentle, patient, and absolute.
"You teach second grade at the elementary school on Maple. We've been together for two years. Don't you remember?"
He slides something across the table. A photograph.
In the picture, y/n is smiling, her hair is styled differently, and a large ring shines on her finger. She's wearing a white dress, and beside her, is Michael.
His arms are around her waist, and he has the same smile he's wearing right now, but in the picture there’s something off about it.
"That's not me," she whispers.
"Of course it's you."
Michael reaches across the table and takes her hand in his. His skin is warm, and a pulse that shouldn’t be there beats steady against her palm. "Look at your smile, baby. Look at how happy you are. This is who you are, who you've always been."
She stares at the girl in the photograph. The woman looks back with her eyes, her nose, her mouth curved in an expression she doesn't recognize.
"My mother," she says, but her voice sounds distant. Uncertain. "She was here. She helped me move."
"Your mother passed," Michael says, and his voice carries genuine sorrow, the perfect performance of grief. "Two years ago. The funeral was hard on you, and you don't talk much about it."
"Stop." She presses her hands to her ears, but the words keep coming, keep slotting into place, keep building a world around her that feels more real with every syllable.
Michael stands, moves closer, kneels beside her chair. His hand covers hers on the table, warm and heavy and absolute.
"You're confused," he murmurs. "That's all this is, honey, I understand."
He leans close, his breath warm against her ear, his voice dropping to a whisper that fills the room, the house, the world he's built around her.
"But you don't have to be. You just have to remember."
Y/n swallows. Tries to find the crack in his story. Tries to find the lie. But he's good.
Too good. The sunlight, the calendar, the photograph, the way the house holds still when he speaks, like it's reinforcing every syllable.
It all makes sense. In fact, the only thing out of place is that phone. Y/n thinks she may actually be sick. Did she dream of a world that never existed?
Her voice goes small as she wrestles with the possibility that she might be the crazy one.
"Remember what, Michael?" She asks, no longer sure of herself.
Michael smiles, and the walls breathe with him. Slow, satisfied, like the trap is finally comfortable enough to close.
during the victory tour, you secretly end up in the hospital and need emergency appendix surgery while michael is on stage. when he finally arrives after the show, he finds you completely loopy from anesthesia.
you're not sure when the sharp, stabbing pain in the lower right side of your abdomen started.
usually, this is one of your favorite moments—to enjoy your boyfriend's show in the quietest corner backstage.
but tonight it seems different; you're in so much pain that you can't focus on anything, you can hardly breathe right.
the pain is there, growing every minute. now, you're sitting on the floor, your hands rubbing your face. you close your eyes as if it's going to help you with something.
it doesn't.
the excruciating pain doesn't go away.
camila realizes something is wrong with you. normally you're dancing or singing in your own bubble; she's not an expert in reading people's faces, but she can tell by the way you're sweating and how your lips seem a bit pale that you're definitely a bit off.
she gets closer to you, and places her hand on your shoulder, asking if you're feeling sick. you don't answer—instead, you just nod your head.
five minutes later, everyone is surrounding you, and someone just had the smart idea of taking you to the hospital.
fuck. fuck. fuck.
you can't even talk properly; you whisper in a soft voice saying that it's not a big deal, but your excuses are useless; they don't even hear you.
you blink your eyes for a second—at least for you it looks like a second. however, judging by the white walls you're seeing and the fact you're lying on a stretcher, it seems like you're already there.
"hey girl, looks like you'll get your appendix removed. right now, they're putting in an iv drip. but you don't need to worry. we're going to tell michael before he fini—"
"camila, don't you dare."
"bu—"
"no, and i'm not repeating myself again."
your calm and gentle personality disappears as you give camila a death glare. the hospital room feels like a freezer because of how cold you are.
no more sweet smiles.
maybe all the pain is making you go insane.
and camila? she's looking at you like she saw a ghost. well, she'll be the ghost if she doesn't keep her mouth shut.
you're counting sheep when the doctor finally arrives.
he tells you that you have an inflamed appendix, and for that reason you'll get an appendectomy—a low-risk operation that consists of removing your appendix.
it could be worse.
but it's already worse.
the pain is lingering and when you take the laughing gas—it's like you're getting high, you feel extremely faint.
you can't remember anything afterwards.
michael is running through the hospital hallway; your room is on the third floor. he's scared—the feeling of something happening to you—god.
he doesn't have the audacity to think further. he actually wanted to commit a crime when he finished the set and realized you weren't backstage—like you always are.
because something serious must have happened.
when camila said that you were having appendix surgery after the concert, she almost dug her own grave.
he doesn't knock when he finds your room, he just barges in—finally seeing you; your eyes are closed and you have a peaceful expression on your face.
relief washes over him.
you seem fine.
michael crosses the room, and goes to the left side of your bed. he gently brushes his fingers across your face, admiring every detail that makes you perfect.
then, he softly presses his lips against yours.
"PERVERT i'm gonnnnna call the police"
well, a stranger just kissed you while you were trying to sleep. not only that—he was touching your face.
you think he's a pervert until you stare at him.
he's too pretty to be a pervert.
this pretty boy kissing you? it's actually a blessing.
you're looking at him like a hunter eyeing their next prey.
"wait—waiit whoo are youhhhh and why are you kissing me pretty boy"
"youuuuuh didnt tell m-mme who you are?"
oh shit.
michael just realized you're high as fuck.
that means you already had your surgery; camila is not escaping from that.
"mama, i'm not a pervert. i'm your boyfriend."
his doe eyes look at you searching for a little recognition; instead, you seem to be in your own little world. like you're assimilating what he just said.
"wellllllll so i pulled uuuuuup a fineee-ee shyt like youuuuu"
michael turns his face with embarrassment, gets closer to you, and holds your hand while he gives a chuckle.
"you're so-oooooo cute—why a-aare u laughing—am i nooooooooot your girlfriend?"
you start to tear up, because the handsome guy is laughing at you.
what if he leaves you here?
you don't want to be alone.
"don't leeeeeeeave me a-alone ple-eeease"
"baby, i could never leave you."
"pro-oomise?"
"yes, sure. i promise you."
"not like-e this."
"like what?"
