┊ ♡ ﹒ as told through bad to dangerous eras 𖹭
┊ ♡ ﹒ summary : what do you do when the man you built your entire life around disappears without so much as a goodbye for another woman? do you love him enough to stay? or do you respect yourself?
┊ ♡ ﹒ byi : power imbalance (mentor and apprentice), age gap (reader is 20 / michael is 29), slow burn, mutual pining, celebrity romance (reader is a popstar), hurt/no comfort, cheating, marriage, divorce, addiction & substance abuse, rehab, depression, michael is in a lot of pain from his accident (reader helps him wash his hair at some point), anxiety, panic attacks, codependency, emotional neglect, themes of loss, abandonment, media harassment, public scrutiny, character study, ”right person wrong time.” extremely heavy angst, smut, intercourse, creampie, pregnancy. third person pov. use of petnames. no y/n, reader is (name).
┊ ♡ ﹒ disclaimer : this work contains depictions of addiction, substance abuse, deteriorating mental health and discussions the 1993 allegations (fictionalized within an alternate universe narrative). this piece is not an accurate depiction of any real-life individuals. 28k word count.
The studio had long since settled into the comfortable quiet that often accompanied afternoons spent in Michael’s company. It wasn’t ever completely silent because there was always music somewhere at Westlake, but he did like to keep it dark in the room mostly. A distant melody leaking beneath a door, muffled sound of a playback from another room, occasional burst of laughter from a hallway before fading away. Yet neither seemed particularly aware of any of it as hours had a tendency to disappear whenever they occupied the same space, each of them retreated into their respective work while somehow remaining deeply attuned to the other’s presence.
There was just something about the space they shared that neither of them ever learned how to explain. It was unlike the awkward silence that settled between strangers with nothing left to say, or lovers too consumed by one another to speak. This felt beyond either of those things because somewhere beneath language itself, beneath the music, even the friendship, they had stumbled into a frequency only the two of them seemed capable of hearing. They rarely interrupted one another, but every so often one of them would glance across the room to simply bear witness to the other’s existence. It felt spiritual.. it felt strangely.. devotional. As though the simple act of creating in each other’s presence had become its own form of intimacy. They each protected the other’s solitude with the same care another person might protect a confession. There was an unspoken understanding that whatever was happening inside the other’s mind, deserved to arrive in this world undisturbed.
The thing was, truly knowing another person is a remarkably rare experience. Most relationships are built upon performance initially, a person will unconsciously arrange themselves into someone easier to understand, to admire and love. But there are extraordinarily rare occasions people who seem to step past all of that. People who see you and understand you before you have a chance to disguise it. And there are very few things in life more sacred than finding another soul who your own can finally share company with.
Michael and (Name) were just that.
She sat on the floor between two couches in the corner, surrounded by the clutter of an artist’s mind. Open notebooks, loose sheets of paper and pens scattered across the flooring. One notebook housed lyrics and the other contained.. literally everything else from fleeting observations, fragments of conversations and questions she found herself unable to stop thinking about. The thoughts that were too insignificant to piece together in the moment but had too much potential to ignore. Every so often she would pause, chewing thoughtfully on the end of her pen as she stared down at a page, scribbling another line with furrowed brows. Across the room Michael worked through notes of his own, occasionally adjusting something on the mixing console or replaying a section of music.
Neither of them spoke or even seemed inclined to.
This could go on for hours upon hours and it was maybe the most unusual aspect of their friendship:
How easy it was.
Because most people approached Michael Jackson with some level of a mental obstacle he couldn’t look past to see them, even if it wasn’t conscious. Some people became nervous, others became overeager.. but many spent entire conversations attempting to impress him.
But somehow she had skipped every single stage of this discomfort and awkwardness entirely.
Their first meeting months earlier had been brief, a polite little exchange at a charity event attended by dozens of entertainers and industry figures. Neither had anticipated seeing the other again, and yet something about that initial conversation had really stuck. A second meeting followed. Then another. Phone calls became commonplace. Invitations to studio sessions no longer required formal asking. Somewhere along the way, what should have remained a casual acquaintance turned into one of the closest friendships either possessed.
Michael often attributed it to recognition, she felt less like someone new and more like someone he’d forgotten he already knew. He had met plenty of people in his life, but very few made him feel this way in particular and it was intriguing—intoxicating, even.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen that kind of ambition before. The way she carried her lyric books almost everywhere she went. The way she dissected her own work with such a relentless scrutiny. The frustration that overtook her whenever an idea failed to match the version she had envisioned in her head. He recognized it because he had spent his entire life battling the same instincts. While others saw a young entertainer on the verge of stardom, Michael saw pieces of himself reflected back at him with this startling clarity. The perfectionism. The sensitivity.
The inability to leave “good enough” alone.
For (Name), the friendship had begun from an entirely different place. Admiration, certainly. How could it not? Michael Jackson had occupied such a permanent space within popular culture that separating the man from the legend often felt impossible. He felt like a deity. But what surprised her most was how quickly the legend disappeared once they were alone. The Michael she encountered in studios, hallways, and late night phone conversations bore little resemblance to the larger than life figure the public imagined. He was thoughtful. Curious. Shy. Nosey. And far funnier than anyone ever gave him credit for. He asked questions and genuinely listened to the answers. He remembered details from conversations months earlier. More importantly, he understood the strange loneliness that came with building a career at a young age in an industry that did more harm than good. Few people in the world could comprehend that reality and fewer still had survived it unscathed.
Which was probably why he felt so protective of her. It wasn’t that he didn’t think she was incapable of protecting herself, but.. he knew exactly how cruel the industry could be. The media, too. At twenty, she was still vulnerable in ways she didn’t even recognize yet, still young enough to believe talent and hard work would shield her from the uglier parts of success. Michael remembered being twenty himself. Bright eyed, eager and convinced that if he gave enough of himself, people would give something back. He wished someone with good intentions had been there to guide him through it all, someone who wanted nothing from him except to see him make it through in one piece.
Granted, their youth had looked nothing alike. Michael had never really been afforded the luxury of a childhood. By the time he was her age, he’d already spent years belonging to the public in one way or another. She meanwhile, had stories. Endless stories. Sleepovers and school dances and family vacations and embarrassing teenage crushes. Entire chapters of ordinary life that Michael found himself fascinated by.
That more than anything, surprised him. He wasn’t a naturally curious man when it came to other people in general. Most conversations with industry stars and such felt like a chore.. But he could sit and listen to her talk for hours, chin propped in his hand, completely engrossed as she recounted some insignificant memory from when she was twelve. To anyone else, the stories would have sounded so pointless and boring. But to Michael, they were so captivating. Hearing someone describe a childhood that had actually belonged to them felt almost miraculous. He never seemed to tire of it, always asking another question, always wanting another detail, as though he could piece together an entire world he had never gotten the chance to know himself.
He’d always be a dreamer, dreaming his life away.
The longer (Name) stared at the notebook in her lap, the more hopeless the page had become. What had started a few hours ago as a verse she was genuinely excited about had since become a shit show of crossed out lyrics, scribbled replacements, and arrows leading to ideas she wasn’t even sure she liked anymore. Entire sections had been rewritten only to end up exactly as they’d been before. Others had been abandoned halfway through, casualties of a train of thought she’d lost somewhere along the way.
The frustrating part was that the song wasn’t bad.
If it had been bad, she could’ve walked away from it. Started over. Scrapped the whole thing without a second thought. But, unfortunately there was potential in it. Every time she read the verse back, she could feel it. The song was close to becoming what she wanted it to be, close enough to keep her chasing it but not close enough to cooperate with what she feels on the inside. Every attempt to improve a line only seemed to draw her attention to another one that suddenly wasn’t working. A word would feel wrong. Then the rhythm. Then an entire section she’d liked five minutes earlier.
Eventually, she stopped making changes altogether and she just sat there rereading the same few lines, hoping that if she stared at them long enough, the answer would appear on its own. It never did.
Without thinking, her fingers drifted toward the rubber band looped around her wrist. The sharp sting against her skin followed a second later. It was a habit she’d picked up years ago and never quite managed to abandon, a small physical interruption to break the endless cycle of thoughts whenever she became trapped inside her own head. Usually she barely noticed herself doing it. Another minute passed. She stared at the page. Read the same line again. Hated it for an entirely new reason.
The rubber band snapped once more, harder this time.
Across the room, Michael’s attention slowly drifted away from the notes spread across the mixing console. They had spent enough afternoons together by now for him to recognize the various stages of her creative frustration. There was the concentration that came with the beginning of an idea. The excited rush that followed whenever she felt something falling into place. Then came this stage. The stage where progress slowed to a crawl and every sentence had her itchy and uncomfortable to be in her own skin. He watched her stare down at the notebook, reading the same section repeatedly and the rubber band snapped against her wrist again. Michael found himself smiling despite himself. Some things about artists appeared to be universal.
“Should we take a break?”
Her head lifted immediately, brows furrowed. “Why?” The response came far too quickly.
The moment the word left her mouth, embarrassment followed close behind. Because what she heard in his question wasn’t an invitation—it was recognition that she was struggling. She was suddenly hyper aware that he saw how she’d spent the better part of an hour trapped on the same verse and hadn’t written anything in quite some time. The realization that he maybe noticed everything bothering her made heat creep into her face almost immediately. Creative frustration was difficult enough in private but being perceived in it felt infinitely worse.
For a brief moment, Michael simply looked at her. Then understanding settled across his features. He knew exactly where her mind had gone. Knew she thought he’d been commenting on the fact that she’d been losing patience with herself for the last forty five minutes.
His expression softened like she was being silly. “For lunch,” He clarified.
The relief came so quickly. “Oh.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Michael’s mouth. “Unless your plan was to be like Louie and eat your notebook..”
A small laugh escaped her before she could stop it and the tension that had wound itself so tightly around her shoulders throughout the afternoon loosened ever so slightly. Somehow he’d managed to offer her a way out without drawing attention to the song or pointed out her frustration. Michael didn’t like offering advice when she didn’t ask for it because he never cared for it himself. Instead, he’d simply given her an excuse to step away from the problem for a little while.
It was one of the things she appreciated most about him, though she rarely said so aloud. Michael understood creative obsession because he lived with it himself. He knew the difference between helping and making someone feel watched. Knew that sometimes.. the kindest thing you could do for another artist was pretend not to notice the battle they were fighting with their own work. As he gathered a few papers from the console and prepared to leave the studio, (Name) found herself looking down at the notebook once more. The lyrics still weren’t right and they probably wouldn’t be right when she returned. And yet they felt less daunting than they had a few moments earlier.
Sometimes all it took was being reminded there was a world beyond the page.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤApril, 1987.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ American Music Awards - Manhattan, New York City.
“Oh my god, you were amazing!”
“Did you see the crowd out there? That pop was insane!”
“You did the damn thing, kiddo. Congratulations.”
The aftermath of her performance felt louder than the actual performance itself. The air backstage was bustling with movement, people calling her name from different directions and hands reaching out to touch her shoulders, squeeze her arms, telling her she had done it—she had really done it. Someone pressed a bouquet into her hands and more people were already talking about reviews they had overheard in the hallway. There were congratulations layered over congratulations until none of them sounded real anymore, just overlapping noise dressed up as celebration. (Name) stood in the middle of it all with the bouquet held tightly against her chest, nodding at the right moments, smiling when it was expected, saying thank you in a voice that felt detached from her own body.
She’s disassociating.
All she could think about was the note.
The one she had nearly missed.
It’s ridiculous, really. It wasn’t noticeable for anyone to catch or enough to interrupt the direction of the set, but she knew it happened. It wasn’t even her fault, it was due to technical slip making her slightly off beat before the problem fixed itself. She had handled it so well that no one even suspected anything, only a note alteration but that was very common during live performances. But she wanted perfection.
(Name) could feel it still sitting wrong in her throat, the memory of it stood out like a thorn more than anything else from the entire night. It replayed behind everything people were saying to her, the praise going in one ear and out the other. She nodded again on cue adjusting her grip on the flowers and tried to keep her face fixed into something that resembled gratitude instead of frustration.
She only noticed Michael when he appeared at the edge of the crowd by the doorway. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t immediately make his way over. He lingered near the back instead, allowing managers, producers, executives, and well wishers to reach her first. It was a habit she’d observed countless times before. Michael understood better than most how quickly a room could change around his presence. One appearance was often enough to redirect an entire conversation. Two steps into a crowd and suddenly every eye belonged to him whether he wanted them or not. Fame had taught him many things over the years. One of them was when to take up space. Another was when to surrender it.
Tonight wasn’t about him, nor did he want it to be. So he remained where he was but not out of indifference, quite the opposite. It was her night. Her performance. Her achievement. The last thing he wanted was for the attention she had earned to quietly shift elsewhere. Michael had spent enough of his life accidentally becoming the center of things to recognize when someone else deserved the spotlight. He knew what it had taken for her to get here. The years of work hidden beneath a handful of minutes onstage. The rehearsals nobody saw. The disappointments. The self doubt. The relentless pursuit of something just out of reach.
From a distance, he looked almost detached from the celebration, standing just beyond its center with his hands hidden in his pockets and sunglasses on while the crowd continued to orbit around her. Yet his attention never wandered very far. Every so often his gaze found her through the sea of people gathered around her, watching with the satisfaction of someone who had believed in her long before the rest of the room had caught up.
There was pride in his expression, yeah. But it wasn’t quite the same pride everyone else seemed intent on expressing. Theirs was loud and straight to the point, entirely built upon the performance they had witnessed.
Michael’s was quieter and more attentive. And perhaps because he knew her so well by now, there was something else beneath it. He knew.
While everyone else saw success, he found himself watching for her reaction to it. The smile that never quite reached her eyes. Watching the way her grip tightened around the bouquet each time another person congratulated her. Watching her nod at conversations she didn’t seem entirely present for.
And unfortunately, he knew exactly what this was.
When her eyes finally met his shades, something in her shoulders tightened without permission. She could feel his stare.
Of course he would have noticed.
Of course he would know.
(Name) looked away first, because looking at him felt like she was acknowledging something she didn’t want to yet. A producer pulled her into another conversation, someone else asked about upcoming plans and she answered on autopilot, the words coming out in trained fragments while her attention kept slipping back toward the same place in the room where he stood.
Eventually, she found herself drifting toward one of the side hallways, retreating from the crowd. The noise softened the moment she crossed the threshold, the cheers and conversations dissolving into something distant and more manageable. For the first time all evening, nobody was speaking to her. Nobody was congratulating her or asking questions. The sudden absence of attention settled around her and she let out a long overdue exhale, leaning against the wall and adjusting the bouquet in her arms before realizing she’d been gripping the stems so tightly that a part of her palm had begun to bleed from a throne that pricked her. Slowly she loosened her hold, watching a few crushed petals spring back into place as she drew in a deeper breath than any she’d managed all night.
“Tinker.” His voice came from behind her.
She didn’t turn right away. “Hi, Michael..”
He stepped closer, not looking at the flowers but he looked at her face instead. “It went well,” He said. “Please, stop.”
“Stop what?” She replied too quickly. “It went okay.”
The silence that followed made it worse because he had seen right through her bullshit. She adjusted the bouquet again and her fingers had started picking at the ribbon
“I messed up.” She said suddenly, like stating it out loud would keep it from growing.
Michael blinked once slowly, as if processing whether she was joking or not. Then he shook his head, removing his shades. “Do you think anyone in there noticed except you? Honestly?”
“I noticed it, Michael..” She says. “I did.”
“Mm.” That sound Michael liked to do. It wasn’t dismissive but he wasn’t really agreeing either. Just acknowledging that her mind had already made a decision and was now refusing to let it go.
She stared down the hallway instead of at him. “I shouldn’t be fucking up on things.”
“Language..”
“I’m sorry. I’m frustrated.”
“You’re allowed to be human,” He said, and there was something faintly amused in it. “Y’know that right?”
“Says you.” Her mouth tightened anyway. “Michael, I rehearsed for weeks..” Her voice had changed. Slightly smaller but tightly bound in a tone that wasn’t aimed at him, even if it sounded like it might be. “I rushed the transition. I came in late on the second verse and I felt it. I felt it and I still did it anyway.”
Michael watched her for a long moment without interrupting. When he spoke again his tone had shifted, less performer observing another performer. “I used to do that,” he said. “All the time. I would finish a show and all I could think about was the one thing I didn’t do perfectly. Not the rest of it. Not what people were screaming about. Just the thing I knew I could’ve done better.”
She finally looked at him then and he wasn’t smiling now.
“I would go over it in my head so many times I’d forget the rest of the performance happened at all,” He continued. “And nobody ever told me what I’m about to tell you now, so I’ll say it because someone should have said it to me when I was your age.”
He paused, just long enough for her to feel it. “People don’t come to see you be flawless,” He said quietly. “They come because of what it feels like when you’re up there. There’s a difference. You’re the only one who turns it into a test.”
Something in her expression shifted, but she didn’t speak yet. Michael tilted his head slightly, studying her like he was trying to make sure the words actually landed where they needed.
“One little thing doesn’t undo the fact that you just held the entire world in your hands,” He added. “But I can already tell you’re not going to believe that tonight.”
A faint, reluctant exhale left her.
The bouquet drooped slightly in her hands as her grip loosened again. The silence returned, but it felt different now, less like pressure and more like space she didn’t know what to do with yet.
Michael didn't push further. He just stayed beside her, letting the noise of the celebration belong to another version of the night, one neither of them was currently living.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ May, 1987.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ The (Surname) Residence - Los Angeles, California.
The phone call had long since outlived whatever purpose it may have originally possessed. Not.. that either of them could remember what that purpose had been to begin with. Hours earlier, one of them had called the other for a reason that had likely seemed important at the time. A question about a song. A conversation about an upcoming appearance. Some minor detail neither could recall now. Somewhere along the way, the original subject had disappeared entirely, replaced by the sort of aimless discussion that only seemed possible after midnight, when the rest of the world had gone quiet (Name) sat on her bed painting her toe nails, a mess of different colors of polished, acetone and cotton balls spread out on her silky comforter. Outside her bedroom window, the city stretched into darkness with a pretty skyline and the hallway beyond her bedroom remained still.
Across Los Angeles, Michael was awake too. That part hardly surprised her anymore. Artists seemed to exist on entirely different schedules than everyone else.
The conversation drifted lazily between subjects. Music. His upcoming tour. Childhood. Movies. Family. Stories neither had planned on telling when the call began. There was no urgency to any of it, or destination they appeared determined to reach, just the comfort of two people who genuinely enjoyed speaking to one another. The thing was, neither had expected this. Not the friendship and certainly not the ease of it. When they had first met nearly a year ago, both had assumed the interaction would be brief. Another industry introduction. Another polite conversation destined to disappear among countless others. Instead, somehow, they kept finding reasons to talk. Then reasons to call. Then reasons to stay on the phone long after they should have said goodnight.
Michael understood loneliness in ways most people didn’t. And it wasn’t because he lacked company—quite the opposite. His entire life existed beneath constant observation. Crowds. Interviews. Audiences. Fans. Managers. Family. There were always people nearby. Yet very few of them knew him. Really knew him. And the older he became, the more difficult that distinction seemed to grow.
“I think people have a strange idea about what this is like.” His voice arrived unexpectedly through the receiver.
(Name) glanced up from her polish. “What?”
A brief pause followed. “Everything.” The answer sounded almost sheepish, as though he was aware of how vague it was. “This stuff.”
She smiled despite herself. “Very specific.”
Michael laughed softly. “You know what I mean, Dumbo.”
She did. At least enough to answer. “The music thing?”
“The fame thing.”
Something in his voice had changed slightly. The difference was subtle, but she had spent enough time around him to notice it. Most people spoke about fame as though it were a reward, a finish line, something achieved. Michael always sounded as though he were describing weather. Something that simply existed. Something unavoidable.
“I think people imagine it’s.. exciting all the time,” He said. “They think you’re constantly doing something. They think you’re happy because you’re successful.”
(Name) looked down at her toes. For some reason, she found herself listening more carefully. “Are you not happy?”
The question slipped out before she could stop it and silence followed. A thoughtful silence.
Then Michael laughed quietly. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you didn’t answer either.” That earned another laugh, slightly louder this time. For a moment she wondered whether he’d change the subject. Instead, his voice returned softer than before.
“I think sometimes people get confused.”
“About what?”
“Being loved.”
The words settled heavily between them—they sounded like something he’d spent a very long time thinking about.
“They think being loved by millions of people means you never feel alone. But most of those people don’t know you.” A brief pause followed. “They know who they think you are.”
Something tightened unexpectedly in her chest because she understood exactly what he meant. Not entirely on his scale, but enough. Enough to know what it felt like when strangers decided things about you. Enough to know what it felt like to become a version of yourself people preferred over the real thing.
The line remained silent for several moments. Neither seemed in any hurry to fill it.
Eventually Michael spoke again. “You know what I mean?”
His voice carried something unusual now, hope. The kind people rarely admitted to.
“Yeah,” She answered quietly. “I do.”
When Michael spoke again, his voice had softened even further. “That’s why I like talking to you, girl.”
The confession arrived casually, absentmindedly and (Name) forgot how to respond. Her eyes shot immediately toward the window looking at the city, toward anything except the warmth suddenly spreading through her chest.
“Why?” She asked quietly.
A brief pause followed long enough for her to wonder whether he'd answer at all. “Because you talk to me like I’m Michael.”
His voice carried the faintest trace of amusement. The faintest trace of gratitude. “Just Michael.”
Neither of them realized it then or understood that something had shifted. A shift into something infinitely more dangerous than romance.
Trust.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤAugust, 1987.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Motown Records Summer Party - Los Angeles.
The thing that unsettled (Name) most was not that Michael was speaking to Diana Ross. It was that she seemed incapable of treating the sight with the level of indifference it deserved. Rationally, there was nothing remarkable about it. If anything, the opposite was true. So why.. why is she feeling like this? Michael and Diana occupied such a permanent fixture in one another’s lives that seeing them together should have registered as background noise. Expected. The sort of thing a person acknowledged before moving on, like fork found in kitchen. Yet for reasons she could not seem to control, her attention continued returning to them. Like.. often enough for her to notice and often enough for the realization to become uncomfortable.
The problem was that the feeling refused to cooperate with any explanation she attempted to give it. Jealousy implied desire, and desire implied a level of honesty with herself she had no intention of entertaining. Besides, jealousy suggested competition. A rival. An obstacle. Something to overcome. Diana Ross was none of those things. Diana belonged to an entirely different category of person. She represented history. Foundation. Permanence. The part of Michael’s life that existed before (Name) and would almost certainly continue existing long after her.
There was something deeply humbling about the realization. Entire chapters of him remained inaccessible to her. Entire versions of him and his life she would never know. The young boy Diana had met. The young man she had enough influence on to shape at least some way in his thinking whether it be his music preferences or.. his type in women. The memories they shared had nothing to do with her at all. It shouldn’t have mattered. Yet standing there, watching them laugh together across the room, she found herself confronted by an uncomfortable awareness of just how thoroughly Michael existed outside of her.
Perhaps that was the true source of her discomfort. Not the conversation itself, but what it revealed. Somewhere over the past year, Michael had ceased being a person she knew and quietly become a point of orientation. The distinction was subtle enough that she had failed to notice it occurring. Yet now, under the harsh spotlight of self awareness, evidence of it seemed to surface everywhere. He had become the person she saved stories for. The person whose opinion she sought before fully trusting her own. The person she instinctively imagined beside her during moments of success, disappointment, boredom, excitement. And not because she was in love with him. At least.. she didn’t think that was the reason. The truth felt simultaneously smaller and more alarming. Michael had simply become woven into the architecture of her daily life. So gradually, so naturally, that she had mistaken his presence for part of herself.
And that was what made the feeling ugly. If this was romance, it would have been easy. Romance was flattering. Romance transformed emotional dependency into something poetic! and socially acceptable!
This felt.. less noble than that. More selfish. More childlike.
It was deeply embarrassing about realizing how accustomed she had become to occupying a certain place in another person’s world. More embarrassing still was discovering the small sense of entitlement that accompanied it. Not entitlement to Michael himself, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe she possessed any claim over him. Rather, entitlement to access. To attention. To significance. The assumption that she would always occupy the same space she occupied yesterday. The assumption that their friendship existed as a fixed point rather than a living thing capable of shifting beyond her control.
The realization left her feeling strangely exposed. As though she had stumbled upon a private truth about herself she had never intended to examine. Because if Michael had become this important to her without her noticing, what else had changed without her permission? How many decisions had begun orbiting him? How many thoughts ended with his name? How much of her emotional equilibrium depended upon a friendship she had spent months insisting was perfectly normal? The questions arrived one after another, unwelcome and impossible to dismiss. By the time she finally set her drink aside and decided to leave, it had very little to do with Diana Ross. Diana merely happened to be standing in the place where the realization occurred.
The truth was that (Name) no longer wanted to remain in the room because she had become increasingly uncomfortable with the person she was discovering herself to be within it.
She offered a few quick goodbyes to people near the exit, accepted a handful of distracted farewells in return, and disappeared into the Los Angeles night feeling vaguely irritated with herself.
The feeling followed her home.
That was perhaps the most frustrating part.
Because by the time she arrived home, kicked off her shoes, and changed into something more comfortable, she had fully expected the discomfort to dissolve beneath the practical demands of ordinary life. Instead it lingered stubbornly at the edges of her thoughts, refusing to loosen its grip no matter how thoroughly she attempted to dismiss it. She washed her face. Brushed her teeth. Wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water she didn’t particularly want. The entire time, some small part of her remained trapped inside that ballroom, replaying a feeling she had already decided was ridiculous.
The thing was, embarrassment has a way of prolonging emotions long after they’re deserved.
Had she been genuinely angry, she could have justified it.
Had she been hurt, she could have examined it.
Instead she found herself confronted by something far more difficult to defend: self awareness.
Because the longer she sat with the evening, the less interested she became in Diana Ross and the more interested she became in herself. Specifically, in the version of herself that had stood across a crowded room behaving in ways she would have found deeply embarrassing had she witnessed them in someone else. The version of herself who had lingered. Waited. Watched. The version who had discovered, quite accidentally, that Michael’s attention mattered more to her than she had previously understood.
By the time she settled onto the edge of her bed, she had almost convinced herself she was overreacting. That the entire thing had been inflated beyond reason. That she’d imagined it.
Almost.
Then the phone rang, and (Name) stared at it for half a second before reaching for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi, ladybug.”
Michael.
Immediately she smiled and the reaction was such an automatic response she nearly laughed at herself. Of course.
“Hi, apple.”
The conversation began the way it always did. Easily. Comfortably. They spoke about the event. About people they’d seen. Gossip. About nothing in particular. The familiarity of it settled around her almost immediately, smoothing over the sharpest pricklies of whatever had been bothering her. This was the version of their relationship she understood. This part was simple, it was safe. There was a reason she found herself reaching for the phone whenever something happened. A reason conversations with Michael never seemed to require effort in the way conversations with other people sometimes did. Being around him had become easy.
Then, after a brief pause, Michael spoke again. “You know..” Something in his tone caused her grip on the receiver to tighten slightly.
“Hm?”
“It’s not like you to leave without saying goodbye.”
The smile disappeared instantly and her pulse jumped. The thing was, she hadn’t considered the possibility that he would notice. The room had been crowded. The event had been busy. People had been coming and going all evening. In her mind, her departure had occupied the same category as every other insignificant thing she’d been trying to forget since arriving home.
Apparently not.
Apparently Michael had noticed.
“At least not saying goodbye to me,” He added gently. “..Is everything okay?”
Heat rushed into her face with alarming speed. Suddenly she became acutely aware of herself sitting alone in her bedroom, staring at the floor as though he might somehow see the expression she was making through the telephone line.
“Oh.” Brilliant. An excellent response. “I—”
She looked down at the blanket gathered around her legs, the embarrassment arrived all at once.
There was something uniquely humiliating about being known by someone observant enough to notice deviations in your behavior before you noticed them yourself. Most people would not have thought twice about an early exit. Most people would have assumed she was tired, distracted, busy. Michael, had noticed she hadn’t said goodbye.
Specifically to him.
“I’m sorry,” She said quickly. “I just.. wasn’t feeling well..”
The lie sounded flimsy even to her own ears but it wasn’t entirely false. She had felt unwell.. just not physically.
Silence settled briefly between them, the sort of silence that suggested Michael was considering the answer rather than accepting it.
Then: “Really?” One word.
Nothing else, yet somehow it managed to unravel every ounce of confidence she’d possessed in the explanation.
Because she couldn’t tell whether the question made her feel relieved or mortified. For the first time all evening, she found herself confronted by a realization every bit as unsettling as the one she’d fled from earlier.
Michael had become important enough to her that his attention could alter the course of an entire evening. And she had become familiar enough to him that he could hear dishonesty in a single sentence.
Neither realization felt particularly great.
ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤSeptember, 1987.
ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤD-1 Bad Tour - The (Surname) Residence, Los Angeles, California.
Michael wasn’t supposed to come. He wasn’t supposed to be there. She didn’t want to look at him or even say goodbye because she knew she’d cry! She had spent the entire day surviving on the fragile, pathetic agreement she made with herself that if she didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.
It would make it easier to cope, she thought.
But by the time she realized what was happening, the door was already open. It wasn’t knock she could prepare for.
It was him, standing there.
He was smiling. Shyly, the way he often did. It rested somewhere between hopeful and apologetic as his sunglasses hid his eyes, those oversized dark lenses he’d developed a habit of retreating behind, but somehow they only made him more unmistakably Michael. His curls fell carelessly across his forehead, disturbed by the breeze outside, and for one absurd, fleeting moment she found herself resenting how beautiful he looked standing there. It was unfair. Unfair that he could come here carrying something as painful as a goodbye and still somehow look so impossibly gentle, so effortlessly beautiful.
He had spent the drive rehearsing this visit in his head, wondering whether he should have listened to her when she’d insisted she didn’t want to say goodbye at all. In the end, he hadn’t been able to. The thought of boarding a plane the next morning without seeing her one last time had settled somewhere beneath his ribs and refused to leave. So he had come anyway, with only the softest version of himself to her doorstep, hoping that if he spoke sweet enough, smiled gently enough would grant him some level of mercy.
“I know you didn’t want to say goodbye,” He said, voice calm which only made it worse, “But I just couldn’t bring myself to not see you before I go.”
That was all it took.
Something in her face gave way the instant she heard his voice. It was imperceptible at first, the slightest tremor beneath the fake composure she spent the entire day constructing, but once the first crack appeared there was no gathering it back together. Her expression folded inward on itself with startling speed, her mouth pulling tight as if she could physically keep the emotion from escaping if she held it there long enough. She couldn’t. Her breathing hitched once, then again, each inhale shallower than the last until even that simple act seemed to betray her. She had been waiting for permission to stop pretending she was fine. He had unknowingly given it to her the moment he knocked on the door.
The sound that left her wasn’t graceful or even recognizable as a word. Just a small, fractured noise that seemed to tear itself free from somewhere deep inside her chest before she had the chance to swallow it back down. It embarrassed her almost immediately, but embarrassment had already become irrelevant. There are certain kinds of grief that strip dignity away before you have the opportunity to protect it.
“..Michael..!” His name left her in a trembling exhale. She hadn’t intended to say it like that. She hadn't intended to sound as though she’d been carrying those seven letters inside her all day, letting them grow heavier with every passing hour until speaking them became less of a choice than a release.
Then she moved.
The distance between them suddenly felt intolerable, something instinct refused to negotiate with any longer. She crossed it in two uneven steps, stumbling in her haste, and collided with him before either of them had time to think about what was happening. Her hands found the fabric of his plaid first, gripping it with desperate certainty, fingers twisting into the material as though she needed proof that he was solid, that he hadn’t already become another goodbye she was remembering instead of living.
The moment she felt his arms come around her, whatever fragile structure had been holding her together dissolved completely.
She collapsed into him.
Every ounce of resistance she’d spent days maintaining abandoned her all at once, her forehead finding the space beneath his chin, her weight settling against him with complete involuntary trust. Her shoulders shook violently against his chest, each breath catching so hard it bordered on painful, her fingers tightening almost helplessly against his back every time she tried and failed to steady herself.
It wasn’t only crying. It was relief—relief that she didn’t have to pretend for one more second. Relief that he had come despite her asking him not to. Relief that, for one impossibly brief moment before tomorrow morning arrived and an ocean separated them, she was exactly where she wanted to be all day.
With him.
Michael spoke softer, close to her hair, he said, “Hey now.. you’re gonna make me cry, silly girl.”
He had seen her cry before.
Artists cried. After bad performances. Long rehearsals. Brutal criticism. Creative exhaustion. She had cried in frustration over lyrics that refused to come, over mistakes she believed were unforgivable, over expectations she placed upon herself that no one else ever would. He knew those tears. He knew how to sit beside them, how to remind her that tomorrow would arrive and the music would still be there waiting. This wasn’t that.
This frightened him because whatever this was wasn’t coming from disappointment or failure or exhaustion.
It was coming from him, not something he had done to her—but something he represented as her mentor.
As she shook against him, the realization unfolded slowly. Somewhere over the last year, without either of them ever acknowledging it, he had become the place she returned to. The first person to hear a new melody. The one she called before bed because conversations with him never seemed to have endings. The familiar face waiting in the studio. Her mentor. He had mistaken it for routine. For a simple friendship. Because it had become routine for him too, don’t get him wrong.
But routines are dangerous things.
You don’t notice how necessary they’ve become until someone asks you to live without them.
His hand moved slowly across her back, trying to soothe something that suddenly felt much larger than either of them. She wasn’t simply crying because he was leaving. She was grieving the sudden absence of the person she’d learned to organize parts of herself around. The thought hollowed him. She never asked for that. He had never asked for it either. It had happened the way the most consequential things often do. Gradually.. one ordinary afternoon at a time.
And now he was leaving.
An ocean.
Sixteen months.
Different time zones. Concerts. Hotel rooms. Crowds so large they’d swallow him whole every night.
Michael had always imagined the tour would be difficult because he would miss home. He hadn’t considered that somewhere along the way he had become part of someone else’s.
A strange guilt settled over him.. because he couldn’t remember the moment he’d stopped making sure she would be all right without him. He had spent so long trying to protect her from the industry, from disappointment, from people who wanted too much of her, that he had never stopped to wonder whether she had begun depending on him in ways neither of them understood.
And if she had..
Then leaving no longer felt like boarding a plane.
It felt like walking away from something fragile he’d been trusted to keep safe.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ May, 1988.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ The Bad Tour - The World.
By the time Michael got to London, the tour didn’t really feel like traveling anymore. It just felt like doing the same thing in different buildings.
Wembley Stadium was huge, overwhelming in a way that never really stopped being overwhelming, even after soundcheck. Even after everything was set up perfectly. The lights, the sound, all of it technically correct. He moved through it on autopilot now. The same routine every day and every night. The same dressing rooms that blurred together no matter what country they were in. The same faces orbiting him with clipboards, headsets, schedules, questions. He was never physically alone, that had become impossible years ago. There was always someone opening a door for him before he reached it, someone asking what he needed before he’d decided whether he needed anything at all. And somehow that constant proximity had only made solitude he felt internally feel stranger. Conversation had become increasingly transactional, every interaction serving the machinery of the tour.
People spoke to Michael Jackson constantly. Very few spoke to Michael.
There was a show that night. Then more shows after that. Then another one after a short break that didn’t even feel like rest, just a pause before the next thing started again.
Everything started to blur together a bit.
Hotel. Stadium. Hotel. Repeat.
By the time he got back to the hotel, he could feel the tiredness sitting somewhere behind his eyes. Worn down. The kind that came after weeks of answering questions, making decisions, shaking hands, smiling for photographs, stepping onto stages where thousands of people wanted something from him all at once. He loved performing. He always would. But..
At some point in all of it, he reached for the telephone without really deciding to. The gesture felt so, so familiar, muscle memory from a life a year ago that had become increasingly difficult to return to. The receiver rested in his hand while he sat there for a moment, waiting for his thoughts to catch up with what his body had already done.
Then he stopped.
Because he realized there wasn’t really a correct time anymore. Either it was too late there or too early there, or she was probably doing something, or he was probably about to do something, or it just didn’t line up in any way that felt simple.
So he just didn’t call.
He put the phone back down and just kind of looked at it for a second like it was going to give him a better answer if he stared long enough. But it didn’t.
So Michael moved on with his days.
Because everything always kept moving anyway.
The thing about absence is that it rarely announces itself all at once. It reveals itself through instinct. Through the split second after something happens, before reason has time to intervene. He’d hear a melody and think, She’d like that. Someone would say something ridiculous and for one unconscious moment, he’d already be turning to tell her before remembering she was an ocean and a continent away. The feeling wasn’t that she had left his every day, she was still very much built into it. Every instinct still assumed she was only a phone call away.
Reality was simply taking longer and longer to catch up.
He went to more shows.
Hundreds of thousands people. Noise everywhere. Lights. Movement. Everything loud enough to fill his whole body. And somewhere in the middle of it he thought, kind of randomly, that he heard her laugh in his head. It felt like she was right there saying something to him during a conversation that didn’t actually happen.
It was so quick he almost missed it.
And then it was gone.
The weeks became months so gradually that neither of them could have pointed to the moment things changed. There wasn’t one. No falling out or misunderstanding. No conscious decision to stop calling. Life simply grew larger around them. The tour kept moving. London. Paris. Rome. Cologne. Every city arrived with another airport, another hotel room, another stadium large enough to swallow him whole before sending him somewhere else to do it all again. Days stopped existing as individual memories and became pieces of a routine so rehearsed he barely needed to think anymore.
Wake up. Rehearse. Interviews. Soundcheck. Perform. Sleep. Repeat. Sometimes he’d wake in the middle of the night and have to pull back the curtains just to remember what country he was in.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, her own life refused to slow down either. The album she’d spent months pouring herself into was finally becoming real. Recording sessions gave way to rehearsals. Rehearsals, wardrobe fittings, choreography meetings, photo shoots, interviews. Suddenly there were people everywhere, each responsible for a different need of her. Stylists discussing image. Executives discussing singles. Publicists deciding how the world would meet her before she’d fully figured it out herself.
Success had a strange way of convincing everyone they knew what came next. (Name) was simply trying to keep up.
The distance stopped feeling temporary when it became increasingly difficult to find a spot of the day that belonged only to them. He still thought about calling. She still thought about calling. But the thoughts always seemed to arrive at inconvenient hours. He’d reach for the telephone only to remember she was probably asleep. She’d hear something that reminded her of him, glance at the clock, and realize he was probably somewhere beneath stadium lights on the other side of the world. “Tomorrow” quietly became next week. Next week became another country. Months passed before either of them realized how long it had actually been.
And somehow, despite all of it, neither of them doubted the other was still there. That was almost the cruelest part. The closeness itself hadn’t disappeared in their hearts, it had only lost its place in the day. Every instinct remained like when she still found herself collecting little stories to tell him before remembering there was no guarantee she’d reach him that week and when he would pick up little trinkets that reminded him of her.
The pluse was still beating with no place to put it.
Then one afternoon in a random European city, she found him—not in person or through a phone call, if course.
But through a television.
Someone had left it playing in the dressing room while the crew reset equipment between rehearsals. Conversations drifted lazily through the room, a production assistant crossed in front of the screen carrying schedules while a few dancers watched the screen with excited smiles.
Michael wasn’t paying attention until he heard her name leave one of their mouths and his attention lifted almost involuntarily. The screen changed and there she was—he recognized her immediately, his heart skipping a beat as he crossed his arms over his chest.
It was her. Right there on the screen. And she looked so.. different since the last time he saw her. Granted, she was sobbing but in his memory she looked more girlish—childish and juvinile in a way. Always a pretty girl but.
Her eyes were the first thing that got him.
He’d always believed eyes were the only part of a person incapable of lying. Smiles could be mimicked and voices could soften. Hands learned where to rest. But eyes always surrendered something, whether their owner meant them to or not. They were the closest thing people had to a window into the soul, it’s why he enjoyed wearing sunglasses so much.
Hers had always been impossibly easy to read. Open in a way that almost nobody was anymore. Honest. Curious. Entirely without calculation. It had been one of the first things he’s noticed about her, and one of the reasons he’d trusted her long before he’d understood why.
But this..
This was different.
Goodness.. she was pretty—beautiful even.
Her eyes seemed to draw him in, leaving him strangely defenseless. He couldn’t have looked away if he’d wanted to. They were hypnotic now, a kind of beauty that didn’t demand attention so much as command it. Like standing too close to the ocean, knowing full well the tide was pulling at your ankles and realizing too late, that you weren’t interested in resisting.
Michael found himself staring longer than he meant to, then unexpectedly, something sharp twisted beneath the admiration.
Because he knew other people would see them too. Her eyes.
They’d look into those same eyes and find exactly what he had always found there: sincerity so complete it bordered on vulnerable, a warmth that invited trust before a single word was spoken. The thought settled uncomfortably in his chest. He had spent nearly two years selfishly treasuring that openness, foolishly imagining it belonged to the private spaces they shared. Seeing it framed beneath studio lights made him realize it had never belonged to him.
Anyone willing to look closely would have access to the same unguarded soul he’d been lucky enough to know. The realization left him with the peculiar ache of jealousy, irrational as it was. The rest of the world was finally being allowed to see what he’d been quietly protecting in his heart all along.
Then her smile came in and that was worse.
When she smiled, her face softened. Her mouth curved easily, warm and unguarded. It caught him instantly, sitting heavy in his throat. A stupid and immediate response. He didn’t even realize he was smiling until it was already happening.
And the way she moved—
It was just.
The way she shifted her weight, the way her hips carried the rhythm. The camera lingers on a small strip of bare skin peeking above her low slung jeans. The lighting is soft with golden halos from stage lights that catch on her skin just right, a thin silver chain glints around her hipbone as she moves
Close up shots follow every sway and tilt—the way fabric stretches tight over curves when she pivots sharply, then how a breathy laugh parts her lips mid dance before she rolls back into rhythm. Every frame shows movement: one second showing only fingertips brushing that exposed waistline as choreography demands; next frame zooming out to capture full body.
Michael couldn’t stop watching, and beneath the admiration sat something quieter. The realization that this hadn’t happened overnight. This version of her had been forming little by little through weeks, through choices and experiences and conversations he hadn’t been there to witness. Somewhere between hotel rooms and sold out stadiums, she’d continued growing without him.
Someone behind him smiled toward the television.
“She’s got a hit on her hands.”
Another voice agreed.
The room moved on but Michael didn’t. He watched until the video ended, until another artist replaced her on the screen. Only then did he quietly leave the area, thinking about her.
Hours later back in his hotel, he reached for the telephone before he’d fully realized he’d made the decision. His fingers rested around the receiver for a moment. Then he dialed her number. Once. Twice. Three times. The line rang.
“Hello?”
He closed his eyes. It was strange how familiar her voice still sounded after all this time. “..Hi, Tink.”
There was beat of silence, then he heard her smile before she spoke. “Michael?”
“Yes, it’s Michael..” He smiled himself a bit.
She laughed softly, almost disbelieving. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten my number.” She teased.
“I could never, my girl.” Another small silence settled between them, awkward only because it had been so long since they’d heard each other’s voices that they seemed to be readjusting to the reality of them.
It was surprisingly easy.
Within minutes, the months between them began collapsing under the weight of ordinary conversation. They spoke about nothing at first. The tour. Her recording schedule. London weather. Los Angeles heat. It felt strangely miraculous how quickly they found the old rhythm again, as though it had simply been waiting patiently for both of them to return.
Then Michael said, almost casually, “I saw your new video today.”
The other end of the line went unexpectedly quiet. “..You did?”
“Mhm.”
“What’d you think..?”
He smiled to himself. “I loved it a lot.”
When she spoke again, her voice had changed ever so slightly. Smaller and shyer. “I’m glad..”
“I mean it.” He could almost picture her looking down at the floor, suddenly unsure what to do with the compliment.
“You seem different,” He said carefully.
She laughed once through her nose. “Different?”
“Yeah,” He searched for the right word. “Confident, happier..”
She didn’t answer immediately, thinking about how to respond. It’s been hard without his guidance. “I’m trying to be.”
Something about that stayed with him. He leaned back against the headboard, looking absently out toward the London skyline beyond the window. Then, gently he spoke.
“Are they taking good care of you out there?”
The question hung between them. It wasn’t about the video. She knew that. “I think so,” She answered after a moment. “Everybody’s been nice.”
Michael nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “Good.”
He realized that the faint ache he couldn’t quite place wasn’t the video that had made him call after all. It was wanting to hear, beneath all the music and interviews and heavily managed appearances, that she was still there.
Just as herself, as his Tinkerbell.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ January 27, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Final Night, The Bad Tour - Los Angeles, California.
(Name)’s body gets ahead of her thoughts and at this point, refuses to wait for permission as she moves through people. She manages to cast a few polite but rushed smiles when she hears someone recognize her.
“Is that (Name)..?”
“Oh my god, I love her..”
Backstage is alive with the chao that usually comes after shows. People moving too fast, voices stacking over each other, the smell of sweat and heat and stage lights still clinging to everything. The energy manages to give her a second hand high as she’s walking through it. She doesn’t even fully register where she’s going, just that she’s checking faces as she passes them because she already knows the one she actually wants to see. But it feels like she’s already passed a thousand people, and she hasn’t found him yet. He couldn’t have left yet, she knows that much.
But then she sees him. And everything stops, she feels like she might just collapse because she feels weak in the knees.
He’s not even doing anything special, he’s just standing there in the middle of it all, still half caught in the post performance state where everything feels like an in between, where it feels like you’re coming down from a high. But it’s a high that only entertainers could get off on. His hair is damp with sweat, curls falling forward in soft and uneven pieces that stick slightly to his forehead and temples. A few strands are clinging near his cheekbone, darker from moisture and framing his face in a way that makes him look more masculine in nature. He takes a little sip of his orange juice, and she nearly giggles at him.
His skin still has that warm sheen from the lights, luminous under backstage fluorescents. There’s a faint flush at his cheeks, exhaustion sure, but there’s something alive in it like his body is still running a little faster than normal. His lips are slightly parted as he breathes, still regulating himself, still coming down from the energy of being in front of thousands of people. He looks.. he looks good.
Michael looks up, and sees her.
It hits him in a very visible shift, that small pause where recognition lands before anything else can follow. His expression changes subtly but immediately as soon as he drinks her in, and the entire room narrows down to just her and suddenly nothing else really matters anymore.
She doesn’t think before she’s moving to him. It’s fast and uncontained, the instinct inside her has been building pressure for too long and finally stops caring about control. The space between them disappears in seconds as she runs straight into him.
It isn’t graceful, it’s full on impact. Her body forgets how to be gentle about it. Her hands land on him first, gripping whatever she can reach, his jacket, his shirt, it doesn’t even matter. She needs something. Her mind hasn’t actually caught up to the fact that he’s here, in front of her. She can’t be sure if this isn’t some cruel dream she’s going to wake up from.
Michael catches her instantly with no hesitation at all.
His arms are around her in the same breath she hits him, pulling her in because that’s the most natural response in the world right now, there was never going to be any other outcome once she got close enough. One hand settles at the back of her neck, fingers spreading there and steadying her that same way he used to. Before work and fame so selfishly separated them sixteen months ago.
Up close, he still smells like the stage. Sweat, heat, fabric and his perfume warmed from movement. His shirt is slightly damp where she’s pressed into it, curls brushing lightly against her temple when she leans in. It’s still soft despite being flattened in places by sweat and movement.
She can feel him breathing, slightly uneven. His heart his pounding against his chest and she isn’t sure if it’s because he’s just gotten done working or if it’s because of her.
(Name) presses closer without thinking, her body trying to confirm he won’t disappear if she holds on hard enough and his hand at her neck tightens just slightly, anchoring her there without question.
And she doesn’t let go, not even a little.
“I missed you so much..”
“I missed you too..”
The cameras are waiting before the doors even open, a loose cluster gathered near the waiting vans, flashes already firing the second movement appears backstage. Security steps out first, then members of the crew, then managers talking over one another as they funnel everyone toward the vehicles.
The lens keeps searching.
Then it finds them.
They’re walking side by side through the middle of the entourage with their pinkies linked. He stays half a step behind, letting her weave through the narrow path security has made. Their fingers never separate. Every few feet someone calls his name, another voice shouts hers, cameras clicking relentlessly from behind the barricades.
When they reach the waiting van, Michael opens the sliding door himself and instinctively steps aside.
“You first.”
She ducks inside with a small smile, still holding his hand until the last possible second before climbing into the back seat. Only then does he let go, following her inside. The cameras don’t stop, the tinted windows are dark enough to hide most of the interior but the open doorway has already given them more than enough.
Michael drops back into the seat with the exhaustion of someone who’s just finished the final show of a world tour. His hair has mostly escaped the ponytail he’d started the night with, damp curls clinging to the back of his neck and temples. A faint line of eyeliner has smudged beneath both eyes, evidence of two hours beneath stage lights that had long since melted away any attempt at perfection.
He exhales through a tired little smile and reaches up automatically, trying to gather his hair back with one hand while fumbling for the elastic still hanging loosely around his wrist.
It catches almost immediately.
He makes a soft face of mild annoyance, trying again. The elastic twists into a knot somewhere in the curls near the nape of his neck.
She watches him for all of three seconds before smiling to herself. “Come here.”
Without a word, he turns slightly in his seat until his back is angled toward her, surrendering the problem without protest. Her fingers disappear gently into his hair.
“Hold still.” A quiet laugh slips out of her as she carefully works the tangled elastic free, taking her time so she doesn’t pull. Every now and then he winces ever so slightly when a curl catches, and she immediately softens her touch.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
The camera keeps rolling through the open door, the others around unable to hear more than muffled fragments through the glass. By the time she slips the elastic free, a few loose curls have fallen into his face again.
“There.”
He reaches up, gathering his hair into another ponytail while she smooths one stubborn curl behind his ear absentmindedly .
He looks toward the open door toward the camera, his tired eyes meet the lens. A warm smile spreads across his face despite the exhaustion still written across it.
He lifts his fingers in the smallest wave. “Hiii.” It’s quiet and sweet, a greeting that feels less like an acknowledgment of fame and more like someone politely noticing another person in the room.
Beside him, she catches the expression before turning toward the windshield herself. So cute!
She can’t help smiling. After months on the road, after the final show and the noise and the exhaustion, he still somehow had enough gentleness left to greet strangers with the same sweetness he greeted everyone else.
A second later the door closes and driver eases the van into motion and the entourage follows behind.
The footage ends there.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ March, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ The Children’s Arts Benefit - Manhatten, New York City.
It’s a charity event. Cameras everywhere, flashes going off in little bursts that aren’t really capturing anything interesting, just people standing in groups chatting about anything from business to personal life.
(Name) sees him across the room and her heels click against the marble as she moves to him, steady in rhythm and cutting through the softer noise of the room. One hand gathers her dress slightly, keeping it lifted just enough to move properly through the crowd without it catching as she walks. She’s not really listening to anything people say to her as she passes, only offering small nods and polite smiles when needed.
And Michael sees her before she gets there.
He’s mid conversation, still doing the polite thing and engaging enough so that anyone watching would think he’s fully engaged. But admittedly, his attention shifts the second he spots her coming through the room. And he does something simple.
He reaches out. Not fully stopping what he’s doing nor turning his whole body away from the conversation, he simply extends a hand slightly in her direction because he’s already expected she’ll end up there. This is just how it goes. ESP or something?
(Name) takes it immediately when she reaches him, her hand slipping into his. She’s done it too many times for it to ever feel like a question at this point. His fingers close around hers and squeeze for a quick second in a silent acknowledgement before his hand naturally moves to the small of her back, still half listening to the person he was speaking to like nothing.
That’s the part that would look normal if you weren’t paying attention. But there’s a camera nearby, drifting through the room and catching moments without any real intent. It lands on them right as it happens.
At first, it just looks like a greeting. Two close friends acknowledging each other in a crowded event, nothing unusual.
But the footage holds them longer than that.
It catches her as she leans in to say something to him over the noise. Without thinking her free hand goes up, brushing lightly against his arm and to his collar as she talks, just a small little touch. But she doesn’t fully settle until she’s physically anchored for a moment, her hand resting on the nape of his neck.
He tilts his head down to hear her better, still half in the conversation he was already in, but not really leaving her side either. His hand at her back doesn’t move, and then his expression changes slightly. A small smile caught on camera because of something that sat exactly right in his ear. A joke maybe?
She sees it and laughs a little, quick and soft, still standing close instead of stepping away like most people would after interrupting a conversation. They had the tendency to get caught up in their own world when they were together.
The camera keeps rolling, lingering on them.
The hand still there at her back is rubbing now, and they don’t fully separate even while he turns his attention back to the conversation beside him. (Name) finally walks away
And from the outside, it looks a bit intimate.
All hugged up on each other like that looks too comfortable to be accidental and too natural to question.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤOctober, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Media Speculating.
By this point in his career, Michael has stopped functioning in the public eye as a person who is simply “famous.” Fame is too small a word for what he has become. He exists instead as a cultural constant—something closer to an event than an individual. Even people who have never seen him in person still recognize his presence through media alone. He's become a shared reference point across the globe.
Her fame doesn’t build in the same explosive, global rupture that defines his. It arrived gradually at first, through structure—an album cycle, organized, styled, and deliberately positioned to place her at the center of pop culture without ambiguity. But what happens after her latest release is what changes her entirely.
The record doesn’t just perform well. It defines her. It gives the public a version of her that feels fully formed, not developing. There is no “breakthrough artist” period that lingers in perception for long. Instead, there is a quick shift in language: she is no longer introduced as emerging but established. No longer “upcoming,” but “leading.”
And then the media assigns her a title.