"give me yooour little finger"—you interlock his little finger with yours. "noow yooou can promiseeee, right?"
"i promise i'll never leave you. better?"
"yeeeee can you get a bit closer"
"everything for you, mama"
"why don't you lie here with me"
"baby i can't."
"do it please" you look at him as if you're about to cry—michael can't say no to you when you're in this state. carefully he lies by your side, and hugs you gently. he asks how you're feeling and you don't answer. your eyes are closed again.
you swoon—how can you be so cute. you unconsciously get closer to him, and nestle into his firm chest. michael is controlling himself not to hug you even tighter.
Synopsis: An achieved tape of Michael and you being interviewed for the first time after your wedding and honeymoon. Reader is not media trained and is a bit naive.
Pairing: Dangerous!Michael Jackson x Black fem!reader
Word Count: 1k
Warnings: Language, age gap.
Interviewer: So we’re gonna start off with a few questions about your honeymoon and then go from there. Is that okay?
Michael: Yeah, sure. Can I see the list of questions you have for us?
Interviewer: Uh, sure, yes. The producer has them, but you’re more than welcome to decline to answer any questions if you’d prefer.
You: How long will this take? I have dinner plans with your mom and sisters tonight. I don’t want to be late.
Rustling over the microphone as you shift closer to Michael. A soft smooch carries through, possibly Michael kissing your cheek.
Interviewer: Not too long, Mrs Jackson, we won’t be long.
Audio cuts to you humming ‘Human Nature’ as the interviewer introduces himself, along with the segment. This has been redone a few times; your humming is too loud for the introduction.
Interviewer: I’m Steven Knight, and I’m here today with the newly married couple, Mr and Mrs Jackson. How are you both doing today?
Michael: We’re doing great, thank you.
You: Yeah, we’re good.
Interviewer: And marriage? I saw a few tapes from your honeymoon. It appears you two had a blast in the Bahamas.
Michael hums in response, and you giggle at the memory.
You: We spent all day by the pool or the beach. The piña coladas are amazing! I was tipsy for most of the honeymoon!
Michael: Cut that part out.
Another cut in the audio, the interviewer clears his throat.
Interviewer: The Bahamas were your destination of choice. Is there a specific reason why you chose that spot?
Michael: My wife and I wanted somewhere warm and quiet.
You: It was also a fantastic option for us because of its proximity to the states. We got married a few weeks before Mike’s Dangerous tour, so it was easier to book a short trip.
Interviewer: Ah, yes, speaking of the tour, how has it been so far, Michael? Has your wife been to any shows yet?
Michael: It’s been wonderful. The fans are beautiful, and the shows have been exciting so far. My wife has yet to see me live. She’s too busy making Neverland more homely for us both.
You giggle, possibly resting your cheek on his shoulder.
You: Yes, the main home feels more like a bachelor pad. I’m working on renovations with the interior designer.
Michael chuckles, fixing your mic placement.
Interviewer: Any plans for the house in particular?
You: Yes! I want to make it more, umm… a farm-style home. It looks great, but it’s missing the feminine touch.
Interviewer: On other matters…the media has been commenting on your apparent age gap. Ten years, yes? Do you have a response to that?
You: Well, it’s not like we met when I was a minor. I was around 22, and he was 32, yes. I’m 25 now and know what I want — who I want, and I want Michael.
Michael: The press wants anything to make me look evil. I never rushed her into anything. She ran things between us for the most part.
You giggle again, snorting as you shift in your seat.
Interviewer: I see. Is there something in particular that you love about Michael?
You: Oh, yes! He’s such a fun man to be around! There’s never a day when I’m bored around him.
Interviewer: Could you elaborate on that?
You: Of course! Well, as you know, Neverland has an entire carnival just a few miles up. Michael lets me turn it on whenever I want. We also play quite a lot of video games, sometimes all night!
Michael clears his throat, sipping from his water bottle.
Interviewer: Ah, so he spoils you? A girl’s biggest dreams. I read a few tabloids about you spending large sums of your husband’s money on clothes and jewellery.
Michael: Money’s not a problem.
You: I don’t spend too much, but—
Michael: Cut that out, too.
A beat of silence
Producer: Which part, Michael?
Michael: The entire part about her shopping habits. I’m not allowing my wife to be perceived as a gold digger.
Producer: Yes, sir. We’ll cut that out.
You: I don’t think I’m ready for interviews yet, Mike.
Michael: You gotta learn, honey. They’ll cut out whatever I tell ‘em to, so don’t worry about sounding perfect.
A cut in the tape
Interviewer: Do you two ever feel like your marriage is under a microscope? How do you manage that?
You: Yes. I feel that quite a bit. I married the most influential man in the world. It’s a lot of pressure, but I manage it by staying away from the press.
Michael: Can I see that question paper again? I’m not liking where this is going.
A sheet of paper flaps between you both, but the interviewer continues.
Interviewer: Your critics say every appearance you’ve made with your wife feels staged. Is anything in your life spontaneous anymore?
You gasp
You: We stage nothing!
Michael: Stop.
Interviewer: Mrs Jackson, are you afraid that the public fascination could eventually turn against your husband?
You: W-what? No! They love him. He’s a good man.
Michael: Stop asking questions.
Interviewer: Michael, are you genuinely misunderstood, or simply unwilling to explain yourself clearly?
You: M-Mike?—
Michael: I said, stop the interview!
Michael rips off his microphone, but you keep yours on. The tape keeps on rolling.
Michael: I’m a very busy man. I allowed you into my home for an interview, packed in between my rehearsals and shows, and you chose to disrespect my wife and me.
Producer: Mr Jackson, I apologise. None of those questions was written on the paper. What has gotten into you, Steven?
Interviewer: The world deserves to know these things. Excuse me for wanting the truth out.
You: The truth? You’re here for a juicy tabloid hit! There’s no truth in what you’re asking, jackass! Get out! And leave the damn tape here while you’re at it!
Shuffling noises as the producer begins packing up. He’s still apologising to you both.
Michael: You heard the woman. Get the hell out. I’ll be blacklisting Mr Knight from now onward. Feel free to reschedule a proper interview with us.
A long pause of shuffling and apologies. The producer and interviewer leave.