“Princess of pop” becomes shorthand because it simplifies what people think they are seeing. Her image is polished enough to feel the intention and she's likable. Sweet, funny, humble, which makes her highly legible to the public in a way that spreads quickly across magazines, television segments, and early entertainment coverage culture. The public does not just consume her music; it feeds off her presence as well.
So, no one can quite agree on when it started. Hell, Michael and (Name) are still dancing around it themselves.
The first few times, it’s easy to dismiss. They’re musicians. Award shows are small worlds dressed up as enormous ones, the same artists orbiting the same ceremonies, after parties, and backstage hallways until everyone’s paths blur together. A photograph of them talking after an awards show earns a few inches in the entertainment pages before disappearing beneath the next week’s headlines. Then it happens again. Another ceremony. Another charity gala. Another industry party where someone swears they arrived separately but somehow spend most of the evening within sight of one another. Cameras keep finding them laughing during commercial breaks, leaning close enough to hear each other over the music, slipping into conversations that seem to shut the rest of the room out without either of them realizing it.
At first, reporters treat it like harmless fun. Two of the biggest young stars in music spending time together is easy copy, and the headlines stay playful.
“Music’s golden pair?”
“Just friends, or music’s newest power duo?”
“The King and Princess of Pop share another memorable evening.”
Neither of them acknowledges any of it. There’s nothing to deny and nothing to confirm. Their publicists call them friends, stating that they’ve always shared a close relationship before (Name) even blew up. A mentor and mentee type of relationship. Their managers smile politely through interviews, explaining that successful artists naturally cross paths. For a little while, people accept that answer. The stories begin growing longer than the events they’re supposedly covering, with journalists comparing guest lists before premieres have even happened, noticing that if one of them is expected somewhere, the other usually isn’t far behind.
Then the photographs change.
They stop coming from red carpets and heavily staged press lines. Someone catches them leaving the same recording studio long after midnight, her laughing at something he’s said while he holds the door open behind her. A week later another photographer spots them slipping through a hotel’s side entrance after an industry dinner, heads lowered more out of habit than secrecy. Neither notices the cameras until a flash suddenly lights the sidewalk. The pictures run everywhere the next morning, and nothing scandalous happened. It was just based off the simple fact that they’re together. Comfortable. As though neither of them considers sharing the same space remarkable enough to.. hide. That’s the thing, it didn’t seem like they were attempting to hide anything which made the story more interesting as it progressed.
Then comes the photograph everyone remembers.
It appears on the cover of three magazines before the week is over. (Name) steps out of his private residence just after sunrise wearing a wool coat hastily thrown over last night’s clothes, her hair only half pinned back with sunglasses pushed onto the top of her head despite the overcast morning. She looks like a time was had, no shade. Five seconds later, Michael follows, fastening the cuff of his shirt as he steps through the doorway, pausing only long enough to hold the door open before letting it swing shut behind him. There isn’t any visible attempt to create distance between them.
The captions practically write themselves.
“Breakfast together?”
“Early morning depature raises questions.”
“Friends don't usually leave the same house at dawn.”
Again, neither of them responds.
Their silence becomes part of the story.
A few weeks later a video replaces the photo. This one is grainy, taken beneath streetlights outside a restaurant after what had supposedly been a private dinner with friends. They’re stepping off the curb when someone suddenly shouts their names. Without thinking, she reaches toward him and his hand finds hers. The photographer catches the exact second their fingers intertwine. It isn’t posed or even particularly romantic. It’s the instinct. The unconscious movement of two people who have long since stopped wondering whether reaching for each other is appropriate. By the time either of them realizes cameras are there, the moment has already happened.
The video spreads faster than any interview ever could.
Television hosts spend entire segments analyzing it frame by frame. Magazine covers become bolder.
“Hollywood’s worst-kept secret?”
“More than friends?”
“Inside music's most talked-about relationship.”
Soon, columnists begin noticing details no one had paid attention to before. The way she instinctively looks toward him before answering questions on shared red carpets. The way he visibly relaxes whenever she walks into a crowded room. The fact that they no longer bother introducing one another because everyone around them already assumes they’ll arrive together. It becomes impossible to mention one without acknowledging the other, their names slowly merging into a single narrative that neither of them ever agreed to create.
The speculation eventually takes on a life of its own. They become fixtures in gossip columns because they keep appearing in spaces between public obligations. Leaving bookstores. Walking through airports without entourages separating them. Slipping into restaurants through side entrances. Visiting recording studios on days neither has publicly scheduled sessions. Always ordinary places. Always ordinary moments. Ironically, it’s the ordinariness that convinces people. If it were publicity, surely, they’d choose grander stages. Instead, every photograph feels stolen from a real life the public wasn't meant to witness.
The press develops its own language around them.
“Close friends.”
“Constant companions.”
“Frequent collaborators.”
“Reportedly inseparable.”
“Spotted together once again.”
Every headline performs uncertainty while quietly arriving at the same conclusion that there’s an elephant in the room. Award shows become dinners. Dinners become weekends. Weekends become early mornings leaving the same address. The explanations grow thinner while the photographs grow more intimate, yet neither of them offers the world anything concrete. No announcement. No exclusive interview. No carefully crafted statement. But no denial, either.
They simply continue living their lives, refusing to reshape something deeply personal into a story the public can neatly consume. Eventually people stop asking whether they're together and begin asking why they just won’t admit it. The truth, of course, is that whatever exists between them has never belonged to the headlines. The magazines can stitch together timelines from grainy photographs and whispered sightings, but the life they’re trying to explain is unfolding somewhere the cameras never quite reach, in the ordinary hours between performances, where love quietly becomes routine long before the world ever manages to give it a name.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤNovember, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ BET Soul Music Awards - Los Angeles, California.
The BET Soul Music Awards had become one of the biggest nights of the year, but this one felt different before it had even begun.
For weeks it had dominated every entertainment headline. Television hosts spent entire segments speculating about surprise performances, fashion magazines ran prediction pieces on who would wear what, and columnists had somehow managed to turn the seating chart into front page news. The biggest names in music had all arrived beneath the same roof, filling the theater with enough talent, influence, and ego to power an entire city. Diamonds flashed beneath the chandeliers. Satin caught the light every time someone crossed the aisle. Velvet tuxedos, shimmering gowns, polished shoes, expensive perfume, camera flashes. Everywhere she looked was another familiar face, another legend she’d grown up watching, another artist she’d once only dreamed of meeting.
And somehow..
She was the one standing at the center of all of it.
Hosting.
At twenty-three years old, the woman who was declared by the public as the Princess of Pop.
The title still caught her off guard whenever someone else said it aloud. She’d never introduced herself that way and she never would. Yet tonight it seemed impossible to escape. It was printed across rehearsal schedules and cue cards, spoken proudly by producers introducing her to executives she’d already met three times that afternoon, repeated by reporters camped outside on the carpet as though saying it enough would somehow make it feel less surreal.
“Our host for the evening...”
“One of music’s brightest stars...”
“The Princess of Pop herself...”
Every introduction was met with another smile from her, gracious and practiced, even as a small part of her still wanted to turn around to see if they were talking about someone else.
Backstage was its own world entirely.
The polished glamour visible to millions at home dissolved into organized chaos the second someone stepped behind the curtain. Production assistants darted through narrow hallways carrying clipboards thick with revised schedules. Stage managers spoke rapid fire into headsets, pointing toward lighting rigs and camera operators without ever slowing their pace. Stylists hurried after artists armed with garment steamers, lint rollers, powder brushes, safety pins, and enough hairspray to survive a hurricane. Someone sprinted past carrying an entire rack of wardrobe changes. Somewhere farther down the corridor, someone was arguing over a missing microphone.
She barely had time to stand still.
A stylist appeared to smooth the fabric over her hips before disappearing just as quickly. Another adjusted the clasp of a diamond bracelet she’d somehow managed to twist backwards. Someone gently tucked a loose curl back into place before another production assistant slid fresh cue cards into her hands, apologizing because one category had been reordered less than sixty seconds ago.
Everything moved with the frantic precision of people who’d done this a hundred times before.
She inhaled carefully, then exhaled. Ignored the way her pulse refused to settle and then someone counted her down. They were back from commercial break.
Five.
The conversations around her immediately faded beneath the growing roar of the audience on the other side of the curtain.
Four.
The house lights dimmed until only thin strips of blue glowed backstage.
Three.
She rolled her shoulders once, flexing her fingers around the cue cards as the opening music swelled through the auditorium.
Two.
The stage manager pointed toward the entrance.
One.
The curtain lifted and the sound hit her before the light did.
The applause, cheers and screams rolled across the theater like a wave breaking against stone, thousands of people rising to their feet almost instantly. It was loud enough that she felt it vibrate through the floor beneath her heels. Cameras swung toward her from every angle, red recording lights blinking on one after another as she stepped into the spotlight wearing the kind of smile that almost convinced even herself she wasn’t nervous.
Her heart hammered against her ribs anyway.
(Name) welcomed everyone with effortless warmth, delivering the opening monologue exactly as rehearsed, though somehow better than rehearsal ever managed. Every joke landed cleaner once there was a real audience in front of her. Laughter rolled through the theater in waves, interrupted by applause so often she had to pause and let people finish before continuing. She improvised once when a teleprompter skipped a line, earning an even bigger laugh than the scripted joke had been meant to receive.
By the second hour she’d stopped thinking about where the cameras were.
She moved across the stage without thinking about tripping, transitioning seamlessly between presenters, teasing performers with affectionate humor, exchanging quick conversations with artists seated near the front rows that had the audience laughing as though everyone inside the building were old friends. Even backstage, producers were beginning to relax. She could hear snippets of relieved conversations every time she stepped behind the curtain between segments.
“She’s killing it.”
“Best decision we made.”
“She's carrying the whole show.”
Every time the camera found her, she seemed brighter. More comfortable. More confident. The audience adored her, and she returned every ounce of that energy effortlessly, making one of the biggest nights in music somehow feel intimate despite the thousands of people packed into the theater. It was getting closer to towards the end of the show, she had one last award to present.
She glanced down at the next cue card and smile on her face shifted almost imperceptibly. Not smaller, just softer.
Best Male R&B/Pop Artist.
Her french tip adorned fingers tightened slightly around the card.
Michael.
She swallowed before she could think too much about it.
Artists presented awards to other artists all the time. There was nothing unusual about that. It happened every awards season.
But nothing involving the two of them had felt ordinary in months.
Entertainment magazines had practically built an industry around trying to define whatever existed between them. Every charity gala became another cover story. Every award show became another excuse to analyze who looked at whom first. Every blurry photograph of them leaving the same venue within minutes of each other somehow turned into three weeks of speculation.
“Friends?”
“More than friends?”
“Hollywood's biggest couple?”
The headlines changed but the question never did.
(Name) drew one slow, careful breath, lifting her eyes back toward the camera as though there weren’t thousands of people watching and millions more at home. Her smile returned with a sweet ease.
“..And the Soul Music Award goes to..”
She slipped one finger beneath the envelope’s seal; the paper gave way with a quiet tear and the card was unfolded.
The moment she read the name, a grin escaped before professionalism could catch it.
“Michael Jackson.”
The reaction was instantaneous.
The theater exploded.
Applause thundered through the auditorium so loudly it nearly drowned out the orchestra beginning his walk up music. People were already pushing themselves to their feet before the cameras even found him, cheers echoing from every balcony as the entire room seemed to brighten with anticipation. It wasn’t simply applause for another winner.
It was for him.
She turned toward the aisle, the applause still surging through the theater in thick waves that didn’t seem interested in fading anytime soon. The entire room was on its feet, a standing ovation that felt physical force pressing through the air. Cameras tracked the movement instantly, lenses shifting in perfect sync as Michael stood from his seat.
He rose slowly, even with stadiums and decades of history behind him, there was still a flicker of shyness in the way he adjusted his jacket, a subtle dip of his head that softened the image of him. The smile that formed on his face arrived gently and then stayed, warm and unguarded, only growing the second his eyes found hers.
He began walking toward the stage and the crowd only got louder for him, but his attention didn’t shift. Not even once. He moved with his gentle rhythm and then just before he reached the steps, he caught his bottom lip lightly between his teeth, a nervous little habit that always betrayed him. It’s by far the most attractive tick anyone has seen. When he looked up again, his gaze was straight on her as she stood there standing so pretty in her hair, makeup and dress holding his award.
She felt it immediately. That pull in her expression she didn’t have to think about. The smile came before she could stop it, softer than anything she had given the cameras all night, and suddenly she wasn’t hosting anymore, not in any way that mattered.
He climbed the steps and reached her, stopping close enough that the air between them felt charged and uncomfortably aware. The audience was still roaring, but it was fading into something distant. They looked at each other for a moment that stretched just a fraction too long to be stage timing. They’re both blushing, terribly.
She lifted the trophy between them, hands steady in the way she had trained them to be, even though nothing else about her felt steady at all.
“Congratulations.” She smiles shyly.
His gaze softened as it dropped briefly to the award, then returned to her face. “Thank you.”
Their fingers met as he took it, and for a second neither of them let go properly. An unintentional pause where contact lingered longer than necessary and neither of them had decided who was supposed to move first.
Then he did.
Not backward.
Not toward the microphone.
Toward her.
It was small at first, just the shift of his shoulders and the way the trophy lowered slightly between them, but his eyes stayed locked on hers the entire time and whatever instinct normally governed distance simply didn’t show up to do its job.
She realized what was happening a second too late to stop it from mattering.
He leaned in.
Slow enough that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else, intentional enough that her mind had time to register every stage of it before it actually happened. The space between them narrowed until there was almost none left, and her breath caught somewhere useless in her chest.
For a brief, suspended moment, he stopped just short, so close that she could feel the warmth of him and that the entire stadium might as well have disappeared if it weren’t for the fact that it absolutely hadn’t.
Then he closed the distance.
The kiss was gentle, certain, and startlingly soft as their lips moved against one another in a slow, intimate movement. She froze for the smallest fraction of a second out of sheer disbelief, and then instinct caught up, and she leaned into it before thought could interfere any further. Her hand covered their mouths from the camera as he smiled into the kiss.
Everything outside them dropped away completely. The audience, the lights, the cameras, all of it vanished into something irrelevant and far away. There was only the feeling of it, brief and unreal in the way moments like that tend to be when they shouldn’t be happening at all, especially not here, especially not like this.
Then it ended almost as soon as it fully registered, the two of them separating with the same stunned awareness, like neither of them had fully decided how they had gotten there or how they were supposed to return to reality afterward.
The theater was nuts.
The sound hit like a physical shockwave, screams and applause colliding into something deafening enough to shake the space itself. People were on their feet instantly, cameras flashing so rapidly the stage flickered in bursts of white light. It felt less like applause and more like chaos given permission to exist.
(Name) stared at him for a second too long, completely unfiltered, eyes wide with disbelief as the reality of what he had just done caught up with her all at once.
Then she laughed to herself, just pure shock breaking through and she lifted her hand and smacked his chest lightly, more out of instinct than anger.
“You—“ The word fell apart into laughter before she could finish it. Her cheeks were already burning, and she looked genuinely overwhelmed the way people only do when something insane happens in front of them and they’re expected to continue functioning anyway.
He immediately dropped his gaze for half a second, laughing under his breath, clearly just as thrown by his own decision as everyone else in the building.
The applause refused to settle. Even as he raised the award slightly and leaned toward the mic, “Thank you,” he said quietly, sheepish and grinning at the same time.
She shook her head, smiling too hard to pretend she was anything close to composed, and stepped back just enough to give him space. He took a breath, still grinning himself, then glanced down at the trophy for a second before speaking.
“I.. I wanna thank the creator above,” He began softly, and the room finally started to quiet in response, the energy shifting from chaos into attention. “My family.. everyone who believed in me, who continues to believe in me and everyone who’s supported me over the years.”
He paused, thumb brushing lightly over the edge of the award as if grounding himself, then looked up again. Straight at her.
(Name) was still standing just off to the side of the stage, trying very hard to look like she wasn’t still recovering from what had just happened. His smile returned, smaller now, more personal.
“And.. I’d like to thank the lady in my life.” A ripple of laughter moved through the audience instantly, followed by cheers that started building again like they were just waiting for permission.
“You all might know her.” That earned louder reactions, people already laughing as if the answer wasn’t obvious enough. “She’s been doing a wonderful job hosting tonight. Don’t you think?” His question is followed by cheers of agreement. Oh, she was going to kill him.
“You know, when she told me that BET had contacted her for the role, she said she was honored to even be considered but she was afraid that she was going to trip and fall.” He said, earning more laughs and endeared awes.
“She’s very special to me, and she takes good care of me.” He looks over at her and eyes never left hers, even as the noise swelled again around him. “And I can’t see myself without her.” He held the look for a beat longer than necessary, like he wasn’t speaking to the room anymore at all.
Then he softened into a final smile before raising the trophy to the lights and audience. “Thank you.”
The applause came crashing back harder than before, the kind that didn’t just fill space but swallowed it completely, while she stood there shaking her head like she still couldn’t decide whether to laugh or disappear.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ 1990.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
By 1990, they’d been boyfriend and girlfriend for a good bit of time. This year was a year of firsts for them, the start of a new and exciting relationship that that been growing from a seed that mad been planted nearly four years ago.
There wasn’t a formal conversation where they decided to spend every spare moment together. It just happened. She found herself leaving more clothes at Neverland because it became easier than packing another overnight bag. Her favorite skincare and hygiene products appeared in his master bathroom right beside his own. A drawer became her own walk-in closet. Her books started collecting on the bedside table, her records found their way onto shelves that hadn’t belonged to her a few months earlier, and somehow half the flowers in the gardens had been planted because she’d once mentioned liking them in passing. She still technically had her own place, but she spent so many nights at Neverland that the staff had stopped asking whether she’d be staying for dinner.
One evening, while they wandered through the house discussing furniture he absolutely didn’t need, Michael glanced at her almost absentmindedly.
“You know…” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “I think you should spend more time here.”
(Name) smiled without looking up from the lamp she’d been pretending to consider. “I practically live here already, silly.”
“I know.”
She laughed softly. “So what are you talking about?”
He looked at her then, wearing that shy and gentle smile that always seemed to appear whenever he was about to admit something. “I mean..” He shrugged one shoulder, suddenly fascinated by the hardwood floor. “..Move in.”
She blinked. “..What?”
He finally looked back up, the corners of his mouth lifting just enough to betray the fact that he’d been rehearsing those two words in his head for days. “Move in., with me. Your boyfriend.”
For a long moment, she simply stared at him. The thought had never occurred to her that he could ask so simply, as though sharing a home with her was the most obvious thing in the world.
A smile slowly found its way onto her face. “I think,” She murmured, taking the last few steps until she was standing directly in front of him, “I’d like that very much, boyfriend.”
Michael’s shoulders visibly relaxed, the quiet relief written all over his face before he leaned down to steal a quick kiss.
Things were good that year.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ January, 1991.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ ‘92 Grammys - Los Angeles, California.
“Michael, (Name). You’re both queued next.”
The event manager’s voice drifted in through the open limousine door, nearly drowned out by the wall of sound waiting outside. Camera flashes poured through the opening in uneven bursts, briefly illuminating the dark interior before fading again. Beyond the barricades, photographers were already calling their names, their voices overlapping into an indistinct chorus that rose and fell with each arriving guest.
She blinked.
The ring.
She’d been staring at it again.
Her hand rested in her lap, fingers lightly curled, the diamond catching every stray flash that reached inside the car. It scattered little pieces of light across the satin of her gown, dazzling one second and soft the next. She turned her wrist almost absentmindedly, watching it shimmer. It was beautiful, and expensive. She knows that much. Everything beyond that point dissolved into the background.
She still couldn’t quite believe it belonged there. On her finger.
She was someone’s fiancé? What in the world? She remembers being only twenty years old trying to break into this industry. Love was the last thing on her mind.
The proposal returned to her in fragments. Michael’s hands trembling so badly he nearly dropped the ring before he’d even asked. The way he’d stumbled over words he’d clearly spent days rehearsing until they both fell into nervous laughter. The tears she’d never managed to stop before she’d interrupted him with an answer he hadn’t even finished asking for. In retrospect, she probably should have suspected something was up when he brought out the entire Disney park for the day, even more so when her friends acted like it was so urgent to get their nails done the day before.
Sometimes she looked at the ring and remembered that night.
The soft click of the limousine door opening wider pulled her back.
Michael was already moving as he stepped out first, greeted immediately by another explosion of camera flashes and cheers from behind the barricades. For a moment, all she could see was his pretty silhouette against the sea of white light as he straightened his jacket beneath the photographers’ relentless attention.
Then he turned.
Without hesitation, he reached one hand back into the limousine.
Waiting.
She smiled to herself and her hand slipped into his.
The diamond caught the light the instant their fingers met, sparkling brilliantly beneath the flashes as he helped her toward the door with the same sweet care he’d always shown her when no one was looking. Only this time, everyone was looking.
She stepped carefully onto the pavement, her gown falling neatly into place as she straightened beside him. Their hands remained linked between them, the ring resting perfectly where the cameras couldn’t help but find it. Flash after flash reflected across the stone until it glittered almost as brightly as the lights pointed at them.
She looked around for a second then back up at him but he was already watching her. Not the photographers or the crowd.
Her.
That impossibly gentle smile spread across his face, softening everything about him. It was the same smile she’d seen across breakfast tables, in empty hotel hallways after concerts, during quiet evenings when the rest of the world had finally disappeared.
Without thinking, she smiled back and he leaned toward her just slightly, enough to silently ask for a kiss.
(Name) closed the remaining distance herself, brushing a quick, tender kiss against his lips. When they separated, he was still smiling, his forehead almost touching hers for the briefest second before he let out a quiet, breathy laugh that only she could hear beneath the chaos surrounding them.
His thumb brushed once across the back of her hand, and she gave his fingers the smallest squeeze in return before they turned toward the waiting carpet together.
The photographers erupted all over again, calling their names from every direction as flashes exploded like fireworks around them. Tomorrow’s headlines would talk about the kiss, the ring, the glamour, the fashion, every polished detail the cameras had managed to capture.
Neither of them seemed particularly concerned with any of it.
They simply smiled at one another one last time before facing forward, their joined hands swinging naturally between them as they took their first steps onto the red carpet.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤMay, 1991.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ A private estate - Temecula Valley, California.⠀ ⠀ ⠀
It was strange how quickly a wedding day disappeared.
They had spent months planning it, changing little details, choosing flowers, tasting cakes, arguing over songs, finalizing seating charts. Then the day arrived, and suddenly.. it was evening. A bittersweet feeling, really.
The ceremony had passed in a blur of music, sunlight, trembling hands, and promises neither of them had struggled to make. (Name) remembered seeing him at the end of the aisle, looking happier than she’d ever seen him—crying when he saw her. In that moment she remembered thinking, “you are the love of my life.” Everything after that had unfolded was exactly as it was meant to. A perfect day.
Now they were husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
The ceremony had been held on the grounds of a sprawling private estate tucked far enough away from the nearest road that the world might as well not have existed beyond its gates. White roses lined the aisle beneath towering oak trees, their branches stretching overhead as though they had grown there specifically to shelter the occasion. Hundreds of candles waited to be lit for the evening reception, and every path through the gardens had been woven with flowers that looked as though they’d bloomed there naturally.
It had been a large wedding by any measure. Family, lifelong friends, musicians, actors, producers, dancers, people who had watched them grow from children into artists, and others who had become part of the life they’d built together. Nearly every seat had been filled, yet somehow it had never felt crowded. The guest list had been expansive without becoming impersonal, each invitation sent to someone who mattered for reasons beyond status or headlines.
The press, for once, had been left outside.
Security had begun preparing weeks in advance, making sure every entrance to the estate remained private, every road carefully monitored, every helicopter route restricted as much as legally possible. The tabloids had guessed at locations, published fabricated schedules, and parked photographers miles away on the chance they might catch a glimpse of something through the trees.
They hadn’t.
The only cameras inside belonged to people Michael and she had chosen themselves. A handful of trusted professional photographers moved through the celebration, documenting the day without interrupting it, capturing laughter instead of spectacle and stolen glances instead of performances. They weren’t there to chase a headline. They were there to preserve memories. Every photograph would remain theirs before it belonged to anyone else.
And for the first time in years, they had been allowed something astonishingly rare. Privacy.
Not complete anonymity—that would never truly exist for either of them. But peace was achievable.
The vows had been spoken without the click of paparazzi shutters competing against every word. They had slipped rings onto one another’s fingers beneath birdsong instead of shouted questions from behind barricades. When the officiant had finally pronounced them husband and wife, the applause had come only from the people who loved them both, echoing warmly through the gardens before disappearing into the afternoon air.
It had been everything they’d hoped for.
Nothing extravagant for extravagance’s sake, despite how magnificent it all appeared. Every flower, every song, every place setting, every handwritten menu, every candle burning across the reception had been chosen because it meant something to one of them. The elegance wasn’t there to impress anyone. It simply reflected the life they had spent years building together, thoughtful in every detail and beautiful.
As daylight faded into evening, the celebration moved beneath a canopy of lights strung through the trees, casting a warm golden glow over the reception. Music drifted across the gardens while conversations blended into soft laughter, crystal glasses caught the candlelight with every toast, and somewhere beyond the estate walls the rest of the world continued searching for a wedding it would never witness.
Inside, hidden from every telephoto lens and gossip column, they were exactly where they wanted to be. Together and finally, husband and wife.
That same night of course they consummated their marriage.
Her hair is soft, slightly messy from the humidity of the suite as her veil fanned out beneath her like a halo against white silk pillowcases. They were tangled in missionary position: Michael braced above her on his forearms, moving with slow but deep thrusts that made every slide inside her feel endless. She held him close; one hand cradling the back of his neck while fingers threaded through sweat damp strands at his temples.
The wedding dress was long gone—discarded somewhere near their feet—but she still wore that delicate garter belt under sheer stockings, and it drove him wild knowing she’d kept something bridal on for this exact moment. Her heat clenched around him like a vise; the drag of his cock against slick walls made every withdrawal feel like torture before plunging back in even deeper than before.
He slowed, stopped entirely before he pressed their foreheads together instead as they caught breathless air between kisses. The space where their bodies joined glistened—an obscene, beautiful mess of frothy white clinging to the base of his cock like liquid pearls. Precum mixed with her arousal; a thin ring that stretched and snapped every time he pulled back just slightly before surging forward again in those slow, deep rolls. And each time he pushed deeper, that slick little ring got thicker. More abundant.
Then losing himself all over again when she arched up for another kiss mid thrust.
“Lovey—I wanna be a daddy..” A pause where he just stared into her eyes, pupils blown with pleasure as he whispered: “Can I give you my baby? Please?” A kiss. “Please, please, let me—lemme make you a mommy, give you a beautiful baby..” He’s babbling at this point, and she watches him above her with a dazed smile hidden behind a bitten bottom lip. She nods at him, lip popping back into place.
“Fill me up, Michael..” She whispered—soft but insistent, her fingers threading through his sweat damp hair as she coaxed him down against her chest. Her heartbeat pounded beneath his ear; a frantic drum of sound matching the stuttering rhythm of his hips now. Each thrust turned sharper, needier—chasing something neither could name anymore beyond more. She came rather suddenly, her body wasn’t cooperating with her plans of wanting to finish together but he just felt so good.
Then she felt it. A gush so sudden and deep inside that it punched a gasp from her throat—wonder.
“That’s it.. give me your baby,” She breathed out raggedly while cradling him closer like he might vanish if she let go even an inch. Her hands stroked over trembling muscles on back as aftershocks wracked through his body.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ August 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
A lamp in the corner cast a warm honeyed glow across the living room, softening everything it seemed to touch. It was around 11 PM when she moved through the space, slowly and graciously as she picked up the mess from the day and straightened out things like pillows and throw blankets for the couch all barefoot on the polished floor. Her movement that had become second nature without her even noticing. She had long since had her baby, but her sense of urgency remained the same. There was a gentleness to everything she did now, motherhood had recalibrated her brain around something so small and precious that existed just a few feet away. She paused near the baby holder, lowering her gaze.
Aladdin was asleep inside it bundled neatly, his tiny face relaxed and completely unguarded the way babies only ever managed when they were fully gone into sleep. One hand had slipped free of the blanket and rested near his cheek. The sight made something in her expression soften even further. She reached down carefully, adjusting the edge of the blanket without disturbing him. Her fingers lingered for a second before she straightened again, exhaling quietly.
The estate still felt like Michael, even when he wasn’t there yet. That was the thing she hadn’t gotten used to and she doesn’t think she ever will, the way his absence didn’t feel empty so much as.. incomplete. He’s been coming home late these past few days, recording for a new album.
The front door clicked open and there was a pause, followed by the sound of him stepping inside and the faint shift of movement as he closed the door behind him. Then his voice, already softer than it probably needed to be, careful in the way it always was when he came home late and knew she’d notice.
“Tink? You were supposed to be in bed by now..” He set something down just out of sight before she finally looked at him.
“You’re late..” Her tone carried enough disappointment to make the point without raising her voice, not that she ever felt the need to even raise her voice at him.
Michael stepped further into the room, loosening his jacket as he looked at her. His expression shifted immediately, whatever exhaustion he had softened the second he saw her standing there in the cozy light, hair loose and her face calm but tired the usual way it was after she had a long day with the baby. His beautiful wife.
“I know, pretty mama. I’m sorry.” He crossed the space between them without hesitation and leaned in to press a gentle kiss against her cheek. “Forgive me.”
She tried to hold the expression for another second, the small pout still lingering like she wanted to stay mildly annoyed long enough for it to count but it didn’t last. Her shoulders relaxed, and she gave him a look that was half warning and half surrender before she leaned in and kissed him properly, soft and brief as her hand rested lightly against his chest.
When she pulled back, her gaze flicked past him for a second toward the baby holder, instinctively checking again.
Michael followed her eyes, then back to her, the smallest smile forming as if he already understood everything she wasn’t saying out loud.
He lowered his voice without thinking. “How’s he been?”
She lingered near Michael without moving away from him properly, the space between them had become something her body naturally refused to widen. Her fingers reached up first, adjusting his collar with an absent tenderness, smoothing the fabric where it sat slightly uneven against his neck. Her hand lingered there before sliding down over his chest in a slow, grounding motion.
“Good, but we missed you today..” Her voice came out soft, already slipping into that tired half sleepy tone that followed long days and late nights. There wasn’t accusation in it, just honesty that came from someone who had spent the day stretching herself between routines and small responsibilities and the demand of caring for a newborn.
Michael looked at her warm and apologetic as he leaned closer, the sound of her voice alone gave him a tingly feeling. His hand came up lightly, resting at her waist anchoring himself there. She had him wrapped around her finger, he hoped she knew.
“I missed you too—you both.”
She let out a small breath that almost turned into a sigh, her hand still resting against his chest for a moment before she finally let it fall, only to look up at him properly.
“Where were you today?” Tired curiosity.
For a brief second, something flickered across his expression. Not guilt exactly.. or anything that could be named easily for that matter. It was more like calculation, as if he was deciding how much of the day belonged in this conversation and how much should stay outside it. He shifted slightly, loosening his shoulders trying to make the answer sound simpler than it was.
“Just meetings. A few things came up—met a couple friends.”
It was vague enough that it didn’t invite more questions unless someone was looking for them. But she honestly wasn’t.
(Name) nodded a little, accepting it the way people accept small absences they assume will make sense later, then let her attention drift back to him instead of the explanation. Whatever part of her had briefly reached for curiosity dissolved quickly under the familiar pull of him being close again.
Michael exhaled quietly, tension easing from his posture as he stepped closer, his hand sliding up from her waist to her back. The conversation stopped being about answers and became softer and more physical. Something she desperately needed after the day she had.
“You look tired,” He murmured, brushing his thumb gently along her side as if checking for it himself.
“I am, baby..” She admitted quietly.
He smiled faintly at that, then he leaned in and kissed her forehead first, before letting his hand slide up to cradle the side of her face.
Her eyes softened almost immediately and whatever trace of curiosity she had, let go without resistance. She leaned into him slightly, her earlier concern dissolving into clinginess, folding back into his touch.
Behind them, the baby slept on, untouched by anything beyond his own small world of warmth and baby breath.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ September, 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
Today had been a fun day for their little family! A cute day out that started with a shopping spree and ended with a nice dinner at their favorite restaurant. But all good things must come to an end.
The bathroom was quiet the way it usually was after a certain time. One of the vanity lights had been left on because she always forgets to do something before she leaves the house. The light reflected softly against the marble countertop and beyond the cracked door, the rest of the house had gone almost completely silent.
She stood at the sink, humming a little melody as she searched through the medicine cabinet for a small bottle of ibuprofen. Her shoulders ached from carrying the baby for most of the afternoon, and she promised herself she would take something before bed.
Michael was only a few feet away, standing in front of the mirror with his sleeves rolled to his forearms, carefully unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt after the long day. She moved a few things aside before her fingers settled around an orange prescription bottle.
Then another.
She frowned slightly and tilted her head. The first one was nearly empty and she picked up the second without thinking, turning it over to read the label.
Her eyes lingered on it for a second. “..Baby?”
Michael looked up from the mirror. “Hm?”
She glanced between the two bottles in her hands. “I thought you just refilled this prescription...” Her voice was gentle, more puzzled than anything else.
She held up the second bottle a little. “..You have another?” The room seemed to pause, and it was so brief she almost convinced herself she’d imagined it.
Michael’s eyes settled on the bottles before returning to her, his expression remaining calm, though something behind it had tightened ever so slightly. “My doctor wanted me to have another one.”
His answer came easily enough. “You know, just in case.”
She looked back down at the label, her thumb brushing across the plastic cap. “Oh.”
A small silence settled between them. “..Have you had them look at it recently?” She looked up again, concern softening her features. “The burns, I mean. Because baby, you shouldn’t be dealing with this kind of pain..”
He gave the smallest shrug, eyes drifting toward the sink instead of meeting hers immediately. “Yes, of course. But they give me the same answers every time.” There wasn’t any bitterness in his voice, just genuine fatigue.
She nodded slowly and accepted the answer without another thought.
She’d seen the scars; it was the very first thing he showed her before they got really serious about one another. She knew how severe the accident had been. Of course, there were days it still hurt but she just hates the idea that he suffers through this. For God’s sake it happened in ’84, it’s currently ’92 now.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Ignore me.”
He looked back at her then, offering a faint smile that was warm enough to ease the concern from her face. "It's okay."
She smiled back and without another word, she placed the second prescription bottle exactly where she found it, closed the cabinet, and crossed the room toward him. Her hands found the front of his shirt first, smoothing the fabric before they settled lightly against his chest.
“You work too hard.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “So I’ve been told.”
She leaned up and pressed a gentle kiss beneath his jaw, lingering there for just a moment before resting her forehead against his shoulder. “You should let yourself rest more.”
His arms slipped naturally around her waist. “I know..”
Neither of them spoke again for a while.
The bathroom returned to its comfortable silence, broken only by the faint hum of the lights overhead and the distant creak of the house settling around them.
The prescription bottles remained tucked away inside the cabinet, unnoticed now.
By morning, she wouldn't think about them again. To her, they were simply another reminder that the man she loved still carried pain from injuries the world had long since forgotten.
A year later, she would remember the conversation with an unsettling clarity and wonder if that had been the first time something quietly slipped beyond her reach. At the time, though, it was nothing more than an ordinary night between a husband and wife, ending the same way most of their nights did, wrapped in each other’s arms while the rest of the house slept.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ October, 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
Steam lingered in the bathroom, fogging the edges of the mirror until only blurred reflections remained. The room smelled faintly of eucalyptus and shampoo, warm from the shower that had been running for the last several minutes. The baby monitor rested on the counter, its tiny green light glowing steadily beside the sink, carrying nothing but the gentle sound of Aladdin’s giggles and Janet’s coos the hall.
Michael sat on the small stool in front of the tub; a towel draped around his shoulders while she stood behind him with one hand resting lightly against the back of his neck. He was 5’9 but she always sworn he was taller than that, he just looked so awkward and lanky especially in this position,
His hair was damp beneath her fingers as she worked the shampoo through it slowly, taking her time the way she always did. The soft curls slipped easily between her hands until she reached the patch of scar tissue hidden beneath the dark strands. Without thinking, her touch became even lighter, fingertips barely grazing his scalp as she carefully massaged around the area instead of directly over it.
Michael drew the smallest breath through his nose, it wasn’t quite a wince, but she did notice.
Her hands stopped immediately. “..Too much?”
He shook his head. “No.”
She wasn’t convinced. “You always say no.”
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “’Cause you're always worried.”
“I am worried.” Her voice was quiet, matter of fact.
“It still hurts.” He was silent for a moment before giving the slightest nod. “But I promise, it’s not terrible right now.”
She sighed before she resumed, somehow managing to be even gentler than before. Her fingertips moved with careful patience, and every so often she’d pause just to brush damp curls away from his forehead before continuing.
“I hate that it still bothers you.”
He looked down at his hands resting loosely in his lap. “I’ve gotten used to it, mama.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t mean you should have to, Mi.”
Neither of them spoke after that. The only sounds were the slow trickle of water from the faucet and the quiet rhythm of her hands moving through his hair.
When she finished, she wrapped the towel around his shoulders more securely before leaning down to press a kiss against the top of his head, deliberately avoiding the sensitive places.
“There.”
He smiled to himself. “Thank you, pretty.”
She squeezed his shoulder once before turning toward the sink to rinse her hands. Behind her, she heard the medicine cabinet open.
It barely registered at first. She reached for a hand towel, drying her fingers absentmindedly and she glances up just as Michael tipped two pills into his palm.
He swallowed them with a sip of water and she watched him for a second.
Then her brow knit together ever so slightly.
(Name) crossed the room without another thought, slipping her arms loosely around his waist from behind and he relaxed into the embrace as she rested her cheek against his shoulder, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing.
But the furrow between her brow never left, lost in thought as her gaze fell into nothing in particular.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ November, 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
The afternoon had settled into one of those slow, sleepy hours where the whole house seemed to breathe a little quieter. Sunlight drifted through the living room windows, warming the hardwood floors in long, golden rectangles that shifted almost imperceptibly as the day wore on. Outside, the gardens were still, save for the occasional movement of leaves stirred by a light breeze.
Aladdin had fallen asleep nearly twenty minutes earlier, the occasional sleepy crackle drifting through the baby monitor on the side table. She’d rocked him until his little fingers finally loosened around hers, laid him carefully in his crib, then stood there for another five minutes anyway, just watching his chest rise and fall because some part of her still couldn’t quite believe someone so small was entirely their responsibility.
His stroller rested near the front door where they’d left it after returning from the pediatrician, a tiny knit blanket folded neatly over the handle instead of where it belonged. A bottle sat forgotten on the coffee table beside a stack of music magazines she hadn’t opened in weeks.
Now, she stood at the window, absently twisting the ring on her finger.
Outside, the gardens swayed gently beneath the breeze. Somewhere farther down the property, she could just make out the stable through the trees, the horses moving lazily in the afternoon sun.
It should have been enough.
But lately, she’d been wondering why it didn’t always feel like enough.
Behind her, Michael sat curled into one end of the sofa with a book open in his lap. Every now and then he’d glance toward the hallway without thinking, listening for any sign the baby had woken before returning to the same paragraph he’d already read twice.
He looked comfortable.
Content.
More at home than she’d ever seen him.
“Lovey, I got a call this morning.” Her voice was so quiet that for a moment he wasn’t sure she’d meant to speak aloud.
He lifted his eyes. “From who?”
“The label.” She didn't turn around. “They wanted to know when I'd be ready to come back.” The words settled into the room without either of them rushing to fill the silence that followed.
Michael lowered the book into his lap. “Oh.”
She watched a pair of birds disappear over the trees. “They’re thinkign about starting another album.”
Another pause. “They asked if I’d started writing anything.” Her thumb absently traced the diamond of her ring. “I told them I hadn’t.”
It wasn't entirely true.
There were notebooks tucked away upstairs with pages she’d filled while Aladdin napped. Half-finished melodies hummed into cassette recorders in the middle of the night. Lyrics scribbled onto grocery lists because inspiration had inconvenient timing.
She just hadn’t told anyone. “I miss it, Mi.” The admission was nearly swallowed by the quiet room. “I miss the studio.”
She then let out a slow breath. “I miss recording until two in the morning because I can’t get something right.” A small laugh escaped her. “I even miss arguing with producers.”
“But.. I feel guilty for missing it.” Michael watched her for a long moment before setting the book he’d been reading aside.
“You don’t have to go back.”
She looked over her shoulder. “I know.”
“You could stay home.” His voice remained gentle. “You don’t have to rush.” He stood, crossing the room until he stopped in front of her. “You’ve got everything right here.” His hand rested lightly against her arm.
“You’ve got him.” Then, quieter. “You’ve got me.”
She smiled faintly. “I know.”
“You could take another year.”
“I could.”
“You could take five.”
A tiny laugh escaped her. “I don’t think my record label would like that.”
“I don’t care what your record label likes.” Michael says, too quickly.
She looked down, smiling for only a second before it faded again. “..I do.”
Silence settled between them.
“I love being his mom.” Her voice caught ever so slightly. “I love it more than I ever imagined I would.” She looked toward the nursery down the hall. “But I love making music too.” She shook her head.
“I don’t know how to be both.”
Michael stepped closer and both of his hands rose slowly to her face, cupping her cheeks with familiar tenderness until she had little choice but to stop staring at the floor.
She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
“My girl..” His thumbs brushed gently beneath her cheekbones. “You don’t have to figure it out today.”
She let out a slow breath. “I’m scared.” She looked down at her hands. “It feels like I’m supposed to be completely happy just staying home.”
“You are happy.” He starts. “Are you not..?” His brows pinch together.
“I am.” She answered so quickly it almost hurt that he would even question that. “I am, Michael.”
She swallowed and her voice softened. “I love waking up with him. I love feeding him. I love putting him to bed. I love every tiny little thing.”
She smiled to herself, remembering. “When he falls asleep on my shoulder..” Her expression melted for just a moment. “..I don’t think there's anywhere else I’d rather be.”
She looked back up. “But I still miss music.” The confession lingered between them. “I don’t know what that says about me.”
“We need you.” Michael says. The words came so naturally that he didn’t even realize what he was admitting until they’d already left him.
Because he did.
He needed this.
He needed mornings that began with sleepy kisses in the kitchen while a baby laughed from a high chair. He needed evenings that ended with all three of them asleep under the same roof. He needed coming home and finding her barefoot in the living room, humming to herself while folding impossibly tiny clothes.
He had spent his entire life being pulled away by schedules, contracts, rehearsals, flights, interviews, people who always needed another piece of him.
This.. this was the first thing that had ever felt entirely his.
Not fame.
Not success.
Home.
And somewhere beneath all the love he carried for her lived a quieter, more frightened truth.
If she went back.. the world would start asking for her again. The studio. The tours. The interviews. The months apart.
Michael knew that world and he hated what it took from people.
A selfish part of him wanted to keep this exactly as it was. To keep her close. To keep the three of them together inside this peaceful little bubble for as long as he possibly could.
“If it were me..” He hesitated as his thumbs slowed against her cheeks. “I think I’d stay.” The moment the words left him, he saw something shift in her face.
She looked away again and he realized quickly that he’d answered the question he wanted answered. Not the one she’d actually asked.
He knows he’s being selfish, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t care.
Michael stepped just a little closer, trying to catch her eyes again, his hands still cradling her face. “My girl..”
She finally looked back at him, and her eyes were glossy now. “I’m scared, Michael.” Her voice barely carried. “What if I go back.. and I miss all of this?” She glanced toward the nursery. “What if I blink and he’s suddenly five?”
A tear slipped free before she brushed it away herself. “But what if I don’t go back..” She laughed weakly through the tears. “..And one day I don’t recognize myself anymore?”
There wasn’t a real answer.
Michael searched her face for something he could fix.
Anything.
Instead, all he found was the woman he loved trying to hold two equally important parts of herself without dropping either. His hands slipped from her cheeks just enough to brush her hair back behind her ears.
His expression softened. “What can I do for you, baby?”
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Thinking.
Breathing.
When she opened them again, the tears hadn’t disappeared, but they weren’t falling anymore. Her gaze drifted toward the front door, where Aladdin’s stroller still waited from that morning.
“..Can we go for a walk?” She smiled faintly. “With the baby.”
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, lingering there until she felt some of the tension leave her shoulders.
“Yes,” He whispered. “Of course.”
A few minutes later, they stepped outside together. Michael pushed the stroller with one hand and his other found hers.
The conversation remained unfinished.
It would stay unfinished for months.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ August - December 1993.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
(Name) genuinely believes her husband died somewhere in 1993. Not in any literal sense, but his soul did. His essence. The spark and light in his eyes dimmed into something unrecognizable and broken by a cruel fucking world that never really let him breathe to begin with.
There’s no clean break to grieve or any one moment she can point to and say this is when I lost him. It’s a slow, nauseating realization that the version of him she fell in love within her early twenties stopped existing in a place she can still reach—a place where she could still kiss and hold. And the worst part is that he’s still here in the physical realm. Grieving a man who’s still alive made her feel.. sick in ways she couldn’t possibly explain in words. It feels like a hole is in her heart, a large gaping hole that only he could fill. He had been her other half in the way people don’t usually mean literally. But it started to feel like she was holding something inside her chest that had been torn into pieces and rearranged wrong. She could picture it so perfectly, her own bloody, beating heart held in her hands, not intact and wrong in shape, pieces pulled out of it and stolen. And somehow, she was still expected to keep living like this? It felt like there was no possible way, but she was living through this.
(Name) never left his side.
The days became measured by meetings instead of hours. Attorneys came and went through the front door carrying leather briefcases that never seemed any lighter when they left, heavier even. Conference tables disappeared beneath stacks of legal documents, newspaper clippings, witness statements, calendars marked over so many times the ink bled together. Telephones rang before breakfast and long after midnight. There were strategy sessions that lasted entire afternoons led by conversations spoken in careful, clinical language that managed to strip every ounce of humanity from the man they were talking about. Publicists discussed disgusting headlines. Security discussed routes before they left the house. Lawyers argued over words, dates, timelines, and statements until they all blurred into one endless conversation that never truly ended, only paused long enough to begin again the next morning. Somewhere in the middle of it all sat Michael, shoulders a little more slumped than the day before, listening as strangers dissected every corner of his life while she stayed beside him, her hand quietly finding his beneath the table.
She became his wife in every sense of the word she had promised on their wedding day. She never let go of his hand. She rubbed circles into the back of his neck during meetings that lasted hours longer than they should have. She smiled for him when he couldn’t find it in himself. She carried the pieces of him he no longer seemed strong enough to carry alone and never once let him feel ashamed for needing her to.
But no matter how tightly she held him together, she couldn’t stop watching him disappear. Never complaining once.
(Name) reminded him to eat when the day disappeared beneath paperwork. She coaxed him upstairs after nights spent sitting in the same chair until dawn, still wearing yesterday’s clothes because neither of them had realized another day had already begun. When sleep wouldn’t come, she stayed awake beside him. When he finally managed to drift off from pure exhaustion, she stayed awake anyway, afraid that if she looked away for too long, he’d wake up.
If the world insisted on putting him through it, then it would have to put her through it too.
And that had never felt like sacrifice.
It had only felt like marriage.
The allegations did something to him that she couldn’t fight with tenderness alone. They hollowed him out in places she hadn’t known could become empty. At first the changes were so small she convinced herself they belonged to stress. A missed laugh. A smile that disappeared a little too quickly. His attention drifting halfway through conversations before he gently asked her to repeat what she’d just said.
Then the spaces between those moments started growing.
His laughter became quieter until she realized one afternoon she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard it. The brightness that had always lived behind his eyes gave way to a guarded wall, every waking moment for him had become an exercise in bracing for impact. He moved through the house weakly, carrying himself with an invisible weight that seemed to follow him from room to room. Even when nothing was happening, he looked as though he was waiting for something terrible to happen next.
There were days he barely spoke unless someone spoke to him first.
Sometimes she would catch him standing in the middle of a room with no clear reason for being there. One hand resting against the kitchen counter. Eyes fixed on nothing. So still she almost wondered if he’d forgotten why he’d walked in at all. When she’d quietly ask him what he needed, he’d blink once or twice like he’d only just remembered she was there.
“I don’t know,” He’d answer. It broke her every time.
Sleep abandoned him first. Then his appetite, though, he is the first to admit he’s never been a great eater but these past couple years she successfully managed to put a little more weight on him. All of which is gone by now.
There were days when she wasn’t sure he remembered how to take care of himself. Because everything else had become so unbearably heavy that the ordinary things were the first to disappear. Eating. Sleeping. Bathing. Changing into clean clothes. Things like that became things she gently coaxed him toward.
She would find him hours later exactly where she’d left him, a cup of coffee gone cold beside him because he’d never made it upstairs from the night before. She’d kneel in front of him without a word, unbutton his jacket while he watched her with tired eyes, and tell him softly, “Come on, baby.” Most of the time, he’d go.
Then the parts of himself that had always reached instinctively toward life. Music no longer drifted absentmindedly from beneath closed doors. The piano downstairs sat untouched for days at a time. He stopped humming while he wandered through the house. Stopped dancing absentmindedly when a song came on the radio. The little pieces of joy that had always escaped him without thinking seemed to retreat somewhere so deep inside him that even he couldn’t find them anymore.
There were mornings she’d find him awake before dawn, sitting in complete darkness with the television on mute because he hadn’t actually been watching it. He would simply sit there, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor while the blue light flickered across his face. She’d kneel in front of him and take his hands into hers because they were always cold lately, rubbing slow circles over his knuckles until he finally looked at her.
“Did you sleep?” She’d whisper.
“I’m okay.” He answered, and it quickly became the sentence she hated most. Because he wasn’t.
He wasn’t okay.
Michael started apologized for everything.
For forgetting what she had just told him. For staring into space when she was talking. For missing dinner because another meeting had run late. For waking her when another phone rang at two in the morning. For snapping at someone and immediately hating himself for it. For crying. For needing medication. For being tired. For existing and feeling like he no longer resembled the man he thought she deserved.
It was as though guilt had rooted itself somewhere deep inside him and started growing in every direction. No matter what she said, no matter how many times she cupped his face and told him she wasn’t going anywhere, he looked at her with the conviction of someone who believed he had already become too much to love.
And that frightened her more than anything else.
Because for the first time since she’d known him, she couldn’t love him out of his pain.
She could only sit beside it, hold his hand through it, and pray that somewhere underneath all that hurt, the man she’d married was still waiting to find his way home.
Elizabeth found her in the sunroom just after sunset.
The house had become strangely still for the first time all day. Most of the staff had retreated to other parts of the estate, the phones had stopped ringing for the moment, and the endless stream of meetings had finally come to an end. Outside, the sky was washed in soft shades of pink and gold, rainwater still clinging to the hedges from an afternoon shower.
(Name) sat curled into the corner of the sofa with a blanket gathered loosely over her legs, though she wasn’t cold. A cup of tea rested untouched on the table beside her, the steam long since gone. She stared through the floor to ceiling windows toward the gardens without really seeing them, her thoughts somewhere much farther away.
Elizabeth lingered in the doorway for a moment before approaching. “There you are, gorgeous girl.”
(Name) turned her head, offering a tired smile that barely reached her eyes. “Hi.”
Elizabeth smiled back, soft and maternal, before lowering herself onto the sofa beside her. She didn’t sit across from her, she sat shoulder to shoulder, close enough that their sleeves brushed. Without saying anything, she reached over and took one of (Name)’s hands into both of hers, warming it between her palms.
“My goodness” Elizabeth murmured, studying her face. “Sweetheart, you look exhausted.”
(Name) let out a quiet breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “I am.”
Elizabeth rubbed slow circles across the back of her hand. “I know.”
For a little while they simply sat together. It was one of the few things (Name) appreciated about the older woman. She understood why Michael was so close to her, how could you not?
Eventually, Elizabeth inhaled softly. “I need to ask you something.”
(Name) looked over at her. The change in Elizabeth’s voice was subtle, but enough that her stomach tightened instinctively. “What is it?”
Elizabeth’s expression remained kind, though there was a seriousness behind it now that hadn’t been there before.
“I think…” she began carefully, choosing each word with obvious care, “,,I think it’s time we talked about having an intervention.”
The room seemed to lose all of its sound and (Name) blinked once, then again.
“No.” The answer came so quickly it surprised even her.
Elizabeth didn’t react, he simply continued holding her hand.
(Name) shook her head, her brows knitting together. “No. Absolutely not.”
She looked away toward the windows again. “He’s exhausted.” Her voice was quiet now, almost pleading. “Everything that’s happened these last few months..” She swallowed. “Anyone would be exhausted.”
“I know,” Elizabeth said gently.
“He’s under more pressure than anybody should ever have to carry--He isn’t..” (Name) searched for the words, shaking her head again. “He isn’t one of those people.”
Elizabeth tilted her head slightly. “What people, sweetheart?”
(Name)’s fingers tightened unconsciously around Elizabeth’s.
“The people you see on television.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the rain-speckled glass. “The ones whose lives completely fall apart.” She laughed once under her breath, though there wasn’t any humor in it. She knew she probably sounded ignorant, but at this point she didn't care. Her husband didn’t.. he didn’t belong in rehab like some addict. That wasn’t a thing, that wasn’t real. Come on, this was her Michael they’re talking about.
Elizabeth waited.
“He has prescriptions,” (Name) said quickly, as though she’d finally found the argument that mattered. “Doctors gave them to him. He’s in pain, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth’s thumb continued its slow, absent circles over the back of her hand. “I know, my love. You don’t have to convince me.” Every answer was the same. Never argumentative or dismissive. Just heartbreakingly understanding.
(Name) felt tears beginning to sting behind her eyes.
“He just needs everything else to stop,” She whispered. “If these allegations had never happened.. if everyone would just leave him the fuck alone!” Her voice cracked. “He’d be okay!”