You: I can’t believe that man. What the hell is wrong with him?
Michael: I’m sorry about that, honey. That was fucked up.
You: Damn straight it was fucked up. I’m so mad right now I should shoot that bitch up—wait, is that still recording?
After a difficult childhood in foster care, she’s built a life grounded in independence, not trust.
Meeting Michael changes that.
Their relationship begins quietly, but as it deepens, so do her fears of being left behind. When an unexpected pregnancy, media attention, and her past collide, she must learn to accept a kind of love she’s never known before.
𝓐fter the tragic Pepsi incident, Michael was against returning to Hayvenhurst or isolating himself in a hotel room. Fortunately for him, he was more than welcome to stay at your place.
Your son was a child prodigy in the making. His career began in commercials— such as Campbell’s soup and Burger King. Emmanuel L/n became an household name after staring was Webster in sitcom Webster. You were familiar with stardom— doing some background work or starring in a few commercials when you were a girl.
In the flatlands of LA you and your son, Manny you called him, resided in your one story, Tudor revival style home. It was a cozy place with family portraits strewn wood paneled walls, a sunken living room, carpet floors, plants, colorful tiles and warm lighting. You kept your lawn freshly mowed while you rid your garden of any weeds and pests.
You and Manny prepared the spare bedroom for Michael with attentive care— Manny on his tippy toes dusting the shelves, you spraying down the bathroom, washing the bedsheets with that new fabric softener you purchased, and vacuuming the floor. You cracked open the window for fresh air and he even lit a candle. You were pulsing with nerves— you wanted Michael to feel comfortable.
And maybe because Michael freaking Jackson is staying in your house! You’ve been following his career ever since his J5 days and have been a fan since. Your twelve year old self is currently giggling and kicking her feet. But of course, you promised not to fan out.
In the first weeks of Michael’s arrival, he was mostly quiet, but appreciative.
“You have such a beautiful home,” he said with his soft cadence, big eyes taking in the new environment.
“Thank you so much,” you clasped your hands together to calm your nerves, “I’ll show you to your room then give you a tour, yeah?”
He smiled and bit the inside of his cheek, “that sounds perfect.”
Even during dinner, he’d nod and mumble a quiet: “dinner was delicious, thank you. Do you need help with dishes?”
You’d shake your head as you gathered everyones’ plates, “there’s no need— I’d rather have you get some rest.”
He was radiating with shy energy, but it didn’t stop him from giving thanks or softening whenever your son was around. Manny was star struck that Michael Jackson was staying at his house, buzzing around him and never leaving his side. You’d apologize and had to peel your son away so Michael could “get some rest” but he made it clear that he enjoyed Manny’s presence (anyone’s really) and was more than happy to have him around.
You spent the first couple of weeks bringing him trays of food when he was bedridden, making sure he took his medication, checking his bandages and adjusting the temperature in the room. Michael felt so spoiled— having this pretty lady trip over her own feet for the sake of his comfort.
Michael loved sitting in your backyard. Not only because of the butterflies that seemed to flutter whenever you stepped outside, or how the air seemed sweeter because of those pretty flowers you planted. But sitting next to you on that swing sofa, watching Manny catching a butterfly with that toolkit Michael got him at the zoo. At first, you always kept a respectful distance, but the afternoons were chilly, and Michael’s warmth drew you in. And if Michael was feeling extra brave, his arm would rest on the back of the sofa, brushing against your upper back. He was so greedy.
He knew he was falling for you in the way his heart skipped a beat whenever he walked into the kitchen to see you cooking breakfast, or the way you laughed as Manny put gem stickers on your face and calling you a disco ball, or the way Michael’s touch lingered when he squeezed past you or placing a hand on your shoulder “for comfort” when you’d come into his room to talk about your day.
And you felt dammed for feeling the same. It was undeniable the way warmth spread through your body when Michael’s skin would brush yours as you washed dishes, or the way the three of you bundled on the couch— Manny in the middle— for a movie night. As much as you loved your son, it was nice breather to have him away for the weekend.
And it was a perfect opportunity to spend more time with Michael. You felt too grown to call it a crush, but liking Michael felt like you were a teenager again. You loved catching those sparkly auburn eyes across the room, leaving you two giggling and looking away, and spending the afternoons with wine and orange juice in a champagne flute on the swing sofa.
He felt so human being with you. He felt heard and comfortable. He felt like a father, like a husband.
You can recall a random Tuesday when you came home to the sound of Billie Jean pulsing through the walls. When you emerged into the living the sight truly warmed your heart.
“It takes some practice,” Michael said, glancing down to Manny, “shift that weight like I told you. And slide on that heel— like this.”
Manny looked at Michael like he hung the stars as he performed a flawless moonwalk against your hardwood floor. The night ended with a cam recorder over your shoulder, laughing as Manny and Michael spun across the floor to the music.
Your son was undoubtedly bright, but he burned brighter when he was around Michael. Ever since Michael came about, Manny has been smiling harder and laughing louder. You loved the way he felt so comfortable around Michael, sharing his comics, babbling about his favorite films and shared experiences even in the entertainment industry.
You and were son weren’t lonely at home, you had each other, but having that extra presence at the dinner table, engaging in conversation and giving his compliments to the chef, felt like you had a whole family. You can tell Manny felt it too.
Michael treated Manny as his own. You remember when the boys came back from a trip to the Los Angeles Zoo. The trunk was loaded with a bunch of stuff neither of them truly needed, like stuffed animals, books, candy, and souvenirs like animal themed pencils, notebooks, toys, and all that jazz.
One night when Michael was about to depart to his room, Manny ran up to him and hugged his legs. “Good night, Michael,” he gave the man a toothy grin. Michael returned a gentle smile and he picked him out, giving him a light squeeze before setting him down. “Night Manny,” his eyes flickered to yours, “get a good’s night rest.”
“Sleep well Michael,” you cupped a hand over your son’s head, “if you need anything, just speak into the intercom. I’ll be up.”
His eyes never left yours as he nodded, “Goodnight.”