Elizabeth was quiet for several long seconds then she turned just enough to fully face her. “Sweetheart.”
(Name) looked up.
“Do you believe that?” The question settled between them.
(Name) opened her mouth but nothing came out. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to believe it with every part of herself. Instead, she looked back down at their joined hands.
Elizabeth spoke again, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “When was the last time he slept through the night?”
(Name)’s eyes closed. “..I don’t remember.”
“When was the last time he finished a meal without you reminding him to eat?”
Silence.
Elizabeth wasn’t interrogating her; she was grieving with her. “When was the last time you saw him smile because he felt happy..”
She paused. “..and not because he was trying to convince you he was?”
A tear quietly down (Name)’s cheek and Elizabeth reached up, brushing it away with the back of her fingers. “I’m not asking you to pass judgement on him.”
(Name)’s breathing had begun to shake. “I’m asking you to be honest with yourself.”
“I..” Her voice broke completely. “I don’t want him to think I’ve given up on him.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Elizabeth’s eyes glistened. “This isn’t giving up on him.”
(Name) finally looked at her. “It feels like it.”
“No.” Elizabeth gently squeezed both of her hands. “It feels like you’re admitting that loving him isn’t the same thing as being able to save him.”
Those words struck somewhere so deep that (Name) winced. For months she had convinced herself that if she stayed patient enough, gentle enough, attentive enough, eventually he’d find his way back to himself.
She had loved him harder every single day.. she had stayed awake through the nightmares.
Counted pills.
Run baths.
Held him while he cried.
Sat beside him through meetings.
Reminded him to eat.
Reminded him to sleep.
Reminded him that none of this changed who he was.
If love could have healed him.. he would have been healed months ago. The realization settled over her so quietly she almost didn’t notice herself beginning to cry.
Elizabeth wrapped an arm around her shoulders without another word and (Name) folded into her immediately, burying her face against Elizabeth’s shoulder as months of fear finally caught up with her.
“I just want my husband back,” She sobbed, hiccuping.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, holding her a little tighter.
“I know, sweetheart.” Her own voice trembled. “I want him back too.”
That conversation had been eight weeks ago.
Eight weeks since she’d watched him zip up a suitcase she wished had never needed packing.
Eight weeks since she’d stood in the driveway with one hand tucked into his coat, trying to memorize the feeling of him before he disappeared behind tinted windows and boarded a plane bound for Europe.
Eight weeks he’d been away from home.
Some days she counted them. Other days she tried very hard not to.
The house had settled into a strange quiet without him. His slippers still sat where he’d kicked them off weeks earlier because she couldn’t bring herself to move them. His favorite sweater remained folded over the arm of the sofa. His piano downstairs gathered a thin layer of dust no one dared wipe away. Every room still carried traces of him, little reminders that he belonged there, while the only place he actually was sat thousands of miles across an ocean she couldn’t simply cross whenever she missed him.
She kept herself busy because she had to.
There was still a little boy who needed breakfast every morning. Baths every evening. Stories before bed. Aladdin had begun asking for his daddy in the innocent way only toddlers could, toddling over to the front door some afternoons after hearing a car outside, convinced for one hopeful second that this time it would be him. He was a little over one years old now, she can’t believe how quickly time flies
Each time, she’d scoop him into her arms. “Daddy’s getting better, sweetheart.” The words never became easier to say but she hoped one day they’d become true.
Every afternoon, usually around the same time once Aladdin had gone down for his nap, she’d reach for the telephone. It became part of her routine as naturally as brushing her teeth. She knew the number by heart now.
Sometimes the phone rang long enough that she caught herself holding her breath but when the phone picked up it was never Michael.
The conversations had become painfully familiar.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jackson. He’s unavailable right now.”
Or..
“He’s resting.”
Another day..
“He’s with his doctors at the moment.”
Then..
“It’s not a good time.”
The reasons changed and none of them made much sense. If he was resting yesterday, surely, he’d be awake today. If he was with doctors this afternoon, why couldn’t he call her back that evening? Once, someone told her he’d stepped outside. She found herself staring at the receiver after the call ended, wondering how someone could step outside and somehow stay there for three days.
She never argued or demanded to be put through. Never raised her voice. She simply thanked whoever answered, hung up gently, and told herself she’d try again tomorrow.
Tomorrow always sounded more hopeful than today.
On the days they did manage to connect, she treasured every minute she was given, even when the conversations never lasted very long.
She’d ask if he was sleeping any better.
If he was eating.
If the doctors were kind to him.
If they were taking good care of him.
She’d tell him about Aladdin learning a new word, or how he’d nearly toppled over trying to chase one of the peacocks that wandered the grounds, smiling through tears Michael couldn’t see as she painted little pictures of home she hoped might make him feel less alone.
“I miss you,” She’d tell him softly. “So does your little boy.”
There would almost always be a pause that felt like listening for someone standing at the other end of a long tunnel.
Then his voice would come back, quieter than she remembered.
“I miss you too.”
Or…
“Give him a kiss for me.”
Sometimes that was all. Sometimes before she had the chance to tell him she loved him, another voice would gently explain that their time was up.
She’d thank them, set the receiver back into its cradle.
Then sit there for a little while longer anyway, her fingertips still resting against the telephone as though somehow it remained connected to him. She never once considered that the distance between them wasn’t only measured in miles. It never crossed her mind that the unanswered calls weren’t always because he was asleep, or in treatment, or meeting with doctors.
She believed every explanation they gave her because she wanted to.
Because the alternative was too painful to imagine.
She didn’t know that, somewhere in Europe, the sound of the telephone ringing had become something he sometimes asked not to hear at all.
The phone remained stubbornly silent for another four days.
By the fifth, (Name) had stopped pretending she wasn’t waiting for it.
She carried the cordless handset from room to room without realizing she was doing it, setting it beside her while she folded tiny pairs of Aladdin’s pajamas, balancing it on the bathroom counter while she washed her face, leaving it on the kitchen island while she picked absently at toast that had gone cold long before she’d taken a second bite. Every sound outside made her glance toward the front windows. Every time the phone rang, her heart launched itself into her throat before sinking again when another familiar voice greeted her instead.
By late afternoon, she felt wound so tightly she thought she might snap.
She stared at the telephone for nearly a full minute before finally dialing Elizabeth’s number.
It rang once.
“Hello?” Elizabeth’s warm, unmistakable voice filled the line. “Sweetheart?”
(Name) opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out except an uneven breath. She hadn’t even realized she’d started crying until she tasted salt on her lips. “..Hi.”
“Oh, honey,” Elizabeth said gently. “What’s happened?”
(Name) pressed trembling fingers against her forehead, closing her eyes as she slowly sank into one of the kitchen chairs. The room suddenly felt too bright. “I.. I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“I shouldn’t be calling you like this.”
Elizabeth’s voice softened even further. “You can call me however you need to.” That kindness almost made everything worse.
(Name) laughed weakly through another shaky breath, wiping beneath her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Elizabeth simply asked, “Tell me.”
(Name) looked toward the nursery down the hallway where she could hear the faint hiss of the baby monitor. “I can’t stop thinking about him. I keep telling myself he’s exactly where he needs to be.” She nodded to herself as though trying to make the words feel true. “I know they’re helping him. I know this is supposed to take time. I know all of that.”
Her breathing caught painfully in the middle of the sentence. “But…” She pressed a hand flat against the center of her chest. “I just…” Her voice dropped to almost nothing. “I have this terrible.. terrible feeling.”
Elizabeth remained quiet. “What kind of feeling, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know.” (Name) stood abruptly from the chair and began pacing across the kitchen, one arm wrapped tightly around her waist while the other held the phone against her ear. “That’s what’s scaring me.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is.”
Her breathing had become noticeably uneven now. “It feels like..” She searched helplessly for words. “Like something’s wrong.”
Elizabeth listened.
“I know he’s in treatment and I know this isn’t supposed to be easy. But every time I call..” (Name) stopped walking, staring blankly out the kitchen window. “..there’s another reason.”
Her voice trembled. “He’s resting.” She swallowed. “He’s with his doctors.” Another shaky breath. “They’ll let him know I called.”
She laughed once, though it sounded hollow. “It just.. it never makes any sense.”
Elizabeth’s brows furrow in confusion on the other end of the line. “So, you haven’t been able to speak with him much?”
(Name)’s shoulders slowly slumped. “No..”
“How often?”
“I don’t..” She frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t even know anymore.” She rubbed tiredly at one eye. “When I do get him..” She whispered, “It’s only for a few minutes.” Her throat tightened. “He sounds so far away.”
(Name) continued to speak. “I don’t even care if we don’t talk about anything important.” She laughed through another sob. “I’d listen to him tell me what he had for lunch if it meant hearing his voice for five more minutes.”
Elizabeth’s expression shifted and silence settled between them. Then absentmindedly, (Name) asked, “..When was the last time you talked to him?”
Elizabeth sounded genuinely puzzled by the question. “Honey, we’ve been talking fairly regularly.”
(Name) blinked. “What?”
“I’ve been checking in on him. I actually spoke to him today.. which is why I’m so confused to hear this..”
Everything inside (Name) seemed to stop. “…Today?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth nodded. “We had a lovely conversation.”
(Name) didn’t answer.
“It must’ve been..” Elizabeth thought aloud. “Nearly two hours, I suppose.”
Two hours.
The words echoed through her mind and her grip tightened around the receiver until her fingers ached.
Two hours.
She couldn’t remember the last time Michael had spoken to her for longer than ten minutes.
“…He…” Her lips barely moved. “He talked…” Her heartbeat became deafening. “…for two hours?”
Elizabeth’s heart drops a bit. “…(Name)? My love? Let me give him a call, okay? I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding...”
The kitchen blurred around her. The walls suddenly felt too close. Air refused to reach her lungs no matter how deeply she inhaled. Somewhere on the other end of the line, Elizabeth was still speaking, her voice growing increasingly concerned.
“Sweetheart?”
“(Name)?”
“Talk to me.. Please talk to me, I’m on my way.”
She couldn’t hear anything except the blood rushing through her ears. With trembling fingers, she lowered the receiver from her ear, and she stared at it for one long, disbelieving moment. Then she pressed the button.
The line went dead.
The silence that followed was suffocating as she remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, the disconnected phone hanging uselessly at her side while tears slipped silently down her face.
He had spent two hours talking to someone else.
And suddenly, for the first time since he’d left for Europe, a thought entered her mind that she had refused to entertain before.
Maybe the person he was avoiding…
…was her.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤEarly 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
When Michael was released from treatment, (Name) truly believed the hardest part was finally over. She held onto that belief with both hands because she had to. It was the only thing that had carried her through the endless weeks he’d spent in Europe, through the unanswered phone calls, the sleepless nights, the ache of watching Aladdin toddle around without his dad. She told herself that rehabilitation didn’t end the day someone walked out of the building. He would need time. Space. Patience. She could give him all of those things. God knew she’d already given him everything else. She washed the sheets on their bed before he was due to return. She asked the kitchen staff to stock the pantry with all the little things he’d missed while he was away. She even caught herself smiling one afternoon while folding one of his sweaters, thinking how nice it would feel to complain about finding his socks scattered across the bedroom floor again. For the first time in months, hope felt safe enough to exist. Things would go back to normal.
He never came home.
At first, nothing seemed particularly unusual. A day passed, then another. There were explanations, always reasonable enough that she never questioned them. He was resting. The doctors wanted him to ease back into daily life slowly. Travel would take some time. She accepted every answer with the same quiet understanding she’d carried throughout the last year because that was what loving Michael had often required, faith in circumstances she couldn’t control. Every morning she still called without fail and every evening she called again if she hadn’t heard from him. Nothing changed, it was the same few excuses. She was told he’d stepped out. Other times he’d already gone to bed.
Occasionally she managed to hear his voice, but even those conversations seemed to disappear before they’d properly begun. He sounded distant, exhausted, like every word cost him something to speak to her. She asked the usual, if he was eating. If he was sleeping. If he needed anything from home. She told him she loved him. She told him Aladdin had started stringing little sentences together now, that he’d learned to point at photographs and proudly say, “Daddy.” Michael answered kindly enough, but there was always something absent underneath it all, as though part of him had already drifted somewhere she couldn’t follow. She was afraid of bringing up her concerns about his communication, especially since learning he was present with other people. How could she? He.. he was kind enough to take her call, and besides, she missed him too much to potentially mess up her few chances to talk to him. So, she ignored it. Her time with him couldn't even settle into the comfort of simply hearing him breathe before another voice would gently interrupt, telling him someone needed him, that another appointment was beginning, or something. The line would click dead, and she’d sit there holding the receiver against her ear for another minute anyway, staring into nothing.
Days quietly became weeks. One week became two, then three, until she realized she’d stopped marking the calendar altogether because looking at the dates only made the silence feel heavier. The house had become unbearably still without him. His slippers remained tucked beneath their side of the bed because she couldn’t bear to move them. His piano sat untouched, gathering the thinnest layer of dust no one dared wipe away because wiping it meant they were wiping him away. Even Neverland itself seemed to notice his absence. The laughter that usually drifted across the grounds had disappeared, replaced by long stretches of quiet broken only by the distant carousel or the soft chatter of staff trying not to speak too loudly. Aladdin babbled for him constantly. Every answer she gave grew a little weaker than the last. “Soon,” she’d whisper, kissing the top of his head while silently begging God not to make a liar out of her.
By the fifth week, something inside her had begun to change. Hope unraveled slowly, thread by thread, each unanswered call loosening another piece until she found herself lying awake at three in the morning, staring at the empty space beside her where Michael should have been, unable to silence the dreadful feeling settling deeper into her chest. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even resentment. It was fear. Quiet, instinctive fear. The kind that arrived without explanation and refused to leave. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted while he’d been away, that somehow, she’d lost him without realizing the exact moment it happened. She just didn’t know yet that the silence wasn’t accidental. It was a choice.
By the sixth week, she had stopped asking herself when he was coming home.
Instead, she found herself asking why he wasn’t.
The question followed her everywhere. It lingered while she stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes she hadn’t dirtied, while she folded laundry that still smelled faintly of his cologne, while she rocked Aladdin back to sleep in the middle of the night. She turned every conversation they’d had over and over inside her mind until she could practically recite them from memory, searching for something she’d missed. Had she said something wrong? Had she pushed too hard? Not enough? Had she spent so much time trying to keep him alive that she’d forgotten how to simply be his wife? Every answer only led to another question, each one crueler than the last.
Then, as though the silence itself hadn’t already hollowed her out, the news found her anyway. It wasn’t Michael who told her, not a phone call or even a conversation. It was another headline. Another photograph. Another piece of her life handed to the public before it had ever been offered to her.
Someone had seen him in Las Vegas.
Not alone.
With Lisa.
Eight days.
Eight days that stretched across newspapers and entertainment programs with the same relentless appetite that had consumed every other private moment of their lives. Restaurants. Casinos. Hotel entrances. Smiling. Talking. Walking side by side with their hands held as though the weight of the previous year had somehow become light enough to carry in someone else’s company.
(Name) stared at the photographs until they blurred together.
For eight weeks she’d been told, directly or indirectly, that he was too fragile. Too exhausted. Too unwell to hold a conversation with the woman who had stood beside him through allegations, investigations, lawyers, hospitals, intervention meetings, sleepless nights, withdrawal, and rehabilitation.
Ghosted her for six weeks after his release.
Yet somehow, he’d found eight days for another woman.
Something inside her finally gave way.
The first drink came almost absentmindedly. A glass of wine she poured while dinner sat untouched in front of her, thinking it might finally silence the noise in her head long enough to sleep. But of course, it didn’t.
The second night, she poured another.
By the end of the week, she had stopped bothering with glasses altogether and opted for drinking straight from the bottle. She discovered alcohol did one thing remarkably well. For a little while, it made her numb. It softened the endless loop of unanswered questions. It dulled the image of those photographs long enough that she could breathe without feeling like her chest was caving in. It hushed the instinct that still made her glance toward the front door every time she heard a car outside.
Morning always punished her for it. She’d wake with pounding headaches, swollen eyes, and the same emptiness waiting faithfully beside her the moment she opened them. Nothing had changed. Michael was still gone. The bed was still half empty. The phone still refused to ring.
So every evening, when the house finally grew quiet and Aladdin had fallen asleep upstairs, she’d wander into the kitchen almost without thinking. The bottle had become as much a part of her nightly routine as locking the doors or turning off the lights. She hated herself a little more each time she reached for it.
She drank because it was easier than feeling everything. She drank because the silence was louder sober. She drank because she couldn’t survive every night with the version of him she loved walking endlessly through her memories, while the man still alive somewhere in the world seemed to want nothing to do with her anymore.
It happened on an ordinary afternoon. The moment where she died. If her Michael left her in ’93, then she followed soon after in ’94.
There was no warning. No phone call asking if she was home. No request to meet. No conversation she could cling to afterward and tell herself at least they’d tried.
Just a knock at the front door.
She almost didn’t answer it herself. One of the house staff had been busy with Aladdin, so she crossed the foyer without thinking, smoothing the sleeves of her sweater as she reached for the handle.
The man standing outside wore an apologetic expression she didn’t understand until he asked her name. “Miss (Name)?”
“Yes?”
“I need you to sign for these.”
She accepted the large envelope automatically, thanked him then closed the door.
For several seconds, she simply stood there in the middle of the foyer, turning it over in her hands. Her name was typed neatly across the front in stark black letters. No handwriting. No familiarity. Nothing to suggest it had come from the man who had once traced that same name across birthday cards with hearts and little notes left beside her pillow.
Something deep inside her already knew. Her fingers trembled as she slid the papers free. The first page was enough. She didn’t make it past the title before the packet slipped from her hands, scattering crisp white pages across the polished floor like they weighed nothing at all.
Her knees nearly buckled. “No..”
The word escaped before she’d even realized she’d spoken. “No..”
She shook her head, staring at the papers, hoping they might rearrange themselves into something else if she looked long enough.
This couldn’t be how it happened. Not after everything that’s happened. Not after the allegations. After the meetings. The sleepless nights. Rehab. Not after standing beside him when the entire world had seemed determined to tear him apart.
Not like this.
Her breathing became shallow. Fast. And suddenly she stumbled backward before turning blindly toward the nearest bathroom, one hand clamped over her mouth as panic climbed so violently through her body it made her dizzy. She barely reached the sink.
The first wave came without warning.
A clammy gripped the porcelain so hard her knuckles burned as everything in her stomach came up in painful, emptying heaves. Tears blurred her vision until she couldn’t tell where the sink ended and the room began.
When there was nothing left, her body kept trying anyway.
Again. Again. Again.
She collapsed onto the cold tile floor, coughing so hard her chest hurt, one hand pressed against her sternum as though she could physically hold herself together.
Everything she’d known since twenty. Her mentor. Her protector. Her best friend. Her husband. Her fucking soul.
Her life was seemingly being severed over black and white.
Michael didn’t even give her the respect of a conversation or an explanation. Not even goodbye?
Just a case number.
She curled forward until her forehead rested against the edge of the bathtub, shaking so violently she could hardly catch her breath. Somewhere else in the house she could hear Aladdin laughing at something, blissfully unaware that only a few rooms away, their world had just been split cleanly down the middle.
(Name) had survived watching the world try to destroy her husband.
But she wasn’t sure she would survive discovering he had chosen to leave her himself.
you and michael have been best friends since early childhood. you knew every secret about one another, every familial problem, and anything the two of you went through—you went through together. you fell in love, but when you don’t know when you’ll see someone again—it makes you rethink everything the both of you ever shared.
“𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜?”
𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 ➛ angst to fluff, best friends confessions, sexual content. (semi-protected p in v penetration), riding, whining, sub!mike, explicit language, crying during sex, virgin!mike, virgin!reader, aftercare. proofread but please ignore mistakes if you see them, lol
“𝑖 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤, 𝑖 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑖’𝑙𝑙 𝑐𝑟𝑦.”
𝑎 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑦 ➛ hi gorgeous people! i got a lot of love and sweet comments on my last fic, so i present another one from me, to you! based on one of my favorite (and saddest) jodeci songs, and it really fit otw era mike to me. enjoy!
also, let me know if you guys want me to create a taglist! comment if you wanna be added to it, so you never miss anything i post!
YEAR 1975
“Michael, cut it out.” You started. Michael had the tendency to poke at your shoulder when he knew you weren’t paying attention, and it was one of those moments. Your eyes were locked on the handwritten english paper you had yet to complete in front of you. Your topic was a three page essay on the civil war–and you had about five sentences jotted down on the college ruled page. Needless to say, you never paid attention in history, it was all so boring to you. You had bigger dreams–you wanted to become a famous designer somewhere deep in the cities of New York, and away from here. All this civil war stuff didn’t matter in the end to you.
“Can you entertain me now? That paper’ll be there later.” Michael groaned, throwing his head back in annoyance. One thing you learned early on about your best friend was how short his attention span was–and how easily irritated he got when things didn’t go his way. Even if that meant having to put all the things you’re doing to the side, just to find something for him to do.
“Michael, if I don’t finish this paper by tomorrow, my teacher is gonna’ give me that ‘in school suspension’ stuff–and y’know how my momma gets.” You demanded, pointing your deep burgundy painted fingernail into his chest. “I came over so you could help me, not distract me.”
Michael sat up straight in his spot beside you, fixing his wrinkled shirt. “Alright, alright, fine. But you gotta’ promise me you’ll let me take you on that walk later.” He smiled, leaning in closer to you and your binder, scanning over the few things you did write. “Nd’ for starters, you spelled ‘civil’ wrong, goofy. You put an ‘e’ at the end.” His laugh echoed at the realization, and you playfully shoved him after aggressively erasing your mistake.
“Shut up and help me, Mikey!” You giggled, staring in his eyes for the shortest second. You shook off the feeling, and put pen to paper once again.
7:15 P.M.
You and Michael walked the trail of his home, your flats leaving a quiet click after every step you took. The two of you just ate dinner with his family, and Michael kept pushing to take you outside in the fresh air. He just wanted to get you away from the stress of your homework— and you were happy to have finished your paper, but there was this lingering pain in your stomach–and it was aching you when you couldn’t figure out why it came so abruptly. You shrugged off the feeling, pulling your satchel farther up your arm.
“Are you excited about graduating?” Michael asked suddenly, breaking the silence between the two of you. You stood there in all of your awkwardness, finally snapping out of it Michael brushed a loose strand of hair out of your face. You coughed it off.
“I mean yeah. Ahem. Yeah, I guess.” You answered dryly. “Just ready to get out is all–M’ just ready to be able to do anything I want to–once I’m out my momma’s house,of course.” You sarcastically added.
“You still into makin’ dresses and all that stuff?” Michael asked, walking the both of you to a bench to get a little extra time before you had to go home.
“It’s called sewing, Mikey. And yes I am,” you started, opening your satchel and grabbing a couple loose pieces of paper out of your pink binder, the pages covered in sketches and ideas that you were ready to whip up in real time. You laid them out on your lap to display them to him, and he took a couple to get a closer look. The contact of the back of his soft hands gave you a slight chill, but you were known for brushing off any feeling of the sort. In your opinion, the two of you had always been the clingy type. His brothers teased the both of you since you were little–talking about how close you two were, always hugging each other, staring for just a second too long, laying together in silence when no one else was around. You were the only thing that kept Michael grounded from all the messiness that followed behind him with being in the music industry at such an early age. He’s opened up to you about things even his siblings didn’t know about, and they saw him every single day. In your eyes you always saw him as a baby deer in need of guidance and protection, while also being his number one fan in everything he accomplished.
“You’re crazy talented. It don’t make no sense.” He smiled, admiring the handmade work in front of him. “Maybe one day you can design my outfit when I’m big and famous.”
You laughed it off, then looked back at Michael’s face. He was dead serious.
“Michael, you’re not serious.”
“I am indeed, yes ma’am.”
You lightly slapped your palm against your forehead, but in actuality you were trying your hardest not to blush. Michael always treated you like a trophy, always lifting you up when your classmates or potential boyfriends would let you down. He always knew what to say to you.
“I gotta head home soon, Mikey.” You tell him, gathering your papers to clip back into your binder. You would go over all of these later, and maybe you’d conjure up a little something you’d wanna see Michael in when he’s “rich and famous” one day.
“Can we talk, for just a sec’?” Michael asks you softly, grabbing at your fingertips to sit you back down. You oblige, nodding your head for him to continue. You loved looking into his eyes—when you were younger it seemed like his pupils were the biggest thing on his head. His expression wasn’t how it usually was though, his eyes were filled with dread. That familiar feeling started to arise into your gut.
Michael grabbed both of your hands, and stared into your eyes. You fluttered your mascara coated eyelashes at him, waiting on him to say something.
“Joseph has us goin’ back on tour soon, nd’ I dunno’ for how long.”
There it was. That gut feeling. Michael had to leave you again, and you didn’t know the next time you’d see him. You knew that this was what came with business, but Michael was really all you had, besides your mother. He was your escape–he helped shut your mind off when things got way too loud.
You were stunned, and overall heartbroken.
You took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, the tears in your eyes slowly started to build up, and you stupidly let one slip. Michael immediately noticed it, and held on to your hands just a little bit tighter.
“Angel, please don’t cry.” Michael soothed, bringing his bigger hands to wipe the falling tears from down your skin.
Angel. The nickname he called you once you broke down and opened up to him for the first time when you were at the ripe age of ten. He called you that because he believed you were “sent from Heaven” to be in his life, telling you that you were handpicked from the sky by God himself.
“I just… I hate that you have t’ keep leavin’ me, Mikey.” You admitted between sniffles, using the back of your cashmere sweater to wipe the remaining tears and snot remnants off of your face.
Michael rubbed circles on the back of your palms. Doing all he could to soothe you.
“I hate leavin’ you too, y’know I do. C’mere.” Michael also admits, opening his arms to you to let you lean into his chest. You could feel his heart beating, a sound you were used to when the both of you would lay across his bed, talking about nothing. You’d always casually lay your head on his chest, and drift off to sleep, while he sang ‘Ben’ to you for the thousandth time.
“W-what about my graduation…?” You started, your voice barely above a low whisper. “Are y’gonna be able to make it?”
Silence.
“I dunno if I’ll make it, angel.”
Your lip quivered, and your face felt hot. Your tears were starting up again. This was the biggest disappointment of your life. Of course you were more than happy for Michael—all of this gave him more opportunities to better his own solo career in the future, which was all he talked about. But that feeling of one of the most important people in your not being there for such a big moment… it stung worse than a million bee stings.
Michael didn’t say a word, he brought you in closer, tracing stars on your back. That was the signature you two shared. You’d draw stars on each other’s backs when one of you was going through a tough time, and it always seemed to calm the other person down.
The stars weren’t helping this, though.
“Look at me for a sec, let me wipe your tears.”
You sat up off of Michael’s chest, and looked into those doe eyes.
“I’m in love with you. I always have been, always will be. You hear?”
‘I’m in love with you.’ Words you thought you’d never hear from the boy sitting before you. It was a given that you two were close, but loving someone and being in love with someone was completely different.
You’ve felt the same for years.
Always avoiding taking things too far with any other boys who came your way, because you always had Michael in the back of your mind. Michael was popular with the girls your age, but he always turned them down because in his heart, he knew you were the one for him.
You opened your mouth to tell him you didn’t feel the same, though you knew that wasn’t true. He knew it wasn’t true.
“I’m in love with you too, Mikey.”
You looked into each other’s eyes, and shared a deep, meaningful kiss. It sealed the deal. That was the unspoken rule.
“You promise y ain’t gon’ kiss nobody else after me?” He jokes, holding his pinky finger out.
“Promise. As long as you keep in touch, nd’ tell me all about everything.” You say, holding your pinky out.
“I promise, angel.”
You locked your pinky fingers and pecked once more, but you knew it was time to prepare yourself for the loneliness you shortly had to endure. You were going to miss Michael so bad that it drove you nuts—but his dread was a whole lot deeper. He didn’t know how to live without you, and shortly he’d have to learn how to. Again.
He walked you to the gate of his estate, Bill waiting by the car to take you home.
Michael informed you that the tour was going to start up in a couple of days, so you shared one last hug before having to leave him—and never knowing when you’ll see him again.
He opened the car door for you and gave you a hug, taking in one last whiff of your peach perfume. His body went limp into yours, and it was almost like you could feel his sadness. He interlocked his hands and rested his head on your shoulder while he hugged you, but when he pulled away, he was crying.
“Honey, don’t cry… you’re gonna make me cry again.” You giggle, taking your thumbs to swipe the tears from his face. You kissed his cheek and climbed in the back seat of the car, Bill starting the engine.
He smiled at you, getting a good look at you to cherish your beauty before you had to say goodbye.
“I love you, Michael.”
“I love you more than life, angel.”
He kissed your lips for the last time, and closed the car door.
You looked out of the back window, watching the love of your life wave his hand goodbye, tears still slowly streaming from his face. You blew him a kiss, and had no clue that this would be the last time you saw him for a long, long time.
4 YEARS LATER, 1979.
HEADLINES : MICHAEL JACKSON RELEASES FIFTH STUDIO ALBUM THROUGH EPIC RECORDS, OFF THE WALL.
“Marianna, you’re good to take your thirty.” You told your employee firmly, but lovingly. Four years later, and you were fresh out of college, working with your mother at her boutique. Your mother promoted you to the store manager pretty early on, so that meant you dealt with the conflict, the chaos, and everything in between. You hated having so much pressure on you all the time, but with your mother barely in the shop, all expectations fell on you.
You were happy to be doing something you loved, though. You felt free being done with school and pursuing your passion, but you couldn’t help but feel your heart sting every time you saw his name in the paper. Not only did he miss your high school graduation, the person you thought would come through for you one last time, didn’t even call when you graduated college. And you know he saw it, because your name and picture was on the news for getting top of your class.
Your body froze every time you heard his voice on the radio.
‘Four whole years’, you thought to yourself.
Four years, and nothing but radio silence from him.
A couple years ago, you and Michael made a pact. I mean, you kissed, and that had to have meant something. The promise you two made to each other, making sure to keep in touch no matter how busy you were–whether rain or shine, there were no exceptions.
You kept up your part. You called and called nonstop, even on the days you were swamped with school work. He never picked up on the other line, and even after that–you couldn’t bring yourself to hate him. You just wished that he would’ve kept his promise, because no one in this world brought you the same peace like he did.
But it was clear he didn’t think that way anymore.
You used to assume the fame got to him like it did everyone else in the industry– but that wasn’t how your Michael was. Sure, he loved being recognized for his talents and charisma, but he would never, ever let any kind of fame or money get into that brain of his. He knew better than to let it consume him, because Michael’s biggest fear was becoming his father.
So when you found out about his solo album, for a couple days you started spiraling.
This was something the two of you had talked about for years, and all Michael ever talked about was branching out and finding something else to do that didn’t involve his family–and you never failed to listen. You wanted Michael to go solo, because his voice was something like the salt needing to be spread on an icy road, and no matter how much you encouraged him, he always turned the idea down because of his fears.
You cried–a lot. In a way you were proud of him for finally facing his fears and starting a new journey in his career, but on the other hand you were not only disappointed, but grieving someone who wasn’t even dead at the same time. You missed his touch, bad. His small gestures always felt so innocent and sweet–and that was your favorite thing. You enjoyed when his hands rested a little too long on top of yours, and how whenever you were too tired–he’d handwash your hair in the bathtub for you. Sometimes you lose hope, and in the back on your mind, you truly believe that man won’t come back to you–ever.
You saw yourself as a placeholder for the moment, and no matter how much you didn’t want to accept it, you had to. Michael was living a totally different life than you were–touring in almost every country, having such a wonderful and impactful talent–while you were still stuck. And the one that made you feel seen and heard, wasn’t seeing or hearing you. You felt played, because Michael never broke his promises with you–ever. You always got in your head about the situation, thinking he met another girl–but deep down, you knew he was too shy to branch out of his comfort zone.
You were his comfort zone.
You paced around the boutique, holding a handful of untailored dresses for your client to try on, when the exhausting ringing of the phone blared in your ears. It was going off all day–women calling to make appointments, customers complaining and badgering you because of the prices, and pesky little children who prank called every number they found in the phonebook. You rushed and ran to a rack to put the dresses down, and hated yourself for sending your employee on break too early.
You fixed your shirt, took a breath, and picked up the phone.
“Hello, and thank you for callin’ ‘Hurst Boutique’, how can I be of assistance today?”
“It’s you.” The caller on the other line whispered. You couldn't make out their voice, but your stomach was uneasy.
“I’m sorry? Who is this? Look, we’re really busy, so I don’t have time for–”
“It’s me… Michael.”
Your mouth went dry, and all of a sudden, you were at a loss for words. You were in shock that after all this time, the first phone call he’d make to you would be at your job, four years later. You felt your eye twitch out of anger, and a burst of rage entered your system.
“Wow,” You scoffed, sitting down in the office chair in front of you. “You got some nerve, Michael.”
“Pardon?”
“I said you got some nerve. You haven’t spoken to me in four years, for God sake.” You started, your leg now shaking uncontrollably. “Then you call my job? You're batshit crazy, Michael.”
“Please, you don’t have to curse. I-I’m sorry.” Michael pleaded, his voice cracking because of the pressure you put him under.
“You’re sorry, huh?”
“Very.”
“Not good enough.”
You got your last word and hung up the phone. You grabbed your dresses off of the rack behind you and walked to your clients room to do your job. You would be lying if you said you didn’t miss hearing his voice again, but damn, did he hurt your heart. He was insane, thinking a simple apology was going to make up for the four years of no contact, and as much as you wanted to go off on him and argue on the phone all day–that was still your ‘little baby deer’. But now, you have to learn how to protect yourself, even from the one who’s supposed to protect you in the first place.
You had to get yourself together—you were at work. Your chest was aching, but letting people see that is the last thing you’d ever do. You walked your client through her tailoring, and tried to wrap up your day and head to your apartment.
You did all of your closing tasks, cleaning up the floor filled with strings and loose fabric, making sure the already tailored and ready clothes were good to send off to their owners tomorrow, and shutting everything down.
You were in the break room gathering your purse and keys, making sure to shut off the lights.
“Crazy day today, huh.” Marianna giggled, grabbing her purse to follow behind you.
“Tell me about it.” You replied, recalling the moment your childhood best friend stupidly tried to reach out to you. You suddenly realized you forgot to turn off the lights in your office, and turned on your heels.
The bell to your shop rang, signaling that someone opened the front door. You rolled your eyes, because anyone walking in clearly chose to ignore the closed sign. You shut off the lights, only to find a very stunned Marianna, and low and behold.
Michael Joseph Jackson.
“What the fuck.” Were the only words to escape your mouth. He was here, in front of you–staring at you with those doe eyes. Marianna’s mouth hung open, and she almost burst into tears seeing the popstar in real time.
“Holy shit! I-I’m such a big fan! Can I please, please have your autograph?” Marianna screamed, desperately looking for a piece of paper for him to write his signature on.
Michael snapped out of his trance, and grabbed the pen and paper from her.
“S’ no problem at all, h-here.” He said shyly, handing back the slip of paper to the shorter woman, and she ran out of the front door squealing like a little school girl.
“She’s funny.” Michael started.
You were pissed. Not only did he call you like it hasn’t been over years, he comes into your place of work like nothing happened between the two of you. Your sadness turned into anger, and anger turned into tears. You stared at Michael and his bodyguard behind him, and bursted into tears before him.
You stormed outside, slinging your purse on your shoulder. Your tears burned your skin so bad–you just wanted to get home. You heard the door’s bell chime, and heard footsteps chasing after you.
“Wait, please! I just–I just wanna talk to you, angel. Please!” He yelled. The streets were empty, so no one even heard his voice, but this only encouraged you to walk faster.
He didn’t deserve to call you that nickname anymore, and it hurt that it came to this.
Michael began to run, giving Bill a run for his money having to chase after him. He caught up to you, grabbing your shoulder, and your purse made contact with his chest. You didn’t mean to hit him, and he stumbled a bit. He held his stomach, and your instinct was to go in to comfort him.
You dropped your purse, and helped him stand up straight.
“Sorry.” You apologized, dusting off his shirt.
“No, no I deserved that.” He chuckled, grabbing your hand to come back inside your boutique. “Can’t leave without lockin’ the door, silly.” He reminded you, trying to soften the blow about popping up on you like this.
“Yeah, I guess.” You responded dryly, leading the way back into your shop. He let the door close behind him, and you went and locked the door. He sat in one of the chairs, and took a deep breath.
“I just wanna start with an ‘I’m sorry’”, Michael began, fiddling with his fingertips, and picking at a broken nail. “Is there anywhere we can go to talk?” His voice was still soft after these last couple of years, and it made it really hard to say no to him.
“Michael, I’ll give you five minutes. I gotta get home. You demanded, pointing your finger at him.
“That’s all I need, just let me explain. We can even go to your house, if it makes you feel better.”
You thought about it, and something was telling your body to pull away and tell him to get out, but when Michael pleaded, he pleaded. He had his hands together in a praying motion, begging you to hear him out.
“Fine.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER
You opened the door of your apartment, your older cat meowing in the distance. You turned on the lights, with Michael and Bill following behind you. Bill sat on your living room couch, and was so tired from running Michael around– that he was dozing off on your sofa. Your cat curled up next to him, purring as she rested her head on his thigh. You led Michael to your room, and sat your purse down.
“Talk, before I change my mind.” You demanded, sending a slight shiver down Michael’s spine. You were never this hostile with him, but under the circumstances, he knew that you had to be. His act was stupid and not like him at all, you were his best friend–and someone he loved more than anything.
“I know you’re mad that I haven’t reached out,” he started, testing the waters and grabbing your hand. You let him, and he used his thumb to rub circles on your knuckles. You looked down at his hand–it was even bigger than it used to be a couple years ago, and your hand seemed half the size of his.
“I was scared, and I’ll admit that I ran from you,” He admits, his voice getting a lot quieter than it was before. “I haven’t had time for anything, and with the tour, I was scared I wouldn’t be able to give you the attention you needed. I thought about you all the time, day and night.”
You examined his face. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyebrows were drooping. He actually looked like he was sad–and that every word he said was true.
“I didn’t wanna give up on us, angel. I just knew I couldn’t take care of you like you deserved.” He looked up at you with his prominent eyes, and you watched as tears formed in his sockets. You stared at him, and fully took his hand. You could hear his breathing stop for a second, his gaze locked onto you with no shame.
A teardrop fell. You knew he was being serious, because they continued to fall. You hadn’t even gotten the chance to retaliate, and the man was already crumbling in your presence. The only thing you could think about in the moment was how he was crying in front of you, and all you saw was the boy you once loved before.
“You’re really sorry?” You asked, taking your thumbs to swipe the tears away.
“I’m so, so sorry, angel. I’ll do anything to make it up to, I swear.” Michael pleaded.
“Anything?” You asked.
“Absolutely anything, yes ma’am.”
“Beg for my forgiveness, then.”
“P-pardon?” He stutters, scratching the back of his neck out of nervousness.
“Get on your knees, Michael. Beg me to give you another chance.” Your voice was firm, and it scared Michael like this.You weren’t like this back then, you honestly did whatever he said. This unlocked something Michael never knew he had in him.
And he dropped to his knees.
“L-like this?” He questioned, looking up at you with his tender eyes. He brought his hands together in a praying position, and began to plead. “Forgive me, honey. I was wrong.”
“More.”
“But,” Michael began.
“Do it for me, Michael. I don’t wanna have t’ ask you again.” You pressed him, lifting his chin up to look at you.
He smirked ever so slightly, and it was like something inside of him lit up. He took your hand from his chin, and planted kisses along the back of your palm. He stared at you while he did it, until he eventually came face to face with you.
“Forgive me, baby. C’mon, angel, please.” He whispered into your ear, leaning into your neck, leaving soft, wet kisses along your collarbone. “Let me show you how sorry I am, beautiful.”
This behavior was unusual for Michael, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy it. It gave your heart this sort of rush, and you could feel your heat pulsing between your legs. He grabbed the back of your neck to deepen his kisses, and you began to lose the plot. You were thinking about where he learned to kiss like this, but knowing him–it was just natural.
“Michael…” You gasped out, when tongue kissed you–hard. It felt like the muscles in your mouth were boxing, and Michael was winning. He walked you to your bed, gently catching your back to lay you down. You grabbed his jaw, practically pushing his face into yours. You spread your legs a little, allowing him to get between them. You felt how big he was through his slacks, and it made your pussy throb at the contact.
“Whatever you need me to do honey, I’ll do it.” He moans out. You're pulling on his shirt at this point, and even though you knew deep down he wasn’t the most confident, he sure was tonight. Luckily for the two of you, Bill passed out on your sofa while he was petting your kitten, and he couldn’t hear a thing.
“Get back on your knees, Michael. I never told you to get up.” You say, pushing him off of your body. You already missed the contact between the two of you–but he needed to give you a proper apology.
You stood up before him, and he fell to his knees again. He was staring at your legs in the shorts you were wearing, the smooth skin calling his name. He glanced at you, and you looked visibly turned on—yet sexually frustrated at the same time.
“Can I take these off, love?” Michael asks politely, but you didn’t answer. “Please?”
That’s all it took. You nodded, and he unbuttoned the buttons of your jean shorts, and unzipped them. He slowly slid them down your body, noticing the damp spot let in the seat of your panties. You had on these cute cotton ones, with a small, dainty bow on the front.
You got shy on him when he started to kiss your upper leg, slowly reaching your heat. Once he got to your panties, he bit down on the side of your panties, and pulled them down with his teeth.
Your panties pooled at your legs, and your pussy started to drip. He watched the wetness escaping to your thighs, and planted a kiss right on a wet spot.
“It tastes so sweet, angel.” He praised, licking at your thighs. He playfully bit at one of them at one point, earning a thump to his forehead.
“Baby… c’mon don’t tease.” You moaned, tugging at his hair.
“This is how I beg. You want me to beg, right?” He was such a fucking tease. You hated how he had you crumbling, when you were the one supposed to be in control.
“Yes—mm. Beg, Michael.” Your breath hitched.
Michael licked a stripe up your clit, and it sent shivers down your entire body. You gripped onto the sheets behind you, and since he had you standing, your legs immediately went limp.
He pushed his tongue further into your heat, and you grabbed his head. You used his head as a sex toy, massaging your pussy with the muscles of his tongue. For someone who never ate any kind of pussy before, he was tearing your shit up.
He was groaning inside of it, slurping every ounce of cum out of your body.
Then he stopped.
“Mikey… why’d you stop, baby?” You groaned, your legs quivering at the disconnection.
“I wanna be inside, my love. Please, baby. Please.” He begged, back on his knees in front of you. He rubbed on your legs, leaving sloppy kisses all the way down to your feet. He was the only man you knew who would treat your body with such love and care, and that was the only reason you were forgiving him right now.
You were scared, though. You hadn’t told Michael that you were still a virgin. You honestly figured he would know what to do, and that he would take over–but truth is, Michael was too. No matter how dirty he talked in your ear, or how sloppy he ate your pussy—he hadn’t had sex with anyone, even after all these years.
“Michael, I got somethin’ to tell you, baby.” You whispered, his eyes looking up at you and standing to approach your face.
“You can always talk to me, angel. Was it too much? I can tone it down a bit, I’m sorry.” He implored, bringing you in close to help comfort you as much as he could. He was so scared of hurting you, and would hate himself if it ever got to that point again.
“No, no… you’re doin’ great, Mikey.” I’m just… I dunno, nervous?” You chuckled, stroking his jaw. He changed so much since you’d seen him a couple of years ago. His jawline was more defined, and you could tell how much he was growing into an adult. He looked so mature— the two of you weren’t teenagers anymore. This was something you two talked about when you were younger, and how “gross” it was, but it was honestly such a beautiful feeling with Michael willing to please you.’
“We don’t have to keep goin’ if you don’t want to, beautiful.” He said, kissing your forehead. He combed through your hair and rubbed circles on your back.
“If it makes you feel better, I haven’t gone all the way before.” Michael said to you, playing with your fingers. It looked like it took everything in him to admit that, and you saw the slight embarrassed expression on his face. You cupped his jaw, and he avoided eye contact with you.
“Me neither.”
The two of you giggled softly, and as the sound of it wore off, it got serious.
“If I’m bein’ honest, I was savin’ myself for you.” Michael confessed.
You thought about all the times you thought about Michael these past couple of years, and no matter how mad he made you, when you watched his performances and saw that face, you couldn’t shake the fact that not only were you still in love with him, you were still very, very attracted to him and his every move. The way he thrusted his hips on stage, the way he danced effortlessly, and sang with so much passion–it made your whole body tingle.
“I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t savin’ myself, too.” You said.
“I’ll try my best to make it worth it then, girl.” Michael sneered, pecking at your lips before fully going in for a deep, loving kiss.
“Do you…keep condoms or anything here?” He asked you, now fully on top of your body, between your legs again.
“No condoms, but–mmm, I’m on the pill.” You moaned out, grabbing at his shoulders.
“We should be good then, right baby?” Michael teased, moving his kisses further down your neck, leaving a small hickey right above your collarbone. Michael was being bold, and you remembered how you still needed to put him in his place.
“Sit against the headboard, Michael.” You demanded, looking into his eyes with pure seduction. HIs eyes were filled with lust, and you saw the tiniest smirk creep on his face.
“Yes ma’am.”
Michael stood up, and slowly let his pants and boxers drop to the floor. He sat against the headboard like you asked, and you slowly took off his plain white t-shirt, exposing his chest. You could tell he was a little nervous about the whole situation, because he wrapped his arms on his chest, hiding himself from you in a way. His body was gorgeous, and you wanted to kiss every single inch of him if you knew it would make him feel better about himself.
You put his hands down and placed a kiss on his cheek, and proceeded to do what you needed to do, and that was to please the both of you.
Your panties were already down from earlier, and the cool air still left shivers on your heat. You arched your back a little, tugging at his blue jeans. You pulled them down along with his boxers, and threw them off your bed and onto your hardwood floor. You straddled him, and he automatically rested his hands on your hips. Before you slid his cock inside, you just wanted to take a chance to admire him. You looked at his face, and smiled. You missed having him around, even if it meant holding a tiny grudge for a while.
You knew it would wear off soon.
You kissed his forehead, and touched his shaft. He shivered immediately, his face scrunching at the contact.
“You okay, Mikey?” You asked, your voice laced with enticement. He tried to keep himself together, but you could see how easily he would be able to collapse under your grasp.
“Mhm.. jus’--it feels good.” Michael murmured, rubbing along the fat of your ass as you teased him. You saw how hard he was, and by the looks of it, you were in for it. Michael was sitting at a mean nine, and having no prior experience, you were nervous as hell. Of course you knew how to pleasure yourself, but that was nothing compared to what he had attached to him.
You gently stroked him, watching as he closed his eyes to focus on the pleasure. His grip on your ass was firmer, and you couldn’t hold back the quiet moan that escaped your mouth when you felt his soft hands rub on it.
“You ready, handsome?” You tittered, your laugh barely above a whisper.
Michael nodded his head, his eyebrows furrowing a little. He was so turned on.
You took a deep breath, lifted your hips, and grabbed at his dick. You slowly inserted the length inside yourself, and the connecting between the two of you felt like heaven. You were slow at putting it inside at first, simply because of the stretch. It was uncomfortable at first, but when Michael held onto you like he did, you had faith in yourself.
“Aghh…mm. Shit, mama.” Michael groaned, slightly thrusting his hips, trying to get every inch of himself inside your body. He wanted to do nothing but be intertwined with you, feeling every centimeter of your walls around his shaft.
You threw your head back at the feeling, and Michael buried his head in your chest. He was so overwhelmed with the sensation of thrusting inside of your body, feeling like he was as close as he could get with you.
You rocked back and forth against him, shuddering at the many, many, foreign inches inside of your pussy. You both were chasing your high, the sound of your skin and ass slapping against his hips–it was sexy, honestly.
“This… nghhh, mm–fuck. You are so… so worth it, girl. Feels s’ good.” He cried out, as he latched his mouth to your left breast. He took his hand and massaged your right one, leaving you a wet, moaning mess.
“Tell me you’re–fuck, sorry again, Michael… Nd’ maybe I’ll let you to cum.” You say, gazing at him. Your eyes were low, and you didn’t need a mirror to know you looked fucked out. Michael was destroying you, but you needed to maintain your power. He whimpered at your demands, and stared at you with those puppy dog eyes that you loved so much.
“I’m so sorry, baby. Shit… baby, I promise. Y’ gonna make me cum talkin’ like that.” He cried out once again, squeezing his eyes shut.
Then you saw them.
The tears started back up in Michael’s eyes. These tears weren’t from sadness though, they were from ecstacy. You felt so good taking him, that it brought him to tears, and you found it to be the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.
“That good, huh, baby?” Your voice was laced with a condescending tone, and you took his hands from off of your hips. You held them tightly, and sped up your pace on his lap. You were holding back on how loud you wanted to be, in fear of letting Michael think you weren’t in control anymore.
His whimpers grew louder and louder, and the sounds made by the two of you gradually got more aggressive. You were bouncing on him at this point, and you both were slowly reaching your climaxes.
“I’ll never… ever leave you again, angel. Oh God, baby…mm. Gonna cum.” He continued to groan in your ear, and he squeezed your hand tighter. You never thought in a million years that you’d be in this position, holding hands with the one you loved while he pummeled you with a cock so long it damn near reached your cervix.
A couple seconds later, you felt your stomach twist into knots. You and Michael went silent, focused on keeping the rhythm so you two could cum together, and it worked better than expected. You were so lucky that you were consistent with your birth control, because Michael made no efforts at pulling out. He let all of him spill inside of you, and the uncontrollable shaking of your legs was enough for him to bring you in and hold you.
TEN MINUTES LATER
“I feel so embarrassed, crying like that,” Michael started, letting out a dry chuckle. It had been a couple minutes since the two of you came, and he held you close to him while he brushed through the locks of your hair. Just like most say, the “after-fuck” glow was real. Michael seemed so much shinier, and his afro was the slightest bit frizzy. Even then, he was breathtaking.
“Why, baby? You couldn’t tell I was into it? It made it better.” You reassured, rubbing on his bare chest.
“The feelin’ was so indescribable, I guess it just brought me to tears,” He admitted, while yawning at the same time. “I jus’ really hope Bill didn’t hear us.”
The two of you laughed, because Bill had been fast asleep for the longest. You could hear his loud, bear-like snores in your living room, which was fine with you. He better have got comfortable, because Michael was staying with you for the night. You didn’t want him leaving your side right now, and deep down you knew he didn’t want to lose sight of you again.
You made sure of it.
“I’m gonna make up for all the time I cost you, love.” Michael tells you, kissing your temple.
“You better.” You said laughing, melting into his arms.
“It’s crazy, because I sent you letters not even knowin’ you moved here. Thought you were gonna be at your mother’s house forever.” He joked, earning a soft punch to his forearm.
You rolled your eyes and got back comfortable, your body slowly going limp.
Then he started.
“Ben, the two of need look no more,”
“We both found what we were lookin’ for…”
You were drifting off to sleep, while you listened to his soft voice sing. It felt like old times again, and having the man you loved so much back in your life, meant you could feel brand new for new good. You knew he had a lot more to make up to you–but this was a start.
ohhh it gets me SO hot when when everybody brings up Michael’s allegations when they know damn well he’s innocent but never even talk about Diana’s creepy ass 🌚
Hey! Wanted to pop in and say that I enjoyed your last fic, and I’m so excited to hear more from you! I love the mj fandom because everyone writes mature (not just smut but the descriptions and how deep a fic can get) And i just want to say you do that very well. Thank you for your time!
this is the sweetest compliment ever 🥹
and i 1000% agree with you about loving the mj fandom, i haven’t read something i didn’t enjoy, it’s the best. even in my older wattpad days you could find really good fics about him since like 2019 😭🤍
michael’s personality to the public was this timid, closed off man—until he hit that bedroom of yours. that shyness slowly faded away, when he was able to have you all to himself. you gave michael all the experience he had, and him taking the time to learn your body made the entanglement so much better. he knew you from head to toe, and no matter how much you tried to fight it, you needed him—you needed it. he made you so crazy… so much so, you forgot you were in a relationship.
𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 ➛ cheating (sorry not sorry, lol), deadbeat boyfriend, sexual contents. (unprotected sex, p in v penetration, whining, switch!mike, backshots, masturbation (fem & m receiving), explicit language, breeding kink, panty sniffing (hehe) aftercare.) i do not condone cheating! but hey, who wouldn’t go that extra mile for the king of pop 👀
𝑎 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑦 ➛hello to you beautiful people! i’ve been a silent viewer in this fandom for a while, but i thought to put pen to paper because writing is definitely a passion of mine (as well as michael jackson). i have a little about me (here), and i’m hoping you all enjoy my content!
“And in my estimation, the true ‘King of Pop’, rock, and soul… Mr. Michael Jackson!” Elizabeth Taylor announces, the crowd erupts in whoops and screams for the man who influences all. He erupts onto the stage, the black suit he wore embroidered with the tiniest gold accents, a red silk dress shirt underneath to match the hemming on his sleeve, and a sparkling diamond statement piece decorated on his chest. He wore black slacks with shiny metal going down along his legs. He looked good. Great, even.
He was so humble, too. He always made sure to thank those who supported him and his journey, and that’s why so many people fell for him. Why you fell for him. He gave his thanks to Elizabeth, and began the short speech he actually rehearsed with you a couple nights ago.
“Thank you,” he started, that one ringlet curl falling in front of his nose, and the spotlight beaming bright on his face. His face—one of the many things you adored about the man standing a couple seats in front of you. He had the voice of an angel, and the face to back it up, too. You never feed into what the tabloids said about him, how they make fun of his complexion, or how they spew crazy amounts of hate towards a man who would (and most certainly could) pay all of their bills in a heartbeat.