Another sight made your head ache is when you went to check on Michael one afternoon. Cartoons and gleeful giggles bubbled from his room all day, and from your spot on the couch you saw Manny across the hall bring more and more comic books and toys from his room. When the laughter subsided, you decided to pop your head in, and you nearly cooed. The two were bundled up on the woven egg chair, a fluffy blanket draped over them as open Peter Pan was splayed across Michael’s lap. Manny, who had his stuffed lion tucked beneath his arm, was fast asleep on Michaels shoulder.
“Hello,” Michel greeted softly, looking up at you with those pretty eyes.
“Hey,” your tone mirrored his own, sitting on the edge of the bed, “you read Peter Pan for him? That’s— that’s so sweet of you.”
“He was stuck to my side like glue. I could tell he was getting a little sleepy,” Michael said fondly as he looked to the sleeping boy beside him, “I promised him I’d teach him a few dance moves tomorrow.”
Was this man a godsend? Why is he so beautiful? Why does he have to be so perfect? Can I marry him?— You cleared your throat before your mind could cross any sort of dangerous territory. “Well, I’ll get him off your hands and put him to bed,” you slid off the bed, standing in front of them. Michael enjoyed the view.
“Sleep well, little prince,” Michael whispered sweetly before you scooped your baby boy in your arms, his smaller ones immediately wrapping around your neck.
The lights in the room dimmed when his favorite pair left. A sorrowful sigh escaped his lungs and what replaced it was loneliness.
Across the hall you tucked your son into bed, thumb stroking his cheek. You leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead before pausing when Manny asked: “Can Michael be my dad?”
You pulled back and blinked. “What?
“Micahel. Can you marry him so you can my dad?”
Marry? Marry Michael? Marry Michael Jackson? You would’ve brushed it off if he was maybe five years younger, but even age can’t shake the fact that your son yearned for that extra parental figure in his life. Especially that “figure” being Michael, who has been nothing but good to him for the past couple of weeks.
“Uhm—“ a huff of nervous laughter escaped from you, “You’re tired, okay? Goodnight. I love you,” you kissed his forehead one last night, silencing him from any other ridiculous ramble.
Pft, marry Michael Jackson…..
Michael nearly slipped down the hallway as he scurried back to his room. He only stepped out for a glass of orange juice, but gravitated to the sound of your voice and the words “Michael” and “dad” and even “marry” being in the same sentence.
Michael never stopped dreaming of being a father one day. Living in a big house with his pretty wife and his eighteen kids.
He closed the door behind him with a soft click! before biting down onto his fist and silently screaming. What he wouldn’t give to be your husband and a father to Manny.
To say it stroked his ego was an understatement.
“Hmph, I’d be a great father…” he whispered to his reflection, striking a pose.
He struck another that was supposed to make him appear “manlier.”
“Son,” he deepened his voice, tilting his chin upwards and clamping a hand on his hip and pointing a finger, “go to your room this instant— no I wouldn’t say that…”
He tapped his chin before tuning to his right, kneeling down and speaking in his own voice this time, “I’m so proud of you son, good job. Let’s go get some ice cream,” his hand wafted the air, like he was patting his imaginary future child’s or Mannys’ head. He rose to his feet with a shit eating grin, “yeah, that’s more like it.”
And because he was feeling extra special, he turned again, going one knee and opening his imaginary, velvet lined box with the most prettiest rock inside. “Will you marry me, (Name) ?”
After that? Michael slept like a damn baby.
The three of you were exhausted after spending the entire day at Disney.
The car ride home was peaceful. Bill drove smoothly across the freeway. A quiet, instrumental jazz filled the space, bleeding towards the back seat where Manny was tucked between you and Michael. Manny was wrapped in his new Mickey Mouse jacket Michael bought him, the hood having those two signature, black circular ears stitched on the top. Michael wore his own red Mickey sweatshirt with his collared polo beneath. You sported a Minnie one yourself— which Michael was more than happy to purchase for you.
The way Michael’s arm snaked around your shoulders was a complete mystery, but shared the warmth between you and Manny.
The past couple of weeks caught up to you, and your appreciation and adoration for Michael grew fonder. Your words escaped you before you could second guess yourself, “Michael.”
He turned to you, like he was waiting for you to call his name.
The way the city lights sparkled in those big eyes and accentuated the curves on his face, nearly made your heart stop. You could tell Michael felt the same, like he was more focused on your features rather than what you were actually going to say. “Hi,” he whispered.
For a second you ogled at the stars swimming in his eyes, before blinking the thought away. “Thank you again. You have been incredible to Manny and I’d be an idiot not to notice how much Manny loves you and how you love him— I mean you’re so patient and kind and compassionate, and it’s just so refreshing to have that extra hand, that extra presence in the house—“
His cheeks felt so warm, “You’re flatterin’ me—“
You reached out instinctively grabbed his hand on your shoulder, “I’m being so serious Michael. You’ll make a great father, someday.”
To our children, he wanted to say. Instead, his fingers intertwined with yours, “Thank you, I’m really striving towards that. Manny is so smart, so bright and full of wonder. He’s such a sweet boy and knows how to light up a room.” He looked down to your fingers, suspended in the air like time itself slowed to prolong this moment, “and you’re an incredible mother. I see where he gets it from.”
With a flushed thank you and turn of your head, Michael teasingly tilt his head to catch your wandering eyes. Manny shifted between you both, letting out a contented sigh.
Michael loved his little family.
The three of you were headed to some high profile, industry event. Despite Michael wanting to protect you from such a public eye though simultaneously he felt silly since he’s not your man, Manny insisted that you came. But of course, you planned to split up, Manny and Michael embracing their friendship while you stood in the limelight. Plus, you had a few friends in the attending, so you had company.
Your heels clicked on the hardwood floor as you emerged from the hallway like it was your runway. God, you looked like a dream. Michael immediately straightened up before standing entirely. He gulped as he eyed your dress, fitting you like a second skin with that color that he loved on you. You didn’t notice (or did you) and only checked yourself in the frames mirror, touching up your updo and fixing your lashes with your finger.
Manny tugged on his sleeve leaned in to whisper to Michael who leaned down to his level, “isn’t my momma so pretty?”
“Yeah…” Michael licked his lips, eyes scaling your figure through the tint of his shades, “pretty mama…”
a/n i haven’t posted fics lately so i wanted to get something out😅😅 hope i like i prolly wont b publishing for a while cus im so busy
+++ not proofread so if sum don’t make sense tell me 🙏🏽🙏🏽
note: i could never handle being fwb with michael. like nooo mooore big daddy !! anyways sorry it took me so long to drop sumn new..been busy giving my acct a bbl.
"M-Michael!" you yelled out, your voice fracturing into the heavy, heated air of your bedroom.
Hearing you scream his name was his absolute favorite sound, and it instantly made him work even harder, his hips driving into yours with a frantic, desperate rhythm because he knew that was exactly what would get you there. His large hand was tangled fiercely into your messy curls, while his other hand was gently but firmly wrapped around your neck, anchoring your body entirely to his. Sweat glistened over your beautiful brown skin, making you look like you’d been sun-kissed by God Himself as the explosive wave of pleasure finally crashed over you both.
You came down breathless, tangling in the messy sheets. For a few fleeting minutes, you just lay there together, desperately catching your breath in his heavy, safe embrace. But then, you glanced at the clock on the nightstand, and sheer panic set in.
You pushed gently against his chest, breaking the embrace, and immediately scrambled out of the bed. You grabbed your clothes from the floor, frantically rushing to pull your outfit together. "I'm going to be late," you muttered, aggressively fixing your hair. "I have to rush and meet a potential client to show that new property downtown."
Michael sat up slowly, the sweet, post-intimacy haze evaporating into a cold, thick tension. The longer this friends-with-benefits arrangement had progressed, the more intensely jealous both of you had become, and he absolutely hated seeing you with anyone else.
"A client?" he questioned, his jaw clenching tightly as his dark eyes critically tracked your every movement across the room. "Are you sure it's just a client, or is this a date? You're rushing out of my bed awfully fast just to go play realtor."
You stopped dead in your tracks, staring at him in utter disbelief. "Are you seriously doing this right now?" you shot back, frustration boiling over. "It is my job, Michael! Unlike you, I'm not actually out going on dates with other people!" You grabbed your purse and stormed out, leaving a heavy, unresolved tension suffocating the bedroom.
A few days passed without a single word between you two.
Then, you saw the tabloid photos online—Michael had been spotted out at a restaurant on a date with someone else. The jealousy completely burned a hole through your chest. Furious, you grabbed your phone and immediately dialed his number.
He picked up on the second ring, answering with that same sweet, soft tone he always used for you. "Hello, beautiful."
"Mm mm, miss me with that 'hello beautiful' bullshit!" you cussed into the receiver, completely enraged. "You did all that questioning when I had to meet a client yet, here you are out parading around on a date?! You are out here making me look fucking stupid, Michael!"
Instead of getting defensive, Michael let out a low, cheeky chuckle on the other end of the line. "Why don't you come over here so I can fix that attitude of yours?"
His cocky response instantly set you off. "Don’t play with me right now!" you practically screamed. "Lately I gotta watch what I say 'cause you take things personal nowadays, but you think you can just—"
"I'm joking, baby, I'm joking! Relax," he quickly backpedaled, his tone softening as he realized he had pushed too far. "I promise you, the date wasn't anything serious. We both thought it was cool to cross the line, and I was convinced it would be alright, but you're making this so hard."
"Because nothing's the same anymore!" you yelled, hot tears blurring your vision. "We used to laugh and joke, we used to tell each other all our secrets! Honestly, I just want my friend back!" You hung up the phone before he could respond, sinking onto your couch.
Another few agonizing days of radio silence passed.
Then, late at night, there was a soft knock on your door. You opened it to find Michael standing in the shadows of your porch.
"I was in the area," he murmured, his dark eyes looking down at you.
You actually let out a dry, breathy laugh, leaning against the doorframe. "Michael, you live almost an hour away," you scoffed. "You were definitely not 'in the area.'"
Despite the obvious lie, you stepped aside and let him in, locking the door behind him. You didn't want to argue anymore. You just wanted to feel him. You immediately wrapped your arms around his neck, pressing your lips hungrily against his and trying to pull him straight into what you usually did when he came over late at night.
At first, Michael completely fed into your advances. He had come here with a speech prepared, but the second your soft lips crashed against his, his resolve instantly shattered. You were entirely irresistible to him; he had never been able to tell you no. You backed him aggressively against the heavy front door, jumping up so your legs could wrap tightly around his waist as he instinctively caught your thighs.
But the moment you ground your hips down against his, the agonizing reality of his pain crashed through the intoxicating haze.
He came violently back to his senses. This wasn't enough anymore. He suddenly broke the kiss, gasping for air. His large hands moved from your thighs to firmly grip your wrists, gently but firmly pulling your arms away.
"Stop," he commanded softly, setting you down on your feet and taking a definitive step back. He looked completely exhausted, stripping away all his pride. "I can't handle this arrangement anymore. My mind's gone crazy, I can't leave you alone."
He stepped directly into your space, his tall frame towering over you. "I want you to be with me officially. This friends with benefits thing is done. I'm giving you an ultimatum: we are either together for real, or we stop this completely. I want you, or I want nothing."
"Michael, no—"
"I mean it," he interrupted, his voice a raw, gravelly vibration. "I went out the other night. The other girls... they are okay. But they're not you. I keep searching for you in every single one of them, and I can't find it. Because they aren't you."
Your heart hammered violently against your ribs, terrified of the risk. "How can you be sure things won't end up bad?" you pleaded, pushing back against his ultimatum. "If we do this for real and we fail, I'd hate to walk away from you as if this never existed! I’m not ready to lose my best friend!"
"I don't want to hear that!" he demanded, refusing to entertain your doubts. But right now, with his chest heaving inches from yours and his masculine scent wrapping around you, you couldn't process the heavy ultimatum. Your body was aching for him.
"Michael, please," you begged, your hands sliding out of his firm grip to desperately grab the waistband of his trousers, pulling his hips closer. "I promise we’ll talk about this. I promise we’ll figure it out as soon as we're done. But please... just not right now. I need you right now."
He stared down at your beautiful, sun-kissed skin, his jaw clenching tightly. He had come here entirely prepared to put his foot down, but the absolute truth was, he could never tell you no.