“Thank you very much, Elizabeth Taylor,” Michael continued, bending down at the small microphone presented in front of him. He had to do this very often, for a man standing at five-foot-nine, he was all legs, which gave the illusion that he was much, much taller than he actually was. He kissed Elizabeth on the cheek to show his gratitude, then proceeded to thank Eddie Murphy, who accompanied the two of them on stage as well.
Eddie Murphy was always a tease towards Michael, poking at his stomach and constantly trying to tickle him, causing him to let out a deep chuckle. His laugh sounded like the definition of magic, the sound was the type to bring tears to your eyes. It sounded so pure and real, and he never had to fake it—only times he did were when an interviewer asked him the most awkward questions known to man, and he had to force it for the cameras.
“First, I’d like to thank God, who makes all things possible,” Michael started back up again, the cheers from the crowd growing louder.
“I’d like to thank my mother nd’ father, who I love very much,” Michael pointed, and you glanced over at Katherine and Joseph Jackson, who weren’t sitting too far away from you. Your admiration for Michael ran deep, because despite what Joseph put him through his entire life, he still thanked him. He still showered him with love and appreciation, because that’s how honorable his character was.
“I’d like to thank… Quincy Jones, he’s in the audience… I don’t see him… he was somewhere—oh, he was right there, thank you, Quincy.” Michael scanned the second row for Quincy, and locked eyes with you for a little over two seconds. The missing seat next to you was reserved for Quincy, who was handling something backstage the last you could remember.
Michael ushered out the rest of his thanks, ended it with an “I love you”, per usual, and looked out onto the crowd before him. He blew a kiss to the crowd, and found your eyes again. His doe eyes scanned you as quick as he could, your black floor length gown was glistening under the light, and your shimmery red bottoms were barely peeking out. Your hair was pinned up, your subtle blonde highlights showing in the very delicate and tedious bun sitting atop of your head.
One thing he really loved though, was your eye makeup. Your eyeshadow was natural, but still managed to pop every move you made. And your lips—God, your lips. He couldn’t get enough of them. The brown lip liner, blended into the plush of them, a beautiful nude lipstick giving it all a lovely push.
He stepped back from the microphone, glancing at you once again—smiling, and biting his lip. You prayed nobody could tell that his action was directed towards you. Especially the man next to you, your boyfriend, Reese. His claps were a lot slower than yours, his face showing signs of repulsion while Michael was on stage.
The only reason Reese was here was because you needed a plus-one for the award show. Michael invited you, and only you, but Reese just couldn’t shake the fact that Michael wanted you to come alone. Did it annoy you? Of course. Was his reasoning valid? You wished that it wasn’t. What Reese didn’t know is you were the reason that Michael’s reward winning jitters weren’t being displayed on the stage he stood upon today.
FLASHBACK
A couple nights before, when he offered to give you the tickets, there was a catch. There was always a catch when it came to anything Michael gave to you, just because he thoroughly enjoyed watching your face when you got annoyed, knowing you’d do anything he asked for anyway.
He told you in order to get the tickets from him, especially with Reese tagging along, you had to kiss him. Just once, and he’d be satisfied. You showed up to his hotel, but with all his fame and the crazies willing to track his every move, you had to be specially escorted. It felt wrong to come see him in the moment, but once you saw him, all of that weariness faded. He was getting ready for another event prior, straightening up his silky black tie before opening the door. You stood before him, your casual dark wash Levi’s jeans adorned on your legs, a black blouse tucked into them, and some subtle, yet fancy kitten heels on your feet.
He took a whiff of your signature scent, one that could pinpoint you in any crowd, ‘Estee Lauder Beautiful Eau De’. One smell, and his grin immediately shined through. You walked past him, letting the air fill with your scent, before sitting down elegantly on his hotel bed. There was a cup of orange juice on the nightstand, half full–and you silently chuckled to yourself.
Michael didn’t say a word to you, just stared at you in awe. He had no shame in looking you up and down, taking in not only your scent, but the outfit you had on. Your blouse was tight-fitting, and the gold cross necklace sat perfectly between your cleavage. Your chest was so shiny, all the firming body oils and lotion you used made your collarbone pop, and your perfume lasted all day and night. Michael blushed, and that happened every time he stared at you for too long. It was times like this, he wished he could have you alone all the time–but he knew that wasn’t possible under your circumstances.
The two of you went over his speech, and you portrayed a big crowd of people to help give him the reality of the ceremony. It was fun, Michael was a goof—so it was never an awkward moment between the two of you. After a while, he started to blatantly stare at you again, fiddling with hands.
“Michael,” you blurted out, snapping your manicured nails at the man before you. He jumped a little bit, blinking a couple times to snap him out of his trance.
“Hmm?” He started, tilting his head while he devoured his bottom lip. His breathing seemed unsteady, and if he was being honest with himself at all, he forgot the reason he invited you. You looked so good, it was silently turning him on.
“The tickets, Michael. Reese is gonna go apeshit if I’m out too long.” You argued, trying to put up a front as if you cared about Reese’s feelings, but in reality, you hated being confronted. Reese had a million questions a minute anytime you went somewhere that wasn’t with him, and he was so, so, insecure. It made you sick–but your parents were under the influence that the two of you were going to make it to marriage. You didn’t think so.
“I wish his name would stop escaping those lips,” Michael chuckled, searching in one of his duffle bags for the tickets he reserved for the two of you. “Shoot, you’re lucky I’m even giving him a ticket.” He grins, handing you two slips of paper marked with the arena’s name on it, as well as your seats.
“I got you in one of the front rows, and you can thank me later.” He winked, sending a chill down your spine. An actual chill, too–your body suddenly twitched, and of course, Michael noticed it. As you were about to head out of his hotel room, he grabbed your forearm and dragged you back inside.
“You forgettin’ about our deal?” He said, his voice dropping an octave deeper, and furrowing those beautiful eyebrows of his.
“Alright, alright. I’ll kiss your cheek, and that’s it, Michael. Nothing more, nothing less.” You demand, grabbing his jaw and turning it to the side. He fights your gesture, and slowly puts your hand back down.
“C’mon, beautiful. A little innocent peck on my lips isn’t gonna hurt nobody.” He pulls you in, and you take a moment to admire his features. You love his smile, his teeth were pearly white and straight as a ruler–it made you melt. And those eyes, they’re to die for—literally. They had the kind of sparkle that would convince you to do whatever he wanted, which is why you were stuck in this situation in the first place.
“Y’know this is wrong, Michael. What if Reese finds out?” You argue, using a little strength to push him back and away from your lips. One thing you know, is that if he gets too close, all hell will break loose. And unfortunately for you, you’re not going to fight it either. He was a sex icon, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t turned on.
“One kiss, and I’ll let you get back to him. I just wanna thank you, y’know.”
You threw your head back, a smile slowly creeping on your face. “S’nothing, Michael, it’s what friends do. Now let’s get this over with, I gotta head back to the house.” You walk towards him, the click of your heels silent while you strutted across the hotel carpet. You looked up at him, and his eyes were filled with hunger. You puckered your lips, and kissed him once. The two of you pulled away, and the expression on his face was showing he wanted more. You needed to get away before things went downhill, but it was like an invisible rope pulling you closer, because before you knew it, you were kissing him, over and over again.
“You can’t leave me, right now.” Michael whispers after pulling away again, slowly backing you towards his hotel bed.
“But, Reese–” You start, but Michael quickly cuts you off.
“Shh…shh. Focus on me, don’t worry about him right now.” Was the last thing Michael muttered to you, before completely stripping you naked and watching you take three of his fingers at once.
To this day, Reese knows nothing about the entanglement the two of you indulged in, and you wanted it to stay that way.
PRESENT TIME
“He’s kind of overrated, in my honest opinion.” Reese starts, his claps stopping. He was the only one in the crowd who wasn’t clapping anymore, and in all honestly, you were embarrassed to be around someone so disrespectful, let alone be in a relationship with them.
“Overrated, how? Reese, this man has well over one hundred rewards, that’s far from overrated.” You argue between claps. The crowd gave him a standing ovation, including yourself, getting up to whoop and clap louder for one of the most brilliant men in the music industry. You straightened your dress to sit back down, and was met with a very annoyed and frustrated Reese.
“Damn, seems like you like him more than me.” Reese argues, rolling his eyes. You didn’t want to start a fight, not here, not right now–but Jesus, was he irritating. It was always something with him, this was never a one time thing. Reese has no shame throwing a fit everywhere the two of you went–whether it was another guy complimenting you, anyone being nice to you for that matter–it was all a threat to him.
“Will you lighten up, Reese? Enjoy the ceremony that you didn’t have to come to.” You scoffed, brushing off his attitude to continuing enjoying the program in front of you. And to your surprise, that wasn’t the only reward Michael won that night–so in a way you were winning, because being able to see that beautiful smile of his made your evening so much brighter.
“Don’t even know how you got tickets, anyway.” Reese mutters under his breath, hoping you didn’t hear the remarks escaping his lips.
You pretended you didn’t hear him, but all you could think about was the night you made the mistake of sleeping with Michael Joseph Jackson. Do you regret the decision you made? Hell no—that man was a damn drug to you. But now you were faced with the dilemma of continuing your affair with this man who wouldn’t escape your mind, or submitting to your boyfriend who treated you like shit.
After another hour or so, the program ended, and everyone was starting to pack their purses and clutches to exit the building. You wanted to get out of there as fast as you could, but once again, you felt that invisible rope constantly pulling you towards him. Reese didn’t even bother hooking arms with you, carrying your clutch, or even holding your hand. It was so bad, you got used to his behavior. No flowers, no dates–the honeymoon phase was over for the two of you. He clearly didn’t care as much as you did, though.
After a minute of trying to get past everyone, all the celebrities were met with paparazzi outside. That’s when you ran into him. All the shiny accents on his pants were a dead giveaway–and those eyes. Those bambi eyes that seemed to take up his whole face, eyes contacts could never recreate. You stopped in your tracks, when you noticed how he was starting to jog to get to you.
You heard Reese mumble something under his breath, but Michael was the only thing on your mind at the moment.
“Hey! I’m so glad you came.” Michael expresses, embracing you for a hug, and you let him in. In front of Reese.
“Wouldn’t miss it, y’know this. I’m really proud of you.” His hug gradually got tighter, and it felt like heaven. Being able to take in his scent again, and just being able to feel on his body gave you more joy than you could’ve imagined. Reese on the other hand–it was like a switch went off in his brain, because not only was trying to actively pull you away from Michael, now he wanted to hold your waist.
Michael looked down at the image before him, and just simply nodded his head. He looked back at you, your face showing clear signs of awkwardness and discomfort, but he was your boyfriend–you couldn’t make a scene in front of all these people.
“I’ll see you around, m’kay? There’s an afterparty if you’re down to come.” He rested his hand on your bare shoulder, since the sleeves of your dress were designed to cascade a little off your shoulder. His hand was a little chilly, and the touch of his soft fingertips made you twitch once again.
“Nah, we ain’t time for an afterparty.” Reese speaks up, attempting to drop his voice a couple notches to sound more dominating–but in reality it embarrassed you. You sighed and rolled your eyes, kind of disappointed because any moment with Michael was a moment you needed to have.
“I wasn’t talkin’ to you, though.” Michael retorts, looking back at you once again. This act of retaliation turned you on, but if you showed an ounce of that in front of Reese, you’ll never hear the end of it. It’s like his mouth did nothing but argue, while Michael’s did everything you needed it to. The silence grew loud, and Michael wanted to get you out of this situation.
Reese didn’t even know what to say after Michael checked him, but that’s how most were–Michael was good at silencing people, making them shut up before him, and he didn’t even have to be crazy rude about it. He just made people speechless.
“Anyway, don’t be scared to call about that afterparty.” He said, arms out to embrace you again. You melted in his arms, taking a deep breath so his cologne could ignite your body once more. Reese looked like a child too scared to ask for a piece of candy while he stood behind you, watching as another man swooned you, just that easy.
“I’ll see. It’s late, but I’ll let you know.” You reassured, and he gave a simple nod and smile in return. He stuck his hand out to shake Reese’s and surprisingly, Reese shook his hand back.
‘He shook Michael’s hand’. You thought to yourself. That same hand that’s smacked on the fat of your ass, the fingers that have felt the walls of your pussy, those same veins you watched pop as he was thrusting his digits inside of you.
But that was all in the past now, it had to be. You had to put an end to this before something bad happened to the both of you, because Reese wasn’t necessarily an emotionally stable man. He had his moments and his tantrums, where his voice would get louder and louder, until it overall brought you to tears. You hated yelling–you were a reasonable girl, you liked to solve things with simplicity–a nice conversation always did the trick with you. But Reese was raging now, especially after this little moment with Michael.
His blood was boiling.
The two of you didn’t speak in the car—he never took his eyes off the road. His grip on the steering wheel was crazy tight, his knuckles were white. His face seemed to be stuck in this permanent frown, and you didn’t dare utter a word to him while he was like this–but you knew he’d run his mouth all night long until he made you feel bad.
You made it to your apartment, Reese’s movements urgent. He didn’t open the car door for you, (not like he did that anyway), and he stormed to the front door of the apartment you two shared. Your name was on the lease, so really it was your apartment, but you felt bad for the dude. He had nowhere else to go, and unfortunately, he was still your boyfriend. He waited for you to get to the door to unlock it, with his fists bawled up at his sides.
The two of you walked in, you sat your clutch on the couch, looking at the angry man standing in front of you.
“Do you think this is a game?” Reese speaks up, finally. He brings his hands to his sides, profusely shaking his head.
Before you can speak, he blurts out of turn again.
“Y’gonna let some poser take you from me? Is this what this is? Huh?” He’s yelling now, and all you can do is stare at the mess that’s in front of you. Your own boyfriend.
“Poser is crazy, Reese. You don’t know that man from a can of paint.” You retaliated, searching through your bag just to find something to distract you. You did it every time someone annoyed you–you started looking for stuff, you cleaned up, it was the distraction that mattered.
“And you do?! Seems like you’re real close with him, embarrassing me like that tonight.” He tuts, stomping towards the bedroom.
“Embarassing you? You don’t even claim me in public, Reese! You wanna touch on me when you feel threatened. I get sick of that stupid shit.”
This statement alone made Reese see red. He turns around, storms towards you, and gets real close to your face. You could smell his sweat from under his suit, and the remnants of that gross, super woodsy cologne you hated. He stared into your soul, and finally opened his mouth to speak to you once again.
“Y’nothing but a lil’ skank anyway. Sex was good, but you’re nothing to me.”
He didn’t matter to you anymore honestly, but hearing something like that–and hearing someone you’ve given your life to, given your body to–it hurts. Bad. You were crushed at his words, but the last thing you wanted was Reese of all people, to see that he hurt your feelings. It wasn’t in your nature.
“Pack your shit, then.” You demanded, standing ten toes down to the man who thought he’d get into your head, make you believe you needed him. But the only thing you needed right now was Michael, and as soon as Reese got his disreputable self out of your sight, Michael was the first person you were calling.
“And where the fuck am I gonna go, huh?” Reese argues.
You put your hand in his face. “Figure it out. You’re not my problem, Reese. And for the love of God, go get a job.” You added out of frustration. He had basically been living off of your checks, driving your car, and lounging around your house all day. If we’re being honest, you were doing him a huge favor putting him out. He needed to grow up.
Reese could only put on a fake smile and shake his head, dragging his feet towards your bedroom and grabbing whatever duffel back that was in his range of sight. He went through your drawers, stuffing his underwear and clothes into the bag, leaving a mess all over the floor. You didn’t even care at this point–you were just glad he was leaving. He then went to the bathroom, gathered all of his soaps, his toothbrush, his razor. He grabbed his three pairs of shoes, stuffed them into the bag as far as he could, and failed at zipping the duffel.
He took one last look at you before leaving.
“Hope you have a good life without me.” He says, holding his head up high like his words actually meant something to you.
“Trust me, I will.” You replied, shooing him to walk out of your front door. You locked the door behind you, and went to your bedroom window to watch him walk into the darkness of the street, where he had to motion a taxi down to come pick him up. You didn’t care about what happened to Reese at this point–all the memories and problems with him were out of your orbit now. Michael was the planet that surrounded your sun, and the only thing on your mind was calling him at the very moment.
You walked over to your phone, dialing the number he gave to you back at the hotel. You played with the cord, twisting it between your fingers, the anticipation of him answering the phone killing you.
‘That afterparty is probably over by now.’ Was all you thought to yourself, disappointed at the things that could’ve occurred if you were there.
The ringing suddenly came to a halt.
“This is Michael.”
Truly, you missed his voice. You sat in silence for a second, the sound of him speaking to you again leaving you a little stunned.
“Hello?” He asked, chuckling a bit.
“Oh, God. Sorry, Michael, it’s me.” You started, closing your eyes at the embarrassing moment you just presented.
“Hey, you.” It was almost like you could hear his smile.
You cleared your throat and began to speak. “Am I still invited to that afterparty we talked about earlier?”
“What afterparty?” He questioned.
“T-the one you talked about at the award ceremony… Michael–”
“Oh, that? I was lying.” He chuckles on the other line–another sound that was music to your ears.
In your head, you thought you were getting played–messed with. Was this a scheme all along? Did Michael just want to toy with you, and laugh it off after?
“So it was a joke..?” You question, the disappointment laced in your voice.
Michael heard your tone change, and immediately realized how this might’ve been blown out of proportion.
“No, no, not like that, angel. There’s no afterparty because I just wanted to see if you’d call. I wanted you to come over, that’s all–I wasn’t tryna’ play with you, beautiful.” He reassured, his voice automatically getting softer and softer after each word, soothing your heart ever so slightly.
You perked up, regaining your smile again.
“Can Bill come get me in thirty?” You asked him, and of course he said yes with speed. All he wanted was to see your beautiful face again, feel on you, and most of all–talk to you.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER
“Thanks, Bill.” You nodded, giving the older, burly man your gratitude for picking you up at such a late hour. He gave you a head nod and a smile, and closed the Rolls Royce door behind you. You’ve never been in a car this fancy, the red leather interior, that new car smell, it was all so much to take in.
You watched out of the window, as the neighborhoods gradually started to look more and more expensive. Around fifteen minutes passed by, and you arrived at Michael’s hotel. When Bill opened the door for you, it felt like the wind breezing through the night sky hit you extra hard. Your stomach was in knots, and you hadn’t even seen him yet. You walked up to the hotel door, Bill not too far behind you. You made it up the elevator–and there was his room.
Bill walked to his own room right across from Michael’s, and nodded at you once more.
“Goodnight.” He said. His voice was stern, but somehow loving at the same time.
“Goodnight, Bill. And thanks, again.” He disappeared into his hotel room, and now you were all alone, standing in front of Michael’s door.
You took a deep breath, and knocked softly three times.
You could hear the top lock being unhooked, and then the next one, and then the next one. The doorknob twisted, and you were met with that smile. Michael stood before you, and he looked so casual for once in his life. He had on just a plain white tee, with a pair of plaid pajama pants that left too much for your imagination.
“You made it,” He smiles, pulling your arm to come inside of his hotel. He closes the door behind you, but sees the smile on your face slowly start to fade.
“What happened, angel? Where’d that smile go?” He taunts, lifting your chin to look at him.
“Me and Reese are over, Michael.” You tell him, your voice confusing him.
“And this is a bad thing?” Michael laughs, but clearly there was more upsetting you. Sometimes Michael was oblivious to reading a room, better yet reading emotions–but it was something he promised himself he’d work on.
“It’s not that I care about, the sleaze called me a skank–said I meant nothin’ to him anyway. It’s my fault, really–I should’ve ended that a long time ago.” The tone in your voice signaled that you were in the slightest bit heartbroken–not because of the breakup, but by the hateful comments being made about you.
Michael knew that all too well–the hate, the rude remarks. That’s why he didn’t hesitate to embrace you, and he left a soft kiss on your temple.
“You’re a beautiful, bright, young woman. He’s not a man, anyway. He didn’t know how to take care of you. Not like I can.” Michael snuck in that last part, hoping to God you’d catch it.
“Not like you can, hm? Elaborate, Michael.”
He got all shy, hiding his face in his hands, and he turned the slightest bit red. “Yeah, not like I can. I know you haven’t forgotten about it.”
“‘Cus I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“It” was what went down a couple nights ago, and he was right, it was like a ticking time bomb in your mind, ready to go off if you didn’t have him again. You stared up at him, never breaking eye contact between you two. His lips parted slightly, and your gaze slowly aroused him. He loved looking into your eyes, he thought they were just as beautiful as your mind, body, and soul. So when you cupped his jaw and reeled him back in for a kiss–he was going.
He melted into it, the sort of whininess that you heard with each moan in your mouth was leaving your lace thong soaked. You were glad this was all happening again, because of how passionate you knew this was bound to be. Michael learned your body so quickly, just from a few nights ago–and despite what they say about him in the paper, calling him a virgin and inexperienced–he knew exactly how to please a woman.
“I’m glad I–mm… get you all to myself now.” Michael admits between kisses, grabbing at your hips to straddle him. He places you on his lap with ease, his grip on your ass becoming more firm and intense.
He pulls away from you for just a second, and gets really close to your ear.
“I need you, y’know that?”
That was enough for you. You swiftly brought his lips to yours again, your hands pulling lightly at his curls. His hands were exploring your body once more, feeling the plush of your ass through the material of your Nike sweatpants you received as a gift from your sister last Christmas.
“I want…mm–I want it all off, angel.” He muttered, “Can you do that for me?”
You nodded profusely, having absolutely no hesitation when he asked you to do something. But that wasn’t enough for Michael. He wanted to hear that sweet voice of yours, he wanted to hear you submit to him. He wanted that permission from you, he needed that verbal approval to do whatever he wanted to you.
“Don’t just nod at me, honey. Tell me what you want from me.” He whispered, toying with the hem of your sweatpants. “I won’t touch y’ til’ you give me permission, angel.”
He was messing with you, his cold fingertips already taking a dip into your sweats. He wouldn’t touch you all the way until you spoke.
“Fuck, Michael. Fuckin’ touch me, baby.”
And that was his green light.
He pushed his fingers past your panties, and rubbed circles along the delicacy of your clit. You pulled his hair just a little bit harder, making sure not to actually hurt him. “Shit–mhm, rub it like that, Mikey.” You moaned out the nickname, and it only encouraged him to rub faster.
You kissed him with so much passion, and you felt so grounded. He wanted to please you.
You pulled back out of your kiss, the wet sound echoing through the hotel room. You stared at him, his eyes already drinking you up.
“Lay back,” you breathed out, pushing him onto the bed, his sheets already coming undone. He obliged, ready to risk it all for the woman atop of him.
You grinded against his bulge, feeling how girthy it was even under his pajama pants. The last time you two were in this predicament, it all seemed to happen kind of fast. Now you could really study his body, learn all about what he liked, just as he did with you.
“Yeah, mama. You feel it, don’t you?” He teased. “It’s aching for you, baby—ah—it needs you.”
You were at a loss for words. You needed more. You needed him inside your body, stretching you out.
You placed your hand on his bulge, lightly stroking him through his pants. His face scrunched up, and you found it to be the cutest thing.
“Angel…mm, don’t—nngh, tease me like that. Mmph—fuck. C’mon, take it out and do it right, baby. Please?” Michael begged. Something about how he could come undone with your touch drove you crazy.
You stood before him, sliding his pajama pants off of his body slowly. His v-line was something serious, and very overlooked. His body was absolutely gorgeous from head-to-toe, and his happy trail made you excited. And to your surprise, Michael wasn’t wearing any boxers.
You slid the remains of his pajama pants down, his dick popping back up once they fell. His dick was huge. Like, really big. It was beautiful, too. His shaft was long and girthy—and kind of intimidating. It was nothing you couldn’t handle though, because you wanted to handle Michael, so damn bad.
You took your hand, your slim and feminine fingers toying with his cock, stroking all of his length and watching him squirm at your touch. You kissed his lips while you continued your handjob, and he stuck his tongue right down your throat.
“You keep…nngh—touchin’ on me like this—mm—I might cum, baby.” He warned you.
Michael wanted to cum so bad. He wanted all of his sperm to leak all over that delicate hand of yours.
“No cummin’ yet, handsome. Need you inside to do that.” You teased, bringing your stroking to a sudden halt.
“Angel… baby, why’d you stop?” He whined, trying to hold your hands to convince you to start back up.
“I need you inside, Mikey. Please…?” You begged, sitting on your knees, giving Michael competition when it came to your puppy dog eyes.
He was convinced, and instructed you to get on all fours. He snatched your sweatpants off from this angle, your thong submerged completely with the fat of your ass, the entire fabric soaking wet.
Your tank top was slowly falling off, and to your luck, you weren’t wearing a bra. Your tits pooled onto the mattress, and you arched your back for the man behind you.
He slowly hooked his lengthy fingers through the sides of your panties, pulling them down only to see the string of cum that decorated them. Before you knew it, he held them up to his nose and sniffed them with pride.
He was enjoying this.
“Got you this wet, huh, baby? You been thinkin’ about me?” Michael egged on. He loved validation, especially when it came from you. He didn’t even want to admit that when you said you were proud of him after the ceremony, he was hard for twenty minutes.
But now he had you right where he wanted you—ass up and ready for all of him.
You shook your ass in front of him to tease, and he slapped it one good time. You yelled out in pleasure, his hand print slowly fading on your skin.
Michael puts the bottom of his shirt into his mouth, because he wants to watch. He wanted to watch his cock stretch you wide—and he wanted to watch all of him leak out of all you.
He lines his dick up with your entrance, letting you feel his tip tease your pussy. The head of his dick was already huge, and you had to mentally prepare yourself for the rest of it. He slides in, going inch by inch, watching how your body reacts just to make sure he’s not hurting you.
“Mikey…oh, fuck, baby…” You moaned out, gripping his arm from behind you.
“Just wait til’ it’s all inside, mama. Want you screamin’.” He muttered, sliding the rest of his length inside your pussy. “Shit, pretty mama…” He stroked, feeling your walls slowly open up for him. God, you were so wet—it was driving him insane. It was like your pussy was talking to him, it was doing nothing but squelching beneath him.
His teeth grips his shirt tighter, and he grabs your hips. At first, his strokes are steady—slower. But once he gets a feel for your insides, he can’t help but speed up. He was obsessed with the smacking sound your ass made once it hit his hips, this was his motivation.
“Awwgnh, shit! Mikey—mmm, fuck! Givin’ it to me good, baby. Right there…” You cried out, both of your hands gripping at the hotel bed sheets. In your head you looked disheveled, but Michael thought you were the most gorgeous thing under him right now.
“Right there, huh, angel? M’ fuckin’ you good…mmm.. I know, baby. I know.” Michael grunted, his eyebrows furrowed. He was concentrating—the only thing on his mind right now was making you cum on his cock, marking that you were now his.
“You still want me t’ cum inside, sweet face?” Michael asks, leaning on your back to whisper in your ear. “It’s wherever you want it, angel.”