"Damn it," he cursed in a low, defeated, gravelly vibration, completely surrendering as his lips crashed fiercely back onto yours.
Because he had given in, the encounter wasn't the slow, sweet lovemaking you were used to. It was much rougher, fueled entirely by his built-up frustration, the jealousy of your phone call, and the agonizing days of silence. His large hands gripped your waist tight enough to bruise as he backed you forcefully against the heavy wood of the front door again. He didn't even bother making it to the bedroom. One of his hands tangled fiercely into your messy curls, tilting your head back, while the other gripped your hip as he drove into you with a frantic, punishing rhythm.
He was pouring every ounce of his pent-up anger and deep, unyielding passion into the way he touched you. He was usually so controlled, but because it had been quite a while since you had been together like this, he was entirely at your mercy. The intense emotional friction pushed him over the edge incredibly fast.
"I can't get enough of you," he groaned roughly into your neck, his voice breaking as he hit his limit much faster than usual. His hips drove into yours with a final, desperate urgency, a heavy shudder ripping through his tall frame as the explosive wave of pleasure crashed over him, pulling you right over the breathless edge with him.
You both came down panting, his broad chest heaving erratically against yours as he kept you pinned flush against the door. The heat between you slowly began to settle into a heavy, suffocating reality.
As his breathing steadied, he didn't put an inch of space between you. Instead, he rested his forehead heavily against yours, his thumbs sweeping firmly across your collarbones. He hadn't forgotten your promise.
"Now talk," he breathed, his voice a rough whisper against your lips as he brought the ultimatum right back to the surface. He looked deep into your eyes, terrified but entirely resolute. "Are you mine, or am I walking out that door?"
since you did the text with niece!reader, can i ask you for a similar one but with daughter!reader? pleaseeee
WISDOM TEETH REMOVAL — DAD!MICHAEL JACKSON
featuring: dad!michael x daughter!reader
synopsis: reader finds out her dad set up an appointment for her wisdom teeth to be removed and she's not happy about it. reader is bigi's twin sister.
warnings: reader getting creative with nicknames. there will be a part two with an actual fic for this one.
Under the code name Margot, you have been assigned by TimeLine Corporation to prevent the death of global icon Michael Jackson. The mission has been attempted by 20 agents prior and succeeded by 0. The future of the commonwealth thanks you for your service.
You’re no one. He’s the world. And his life is in your hands, no matter how many times it takes to save him—no matter how impossible it seems.
In which you have devoted your life to ensuring his.
cont. time travel/multiverse AU , character study, mystery , angst , hurt/comfort , fluff , death , trauma , hollywood corruption , substance abuse , violence , physical + verbal abuse , racism + misogyny , fem!reader , mental health , mature themes and sexual content (18+) , existentialism , multiverse/realities , confusing time laws , prob inaccurate science
AS A TIMELINE AGENT, PLEASE PROVIDE ALL OF YOUR FINDINGS IN THE FOLLOWING FILES:
📁 : mission report
📁 #1 : wanna be startin' somethin'
📁 #2 : the way you make me feel
📁 #3 : whatever happens
📁 #4 : upside down
𓏲 ࣪ ˖ type : one-shot (requested) fluff. michael x reader. tags : offthewall!michael. reader is bill’s daugther and know the jacksons. friends to lovers. mike is so cute and so jealous. 𓏲◞ michael doesn’t seems to enjoy the way his brothers flirt with you, especially when he’s to one who want to be yours…
it started with the long nights at the studio and the quiet afternoons at the jackson estate. being the daughter of someone as loyal as bill meant your life was naturally woven into theirs. while your father was busy ensuring the family’s safety and logistics, you were usually tucked away in a corner of the living room with a book, or more often than not, trailing behind michael.
you two had been inseparable since the move to la. you were the one person who didn’t want anything from him other than his company, and for michael, that was everything. you knew him before the world truly claimed him—before the glitter of the off the wall era really took flight. to you, he was just mike: the boy who loved magic tricks, old movies, and feeding the deer on the property.
the dynamic was always lively, to say the least. living—or at least spending most of your waking hours—around five brothers meant there was never a dull moment. but lately, the air felt different.
jermaine would always find a reason to lean against the doorframe when you walked by, flashing a slow, charming smile that lingered just a bit too long. jackie started making jokes about how "stunning" you were becoming, playfully nudging you whenever you sat down for dinner. marlon was constantly "accidentally" brushing his shoulder against yours or finding excuses to hold your hand while showing you a new dance step.
you, being as oblivious as you were loyal, just brushed it off as them being their usual, boisterous selves. they were like family, right?
michael saw it all. he watched from the shadows of the hallway, his fingers nervously drumming against his thigh. he knew his brothers' "tactics" better than anyone, and seeing them turn that charm on you made his chest tighten in a way he couldn't quite explain yet.
you were sitting on the edge of the fountain out front, waiting for your father to finish up a meeting, when michael finally stepped out. he didn't look like a global superstar in his simple corduroy trousers and a soft sweater, but his eyes held a weight you hadn't seen before.
"they're doing it again, you know," he murmured, sitting down beside you, his voice barely a whisper above the sound of the splashing water.
"doing what, mike?" you asked, tilting your head.
he let out a soft, frustrated huff, looking at his shoes. "flirting with you. my brothers. they think they're being subtle, but they're not. and it's driving me crazy because they don't know you like i do."
you blinked, looking from michael back toward the house where the light was spilling out from the kitchen windows. you could see the shadows of his brothers moving around inside, laughing and jostling each other.
"mike, you’re overthinking it," you said softly, reaching out to pat his knee. "they’re just being playful. you know how they are—always joking, always trying to get a reaction. they don't mean anything by it. i'm just bill's daughter to them, the girl who’s always been around."
michael didn't look convinced. he shifted closer to you on the edge of the stone fountain, the sound of the water filling the silence between you. "it’s not just jokes, and you know it. when jermaine 'happens' to be in the hallway every time you leave the room, or when marlon tries to teach you those dance moves just so he can hold your waist... that’s not just being a family friend."
you laughed, a light sound that usually made him smile, but his expression stayed serious. "well, even if they are being a little extra lately, it doesn't matter. i don't see them that way at all. it’s actually kind of funny that you’re the one getting worked up about it. i’m fine, really. i can handle a few cheesy lines from jackie."
"i just don't like it," he muttered, his voice sounding small. he picked at a loose thread on his sweater, refusing to meet your eyes. "it feels different now. everything is changing so fast. the music, the move to la, the way people look at us... i just wanted one thing to stay the same. i wanted us to stay the same."
you tilted your head, trying to catch his gaze. "nothing is changing between us, mike. i'm still me, and you're still the only one i actually want to spend my afternoons with. who cares if your brothers are being flirty? they’ll get bored and move on to the next girl who actually falls for it."
michael finally looked up, his big brown eyes searching yours. he looked like he wanted to say something else—something much heavier—but he held it back. he just bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"i hope you're right," he whispered, though the way he was looking at you made it clear he didn't think his brothers were the only ones whose feelings were shifting. "just... be careful. they can be pretty persistent when they want something."
"i'll be fine, bodyguard jr.," you joked, trying to lighten the mood. "now come on, your dad is going to wonder where you disappeared to, and my father is probably looking for me to head home."
as you stood up to leave, you didn't notice the way michael lingered for a second, watching you walk away with a look of quiet longing that had absolutely nothing to do with being "just friends."
the next few days at the estate only made things more tense. every time you walked into a room, it felt like a spotlight followed you, and not the kind michael was used to.
you were in the kitchen helping make some tea when jermaine walked in, leaning against the counter much closer than necessary. "you know," he started, his voice smooth like silk, "i was thinking of heading out to that new club later this week. a girl like you shouldn't be stuck in this house all the time. you need to see the city lights."
you gave him a polite smile, moving to the other side of the island to grab some sugar. "thanks, jermaine, but you know i usually stay back with my dad or hang out with mike. i’m not really a club person."
"maybe you just haven't gone with the right person yet," he countered, flashing that practiced grin.
from the doorway, you heard a sharp throat-clear. michael was standing there, his arms crossed over his chest, looking uncharacteristically annoyed. "don't you have a rehearsal to get to, jermaine?"
jermaine just laughed, putting his hands up in mock surrender before strolling out, throwing you one last wink. as soon as he was gone, michael stepped into the kitchen, his energy practically buzzing with frustration.
"see?" he said, his voice low. "that wasn't 'just being friendly.' he’s trying to take you out."
"he was just being nice, mike! he thinks i'm bored," you argued softly, stirring the tea. "why are you so on edge lately? you're usually the calmest person i know."
michael grabbed a glass but didn't fill it with anything. he just held it, his knuckles turning slightly white. "because it’s everywhere. even marlon was asking me yesterday if i thought you had a boyfriend back in gary. they’re circling you like you’re... like you’re something they can just win."
you sighed, setting the spoon down and stepping closer to him. "hey. look at me. i’m not a prize, and i’m not interested. i’ve told you a hundred times, i’m here for my work and for our friendship. why does it bother you so much if they’re being silly?"
he looked down at you, the golden kitchen light catching the curls falling over his forehead. he looked like he wanted to scream it—to tell you exactly why it hurt to see them look at you—but he just tightened his jaw.
"it just bothers me because you deserve better than their games," he managed to say, though his eyes were saying something completely different. "i just want you to be respected."
"i am respected," you insisted, giving his arm a playful squeeze. "now stop being so moody. we’re supposed to listen to those new demos tonight, remember? just you and me. no brothers allowed."
a tiny, reluctant smile finally broke across his face, but it didn't reach his eyes. "just us," he repeated, the words sounding like a promise he was desperately trying to keep to himself. "i like the sound of that."
later that evening, the house had finally quieted down. the brothers had drifted off to different parts of the estate or gone out, leaving the recording room at the back of the house bathed in a dim, blueish light. the air smelled like expensive leather and the faint scent of the incense michael liked to burn when he was feeling creative.
michael was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the sofa with his eyes closed, listening to the raw track of a new song. you were perched right next to him, your shoulder brushing his every time you leaned in to check the lyrics written in his messy scrawl on the notepad between you.
"this part," you whispered, pointing to a line about dancing until the morning light. "it’s magic, mike. people are going to lose their minds when they hear this."
he opened his eyes and looked at you, a genuine, soft smile finally gracing his lips. for a moment, the tension from the kitchen was gone. "you really think so? i want it to feel like... like an escape. like nothing else in the world matters except the rhythm."
"it does," you assured him. "i can feel it."
the moment was perfect until the door swung open, and jackie walked in, still wearing his sunglasses even though it was night. "there she is," he joked, ignoring michael entirely and coming to sit on the other side of you. "i was wondering where you’d disappeared to. you’ve been hiding in here all night."
"we’re working, jackie," michael said, his voice clipped and cold.
jackie just chuckled, reaching over and playfully ruffling your hair. "working hard or hardly working? you know, i’m going for a drive tomorrow morning. thought you might want to come along, see the coast. get some fresh air away from mr. serious over here."
you felt michael stiffen beside you. his entire body went rigid. you quickly tried to smooth things over, giving jackie a small, awkward smile. "that’s sweet, jackie, but i promised mike i'd help him organize these tapes tomorrow. maybe another time?"
jackie shrugged, unfazed. "suit yourself. but the offer stands. you’re way too pretty to spend all your time in a dark room with dusty tapes." he leaned in close, his voice dropping to a theatrical stage whisper. "don't let him bore you to death, okay?"
once jackie finally left, the silence in the room felt heavy. michael didn't move. he just stared at the tape deck, his chest heaving slightly.
"mike?" you said softly, reaching out to touch his hand.
he pulled his hand away quickly, standing up and crossing the room to the window. "i can't do this," he muttered, his back to you. "i can't just sit here and watch them do it over and over again."
"he was just being jackie!" you stood up, feeling frustrated now. "why are you taking it so personally? i said no! i always say no. doesn't that tell you something?"
michael turned around, his face a mask of hurt and hidden anger. "no, it doesn't tell me enough! it tells me you’re nice and you’re loyal, but it doesn't stop them from trying. and it doesn't stop me from..." he choked off the words, shaking his head.
"from what?" you stepped closer, searching his face. "from what, michael?"
he looked like he was vibrating with the effort of holding it in. "from wishing i was the only one who had the right to be in your space. they treat it like a game, but for me... it’s not a game. it’s never been a game."
he looked away, his jaw tight. "forget it. let's just finish the demo."
the rest of the session was quiet—too quiet. michael kept his head down, focusing intensely on the soundboard, his fingers moving over the sliders with a precision that felt almost robotic. you sat back on the sofa, watching him, but for the first time in years, you weren't actually listening to the music.
you were replaying his words in your head. for me... it’s not a game. it’s never been a game.
was he just being protective? or was it something deeper? you started thinking back over the last few months. the way he’d always save the seat next to him for you. the way he’d remember the most random details about your childhood in gary. the way he looked at you when he thought you weren't looking—not with the flashy, confident smirk jermaine gave you, but with a sort of soft, aching vulnerability.
your heart skipped a beat, and you suddenly felt very warm in the air-conditioned room.
"mike?" you whispered, your voice cracking just a little.
"yeah?" he didn't turn around. he was adjusting a dial that didn't really need adjusting.
"do you... do you really think i don't see what's happening? with everyone?" you stood up and walked over to him, stopping just a few feet away. "i mean, i know i act like it’s nothing, but... are you saying you think i should be taking it seriously?"
he finally let his hands drop from the board. he turned slowly, his face half-hidden in the shadows of the studio. "i'm saying that i don't like sharing your time with people who don't value you the way i do. they see a beautiful girl. i see... i see my everything."
he froze as soon as the words left his mouth. his eyes went wide, and he looked like he wanted to pull the air back into his lungs. you felt the world shift on its axis. everything. he didn't say "my friend." he didn't say "my sister."
"michael..." you breathed, taking a step closer.
the confusion that had been clouding your brain for weeks was starting to lift, replaced by a sudden, sharp realization. the reason you hadn't cared about jermaine's flirting or jackie's invitations wasn't because you were oblivious. it was because none of it felt real. none of it felt like this. the heat radiating off michael, the way his breath hitched when you got closer—this was real.
you reached out, your hand trembling slightly, and brushed your fingers against his wrist. his skin was burning.
"is that why you've been so upset?" you asked, your voice barely audible over the hum of the equipment. "not because of them... but because of you?"
michael looked down at your hand on his wrist, then back up at your eyes. the wall he’d built up all evening was crumbling. he didn't pull away this time. instead, he turned his hand over, interlacing his fingers with yours, his grip tight and desperate.
"i’ve been trying so hard to be the 'good friend,'" he admitted, his voice trembling. "i didn't want to push you. i didn't want to be another jackson brother trying to move in on you. but watching them... it was killing me. because i’ve waited so long, and i was so scared that if i didn't speak up, one of them would eventually convince you."
you looked at your joined hands, then up at him, a small, realization-filled smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. "michael, you're so literal sometimes. you really thought i’d choose a club date with jermaine over a night in the studio with you?"
he let out a shaky, nervous laugh, his eyes never leaving yours. "i don't know. i’m not as smooth as they are. i just have my music... and i have you. and i really, really don't want to lose the second one."
the air in the room felt different now—thicker, sweeter. you realized you were leaning in, and he was too. the distance between you was disappearing, and for the first time, you weren't thinking about bill, or the brothers, or the off the wall release. you were just thinking about the boy who had been your best friend, and how much you wanted him to be so much more.
the silence in the studio was no longer heavy; it was warm, like a soft blanket wrapped around the both of you. you could hear the faint, rhythmic ticking of the tape reels spinning in the background, but everything else had faded away.
michael’s thumb traced small, nervous circles over the back of your hand. he looked down at your joined fingers, a shy smile finally tugging at his lips—the kind of smile he usually reserved for his most private moments.
"you're really serious?" he whispered, his voice sounding breathless. "about them not standing a chance? i mean, jermaine... he’s got that look, and jackie... he’s got the car, and the—"
"michael joseph jackson," you interrupted, stepping into his personal space until your chest was inches from his. you looked up at him, your heart doing a frantic dance of its own. "stop listing your brothers. they aren't you. they don't look at the stars the way you do, and they definitely don't make me feel like... like this."
"like what?" he asked, his voice dropping to a velvety hush. he leaned down just a fraction, his eyes flitting from your eyes to your lips and back again.
"like i'm the only person in the world who matters," you admitted, your own voice trembling now. "you’ve been looking out for me since the day we moved here. you’re the one i want to talk to at 3:00 am, and you’re the only one whose opinion i actually care about. it was always you, mike. i think i was just too scared to admit it because i didn't want to lose my best friend."
michael let out a long, shaky breath, as if he’d been holding it for years. "you could never lose me," he promised. "i'm stuck to you like glue. my brothers are going to be so annoyed when they find out."
you giggled, the tension finally breaking. "oh, they’re going to be unbearable. jermaine is going to try to give you 'advice' and marlon is going to tease us for the next ten years."
"let them," michael said, his confidence suddenly returning now that he knew where you stood. he reached up with his free hand, cupping your cheek with a tenderness that made your knees weak. his touch was light, but his gaze was intense. "let them talk. they can have the clubs and the cars. as long as i have this."
he didn't kiss you yet—it was michael, after all, and he lived for the quiet, soulful build-up—but he leaned forward until his forehead rested against yours. you could feel the warmth of his skin and the rapid beat of his heart through his sweater.
"just promise me one thing," he murmured, his eyes closing as he breathed in your scent.
"anything," you replied.
"don't tell bill yet," he joked, a hint of his old mischievous self peaking through. "i don't think your dad is ready to see me as anything other than the kid who follows you around."
you laughed softly, leaning into him, feeling more at home than you ever had in the giant mansion. "deal. but you’re going to have to be a better actor, mike. because the way you’re looking at me right now? the whole world is going to know."
he just hummed in response, pulling you into a proper hug, his arms locking around your waist as he pulled you tight against him. for the first time in weeks, the jealousy was gone, replaced by a quiet, steady glow that felt like the beginning of a whole new era.
ughhh i love when michael is a shy cutie patootie who is crazy in love and jealous 🥹 my bbg frr !! xoxo