“Y-yes…nngh—inside, Mikey.”
He sped his strokes up, your ass clapping against him more aggressively now.
“Rub your clit f’ me, beautiful. Need you t’ let it out.” He demanded, his grip on your hips leaving tiny moons from his short fingernails digging into the flesh of your ass.
You rubbed circles on your throbbing clit, aching for your release.
“Wish I could get you—nghh… pregnant. Just to… mm, make em’ mad.” He chuckled, a moan escaping at the same time.
“Cum inside and see what…fuck—happens.” You teased, as you began to fuck yourself on his shaft. He let go of your hips and let you do your thing, his legs starting to shake at the incoming feeling.
Michael was about to cum under your touch, and so were you.
“About to cum, aren’t you, handsome?” You giggled. Your voice was shaking while trying to tease him, and both of your moans started to get more and more aggressive.
You grabbed his arm, and looked back at him, his eyes locked on your glistening pussy.
“Cum with me, Mikey. Mmm… Show me how a real man does it.”
He grabbed your hips, and slammed you against his dick. You cried out, burying your nails into his arm—your grip so tight he was damn near bleeding.
“Gonna give you my kids, sweetheart. Fuck—finna plant this real man seed inside you, honey.”
With a couple more strokes, the both of you came. It felt like bliss—a high that took forever to come down from. You became obsessed.
He collapsed on top of you, and all you felt was his cum spewing inside of you, filling you up. You felt complete—felt whole again.
A couple minutes went by, and the two of you were laying in his bed, limbs tangled together. He caressed your body, and rubbed your back, and planted butterfly kisses on your face.
“What would happen if I did get you pregnant?” Michael asks, half-jokingly.
“I guess we’d have to find out.” You shrug, nestling your face into his chest. He started talking your ear off about his tour, and when he noticed how sleepy you were, he sang sweet songs to you.
He was a man. A real man—who gave you more in one night than you ever had in your entire life.
──── 𝒶 𝒸𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 of intimate diary entries by michael j. jackson 𓍢ִ໋🪶 ๋࣭ ࣪ ˖ } between the ages of eleven and twenty-six, all written in mind of his childhood sweetheart
notes: childhoodbsf!popstar!reader ╱ see 𝒂𝒖 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐. fluff and a lil angst, with some mild 𝟏𝟖+ content in michael’s recollection of sexual encounters and thoughts. mention of sexual coercion ⋆ childhood domestic abuse ⋆ religious guilt ⋆ michael's body dysmorphia ⋆ mikey is a lil yearner ⋆ [♥︎] is used to signal reader's name ⋆ reader is avoidant (initially) ⋆ entries are in chronological order with time skips
𝓳𝒖𝒍𝒚 𝟏𝟎, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟎
── I saw the prettiest girl this afternoon. Just real beautiful. I never seen any girl look so precious. I don't know her name, and I could only smile at her as she passed, but I do hope I see her again. We were at the recording studio today, and it was there that I noticed her. So full of life and energy, similar to me, but I've been quieter recently. Joseph says it's not a good look to be such a 'boisterous, happy kid.' I have to be serious offstage. But anyway, back to the beautiful girl...
She was so, so pretty. My brothers kept making fun of me because I couldn't stop staring at her, and when she noticed me as she sung, she looked right in my eyes and smiled. Jackie said she looked at all of us and not just me, but I felt the eye contact, I'm sure of it. I don't know if she likes me, if she'd want to be my friend, but I'm lying awake right now, I don't know what time it is, and I can't stop thinking about her. If she's a Motown artist, I probably will see her again, and that makes me real happy. I need to ask somebody about that. I'll ask mother to ask Joseph tomorrow morning. I can't wait to know her name.
𝓼𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝟐𝟏, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟎
── I keep getting this weird butterfly feeling in my stomach whenever I'm near [♥︎]. It's how I feel whenever I like a girl, I know that, and with most girls I don't think twice about showing how I feel, but with her everything's different. I've never felt so seen and understood before. We're really starting a good friendship and I would never want anything to ruin that, so I'm just going to try my best to push these feelings away and not let her find out. She obviously doesn't feel the same way about me because I think I would've noticed, and if she doesn't feel that way then it would be too risky to ask her out on a date. My family find it funny how seriously I handle the idea of falling in love. They say that I talk very… I can’t remember the word? Basically they say I talk about girls like someone older would, and that I take having a crush too serious since I’m only twelve. But I can’t really help that — I think girls are wonderful. Whenever I meet one that makes my heart jump a little, I just have to make it known to her how incredible she is.
That’s my problem. I could’ve told [♥︎] that I really liked her right away when we first met, but I just didn’t want her to find me weird and then not want to be my friend at all. Because I’ll happily be her friend and nothing more — if that’s what she wants.
If I did ask her out, she'd probably assume I was asking her in a friendship kind of way, since Jackie always says that me and her already do the things that couples do. Going to the movies, staying over at mine to play games, going rollerskating, getting ice cream. (All our outdoor hangouts are always supervised by at least two of my brothers, which really irritates me.) But I don't know why he keeps saying those are only couple activities. I love doing all those things myself, so why would I not do them with a friend? And when I say that to him, he tells me it's something about a "certain way" we do those things together.
All my brothers are constantly teasing me about how quickly I've grown so close with a girl I've known for a really short amount of time, but it's only because I'd say I love very easily when I connect well with somebody. It's not common for true friends to come into my life. The white kids at school either don't like to talk to me because I'm black and their parents want me out of the neighborhood, or they follow me around everywhere because I'm a singer. [♥︎] doesn't care that I'm a singer because she is one too, and we just really get each other so well. I can't explain it. I never had a genuine friend before her.
And maybe my brothers are right and I'm too touchy or romantic with her, but I don't mean to be. I'm just having a lot of fun with my first friend — who, okay, I have to admit I also really want to kiss at the same time. One day maybe I will, but I'm too nervous now.
I know she has other friends at school, but she's mostly homeschooled (just like me) and she tells me she can never know who has genuine intentions because everyone knows her as a rising star in the business. That's exactly what I'm going through. We confide in each other a lot about that kind of stuff.
𝓸𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝟖, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟐
── Tonight started out horribly, but it soon turned itself around. I've found that recently, writing in this book has helped a lot with registering and understanding my emotions, because when I keep them all pent up I sometimes end up hitting Joseph back after he's hit me. I shouldn't do that, because I only get it even harder afterwards, and it's not fair on mother and everyone else who has to sit and watch. But since I've put my thoughts into written words, I've noticed I can deal with the beatings a lot better. Now I just sit and take it, like a disciplined child should.
Tonight I was beat with both an iron cord and Joseph's belt, because earlier I messed up a line in Never Can Say Goodbye, and I slightly altered one of the dance steps in another song too. Joseph always asked of me to stick to the learned choreography completely, but I sometimes get carried away with myself and want to do my own thing.
When he first saw me tonight, I ran to the bathroom to throw up. I couldn't stop it from happening — I just got so terrified. Then he beat me, while my mother kept screaming for him to leave me alone, but this time I wouldn't yell along with her. Yelling never gets anywhere, because it really feels like Joseph thrives off of how anxious and tense he makes us. I don't think he cares how much he's hurting me. To him, all that's necessary is constant discipline.
But as I said, the night got a lot better soon enough. [♥︎] came over right away when I called her house. I had to wait until Joseph was in the upstairs bathroom, and then I rushed to the telephone and dialled her number. I didn't tell her what happened at first, but I think she could tell from my tone of voice and from the suddenness of my call, because when she climbed through my window and settled under our Mickey and Minnie blanket, she immediately started checking for bruises, and made me get real shy and nervous the way she interlaced her fingers with mine. We do that a lot, and I never get used to how warm and cozy her hands feel.
She snuggled into my chest, held my hand tight and told me I'm the Mickey to her Minnie. I looked at her confused, pointing out that Mickey and Minnie were lovers, which we obviously weren't, but she didn't seem fazed. She just shrugged and moved on with the conversation. What did she mean by that?
𝓪𝒖𝒈𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝟏𝟏, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟔
── It's so painful for me to keep watching [♥︎] get taken advantage of by so many horrible guys. She just passed my house in some guy's car, with the top down and she called out for me because she saw me at the fountain. I waved but I just feel so sad. He's only going to use her like all the others, and I don't know why she does this to herself in seeking them out. I've been reading recently about attachment styles, and to me she really seems very avoidant. She always goes out with guys casually and doesn't care what their intentions are, and whenever a nice guy has approached her to take her out on a thoughtful date, she says no. That never made sense to me, but I guess it's starting to make sense if she does have avoidant tendencies. I feel like I'm right about that.
Apparently avoidant people can still eventually be in a real relationship, but they have to feel safe and allow themselves to be loved. That's never going to happen with any of those awful men she lets use her, and I hate that she treats them like the only viable option. She lost her virginity a year ago — she came to me crying about it and she wouldn't stop crying all night until morning. I held her and told her everything would be alright — that she didn't have to feel so guilty — but she said she felt that she'd been used, and that she'd made a huge mistake. I think she did make a mistake, not because of my personal belief in waiting until marriage, but because she gave it up to a guy who really did use her for his own gain. He wasn't gentle with her — she told me it really hurt and that he didn't care. He just kept selfishly assuring her it would feel better in a minute but it never did. And that's when she rushed to my house and collapsed into my arms. I'll never forget that night. How angry I felt for her, how helpless the situation made me feel on her behalf.
I felt disgusted by what she told me. Sex is supposed to be a beautiful, thoughtful act between two people who love each other, and everybody around me doesn't seem to view it that way. They have it all twisted. My brothers sleep with random women out of the audience of our concerts, and they drop them immediately after. Joseph is constantly cheating on mother, and everywhere you go these days you see people almost promoting loveless promiscuity.
Obviously my brothers and Joseph can do whatever they want, and I don't like to judge people outside of my family — but when it comes to my best friend (my only friend, really), I can't stand to see her getting hurt. Men don't get hurt like women do, physically or emotionally. And she's still only a girl — she's seventeen, sixteen when she did it for the first time.
I know this is bad to say and I feel really guilty for writing it down on paper, but as soon as she told me she'd lost her virginity, I wished I'd been the one to take it. A part of me has always hoped that one day she'll fall in love with me, even though she clearly hasn't in all these years and it's not looking likely that she ever will. Maybe one day though, she might view me in a different light.
Or what if she agrees with Joseph? That my nose is too big, or what if there's some other issue about me that she's too polite to point out? My acne has certainly put her off even more. I can't even look most people in the eye these days, I feel so ugly. It's getting a little better now, but there was no way she was ever going to start liking me in the way I want her to while I looked as bad as I have in this last year or so.
Of course boys and girls can be just friends, but we're together so much (whenever we're in the same city) and even though I've spent these last few years trying to ignore my feelings, they've only strengthened the more that I've watched her grow.
Since I properly learned what sex was, I always had this stupid dream that we would lose our virginities to each other. It was such a naive wish but I thought about it a lot, and felt really ashamed. I prayed to God that he'd forgive me for those thoughts.
Even though the people around me and in the strip clubs we've performed at treat sex in such a disgusting way, I believe it's an inherently beautiful thing with the right person. I'm so excited to try it out for the first time but I can't until I get married. That's what mother wants for me, and I also believe in it too. Maybe if [♥︎] had done the same, she wouldn't have been put through so much pain. But I also wouldn't have been able to deal with watching her marry another.
I don't think a man has ever been gentle with her, and she always brushes off every horrible one she meets as if the trauma is nothing, before moving onto the next. When she first started dating these guys she told me all about it, confiding in me about every detail, but she eventually ended up hardly telling me anything. I really think that's because she could see how much I frowned upon her making the same mistakes over and over again, how I'd tell her she needed to respect herself more (which led to a huge argument), so she became too ashamed to say anything. In retrospect, I probably should've worded my point in a different way.
It all makes me so upset. I always want her to confide in me about absolutely everything in her life, not because I'm trying to be intrusive, but because I care about her and need to know she's okay, because we're best friends and we really don't have anyone else we can trust. I'm not judging her in a way where I think she's disgusting for sleeping with men that don't care about her — no, I think the men are the disgusting ones, especially because they're almost always in their early twenties or even older. They're taking advantage of her, and I hate to sit back and watch it happen, so I had to speak to her about it, but like I said now she hardly tells me anything about her love life (if 'love' is even the appropriate term) so by being secretive she's basically preventing me from saying anything at all.
𝓪𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒍 𝟐𝟖, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟖
── I have to write this down because I'm so overwhelmed right now, and I can't tell my brothers because they'll laugh at me.
After almost eight years, I finally kissed the girl I've always wanted to kiss more than anybody. It was amazing, just euphoric, but after a bit of silence, she told me she needed to go home for something and rushed off without even hugging me. I can't stop worrying that I've ruined everything, but I'm also very confused because we kissed for at least ten seconds — she was eagerly kissing me back.
Really, it's not the first time our lips have met. We kissed once when we were fourteen, a playful peck that she instigated, and that was awful because it really showed me just how much she felt nothing romantically for me. She just kissed me and laughed it off. I think I've written about that somewhere in my old diary.
But today we kissed for real, and she seemed to like it, or at least that's what I thought before she suddenly took off. I've had girls tell me I'm a good or even a great kisser, but that didn't stop me from being so nervous. I finally told her how I felt, because my brothers kept telling me I needed to or otherwise she'd keep going off with all those different guys that keep traumatizing her psyche. I knew it would be a long shot, but I told her anyway, needing to get it all off my chest. I made it embarrassingly clear that I've adored her since I first laid eyes on her, that she's wonderful and the most beautiful woman alive. People tell her that all the time, but they don't know half the things that make her so beautiful.
I didn't give her complete transparency though, because if I did I would've said that I want to marry her. I do want to marry her. I want that more than anything. But it's not the old days anymore. We might be religious in our family, but while hers do go to church, they're not as devout, so skipping straight to a marriage proposal would definitely have scared her.
I just read that back and I sound real silly, I know, but I guess I'm just so overcome with emotion because I never thought this would happen.
I'm worried though. I didn't expect her to feel the same after so long of seeing me as only a friend, but I also didn't expect how quickly she'd go away. I stupidly tried to deepen the kiss, again another example of my moving too fast, and she pulled away and started to look anxious, like she regretted it. Then she said she had to go, and left without another word. I don't see her as much these days because we both tour, and oh no, I just remembered I forgot to ask when she'd be leaving California again, so I need to call her house. Or maybe I shouldn't. I've probably really scared her. I bet she thinks I've been secretly perving on her all this time.
I should ask my brothers if they've had any similar experience to my situation, but I think the problem here is that when it's between two best friends, confessing your feelings is a huge risk to take. That's why I've always hid the way I've felt. Now my worst nightmare is coming true.
Jackie, Tito, Marlon, Jermaine, they've never had an eight year long friendship with a girl who they're secretly in love with, so really nobody can help me handle this. I know my mother likes her as a person but I don't think she'd like me to choose her as my girl, because mother's always telling me about the 'unsavory' things she sees of her in the paper each week. I always tell her it's just that she likes to have fun, but mother never takes kindly to that answer.
I guess I just have to wait and see if she calls first, or if she comes here to see me. I really hope she does. I won't be able to sleep tonight.
Maybe she'll climb through my window and cuddle in my bed with me and talk, like we always have done. If I've ruined things between us forever, I'll never forgive myself.
𝓶𝒂𝒚 𝟓, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟖
── I feel silly reading back my last entry. I overreacted and spoke too soon. [♥︎] called me the day after, apologizing for leaving so quickly, and she told me to give her some space for a few days before she could talk to me comfortably about what I'd told her. Obviously, that still sounded concerning, because the way she worded it made it sound as if I'd made her uncomfortable with my confession, but when she did come to me, everything was clear. Crazy and unbelievable, but finally clear.
She told me she wanted cuddles in my bed, that we should just lie there for a while and rest. So we did, except it didn't take long before she started laughing, telling me my heartbeat was way too fast where her head lay on my chest. She could tell I was anxious, so she came out with everything. I can't go into all the details right now — she's coming over soon, I can see her walking up to the front door from my window. I can't contain my excitement, which is why I started writing this to distract myself before she arrives.
But to sum everything up, she said the most startling, surprising thing of all — like something I could only wish to conjure up in a dream, but instead I've somehow made it my reality.
As she stayed cuddled into my chest, playing with my fingers, she told me that even though she never realized it before, she's been in love with me for years, and had unconsciously pushed the feelings away the entire time, until I said what I did. That's why she needed the time alone to process everything. It turns out I was right that she feels uncomfortable to be loved and taken care of so closely — she explained that's why she's always entertained only men who didn't ask for anything more than sex. She never considered that she might actually want to be taken care of by somebody, even if it might feel strange at first.
I can't believe it but she told me she'll try that out with me, even though it scares her. And I'm more than prepared to go at her pace — whatever she wants. I'm just lucky to have her in at least some kind of romantic way, even if it's not everything all at once. I hear her coming upstairs with Latoya right now. I'm so happy I feel like my heart might burst...
𝓪𝒖𝒈𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝟐𝟓, 𝟏𝟗𝟕𝟖
── I lost my virginity tonight. It was incredible. Just so wonderful... everything I ever dreamed of. I came really fast though... but she said that was okay. I don't know if she was just trying to make me feel better about myself.
Even if that was the case, we immediately did it again where I lasted a little bit longer and I made her cum. I don’t think she’s ever been so beautiful as she was in that moment. And she actually told me that I'm the first guy to ever give her an orgasm. I couldn't believe that, because she’s been with at least a handful of guys before me, but she promised me she was being serious.
God, I'm in love with this woman. I feel bad about what I've done, I feel so bad... (I hope mother doesn't find out ever) but at the same time I feel great. Can't bad things also be great? I guess that's the paradox of life, the duality of it. I know I shouldn't have had sex with her, especially because I know that she's who I will marry, so I should've just waited until then... but I couldn't help myself.
I hope I was okay for her. She told me I was and she guided me through what I didn't know, and her voice was so heavenly in my ear, I just... I need to feel her like that again soon. Tonight. I can't stop thinking about the way she felt. I need her all the time.
I understand now what people mean when they talk so much about lovemaking. I understand why she so desperately wanted to do it with me. But anything she's ever yearned for could never match the force of my yearning right now. I'm going crazy.
She is so divine. My sweet girl... I can't believe she's entirely my own. Forgive me God for I have sinned, but I promise I'll marry her and make it alright.
𝓶𝒂𝒚 𝟐, 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟏
── This week has been so magical. Me and my beautiful lady are trying for our first child, and this is all I've ever wanted. We've been making love for days, even more than we did when I first lost my virginity to her — every single day for hours into the night, and I've never felt such a surge of love before.
My angel girl will soon be a mama. She'll be the mother of our first child, and I would never try to force her to have all the kids I want but I also really hope she'll be on board with as many as possible. Ever since we were young I've always viewed her to have the perfect qualities of a mother — so gentle and nurturing, so self-assured and empathetic. Sometimes she would play with animals beside me, or she'd play with the children in her family, and every time I'd watch her I would do so in awe, wondering what it might feel like if she one day would have a child of her own, if she would have mine. And now, inconceivably to me, that day is somehow very nearly here.
All that time she spent with those men who used her, back then it felt like those days would never end, that she'd just keep falling back into that same traumatic pattern. It's hard to believe she's been with me now for three years, even though not long before that I'd given up hope. I'll forever recognize how blessed I am to be the one she let down her walls for. I'll never lose sight of that, because I remember how avoidant and guarded she used to be. Three years ago she did something so difficult for herself, gradually beginning to accept real love, a gentle love that I've given her each day since. The love I'll give her each day forward, too.
The first night this week that we were lovemaking, she was giggling all shy and kept covering her face while I smothered her skin in kisses. That sight tugged hard at my heartstrings because it immediately brought me back to our very first time together. I'd despaired for so long that we weren't each other's firsts, but that night in the summer of '78 had felt like a glimpse into what it might have been like if we were. And now this week, she had the same adorable expression on her face, the exact same shy smile as we anticipated making life together. But where once that expression was one of real anxiety and discomfort at being loved so gently and so carefully — an experience so initially unfamiliar to her — now it was an expression displaying true happiness and content. She tells me she feels so safe with me, and that's the best thing I could ever hope to hear. The glint in her eyes when I hold her in bed is so precious... I treasure the sight dearly.
Even though I can't wait to finally find out she's pregnant, I'm going to miss the days we spent making our child. And yes, that statement obviously carries something inherently sexual within it, but I don't even necessarily mean it that way. Me and my baby have amazing sex all the time, and I imagine us to have it even more passionately when she's all glowing during pregnancy — because I won't be able to keep my hands off her, and I've heard about how women crave sex more during pregnancy due to hormonal shifts.
Really, the primary reason that this week will be so special and memorable to me is because of how beautifully emotional it is. I feel like we're ascending every time we make love, as though we're the only two people on earth. Nothing else matters aside from how our bodies entwine, and inside her I suddenly get inspired to write a million heartfelt love songs. I truly can't believe she's a real human being that I get to call my own, and even more so that she's who will bear my child. I'd love our child to have her eyes, her smile... How beautiful that through love, we're creating a being that will share both of our features.
So that's what I mean when I say I cherish this week not only for the sex as a pleasurable and more frequent act, but I cherish it for how deeply emotional the act has been — even more than usual, because I do feel like I always get at least a little emotional when I take her so intimately. My heart is aching with adoration and complete happiness every time I move inside her, every time she makes one of those sweet noises into the air and holds me a little tighter. She's my anchor.
I love when our bodies are pressed together chest to chest as one — it's always been my favorite way to make love. Even better if I can make her laugh in the middle of it, tickling her or poking her nose to bring a smile to her face while she moans in my ear. I like it to be as intimate and as passionate as possible, and my girl's favorite thing is when I cradle her head and whisper to her, which I always do, because I love that just as much as she does. One hand interlaced with hers, and one hand on the back of her head or her jaw to keep her feeling protected. Everything is so heavenly and incredible when we're together like this — I've always been addicted to her body but now I feel like that's somehow been heightened times a thousand since we started trying for our baby. It's such a precious time in our lives — I'll remember this week forever.
𝓯𝒆𝒃𝒓𝒖𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝟐𝟖, 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟒
── Last night was one of the greatest nights of my life. I won eight Grammys, breaking the record for most awards won in a single night, and my lady won six, setting a new record for the most Grammys ever won by a female artist in one night. Together, we now own the achievement of most Grammys won by a married couple in a single ceremony. I'm amazed that this is real life.
I came home with her when the afterparty was over, although we wanted to leave earlier, and we made the sweetest love all night, not even fully taking off our clothes until the third round. The stars shone outside the windows as I loved on her, and I don't think I've ever felt more satisfied with what I've achieved in life. If the world happened to end here, even though there's so much more I hope to do, I would be proud.
We wore matching glittery numbers, midnight blue embellished with gold, and I thought she just looked so sexy I couldn't take her out of her dress. Reluctantly, when she was getting a little overstimulated after two orgasms I unzipped it and helped her out of it. Now I watch her sleeping beside me as I write this early in the morning, so beautiful like an angel in her slumber, and I hope she's having a magical dream.
I remember what she told me last night, while we laid in each other's naked arms. She said the orbs of my eyes were an ocean of glistening stars, that my smile was born of the gentlest angel. I resent when people comment on my appearance, because even with compliments I don't believe a word they say. They're just trying to flatter me. In some ways I think that's the same with my baby, because she wants to make me feel better, but I could never resent her for that, because everything's different with her. She knows my soul.
𝓭𝒆𝒄𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝟑, 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟒
── Stress is eating me alive at the moment. I haven't had sex with my girl in three weeks, and I just keep trying to make her think it's all down to me being too tired when I get home. But the problem is that we've both had mostly free schedules for the first time in a long time, and usually we'd fill a lot of that freedom with lovemaking. So I know she's secretly confused, maybe concerned, and just doesn't want to bring up the elephant in the room. She probably doesn't want to embarrass me with such an awkward question.
Our sexual distance is all because my vitiligo is spreading. In the beginning, I did hate the patches on my wrists and hands, my forehead, my nose and cheeks... but it was easier to cover those smaller patches, and I didn't feel as self-conscious as I do right now because they just felt like wide, splotchy blemishes of a kind. But now I'm getting worse (my skin is getting worse, and emotionally I am too as a result). I don't know how to deal with the fact that this issue is going to keep on worsening as time passes, and I do believe my baby when she says she loves me unconditionally, but maybe she hasn't really considered what unconditionally might mean. I'm going to look more and more like a freak, so ugly with all these patches of white everywhere.
A few years ago I hated my nose so I changed it, but I can't do anything about this current problem. I'll need to start wearing makeup everyday, and have to keep relying on creams for the condition. The glove I wear onstage is long outdated as a cover-up, because this thing is spreading much further now, but the main problem isn’t how it will affect my public persona (because I can just use makeup and cream for that) — it’s how it affects the woman who wants to see me naked every night.
I need to sort it out quickly, because I keep avoiding intimacy out of fear that I'll be unattractive to her. How would it even be possible that she could want to have sex with me when I look like this? It's winter and I've been covering myself up more, but California is always warm, and I think sometimes she wonders why I'm never without long sleeves and pants. The other day I wanted to swim with her so badly (I love swimming) but I can't. I can't let anyone, not even my girl, see me so deformed, stripped of my normal pigmentation.
I wouldn't even feel comfortable if we made love, if I forced myself through it, because I'd just feel so guilty and awkward about the way I look. I've never enjoyed the sight of my own appearance, but I'm not ignorant and I do understand that my wife obviously married me for reasons other than what's inside. She has tried to reassure me about my looks for years, and I don't think she's lying to me but I guess I just don't see what she sees. In some ways I hate that she's so in love with me, because I think she'll surely fall out of love when she sees what I'm turning into. There are patches on my genitals now and every time I see them I just want to cry.
Someday in the next week, I think I'll have to tell her we need to take a break — I'm not sure for how long. She doesn't deserve me when I'm not at my best. I know we have our son to take care of, but we're already often split as parents because of our opposing schedules with touring and everything else, so our parenting roles won't be affected by this. I just need to be alone for a while. It's strange — even in my hardest moments, I've never felt like distancing myself from my wife, but I don't feel like me at the moment.
𝓶𝒂𝒚 𝟐𝟗, 𝟏𝟗𝟖𝟓
── After a six month break in our marriage, my Tinker Bell has taken me to Disneyland Paris for the weekend. She found out not long after I'd initiated the break what the real reason was for my doing so, and she pleaded with me not to be so ridiculous, assuring me that she would love me no matter how patchy my skin became. But I was just suffering so much at the time that I couldn't listen to her pleas. The way I felt was very similar to how I used to feel as a teenager, when my acne and my nose was all I could think about in every social situation. It was horrible. Just like when I was younger, I couldn't look people in the eye when they talked to me — not even my wife. I rely on sunglasses while I'm out, but I can't exactly wear those in bed. Suddenly, I begun to feel entirely exposed.
After trying so hard to get me to stay and let her take care of me, she finally gave up and allowed me some space. Six months we've been apart, until she called me up one day and asked me out of the blue if I'd like to go to Disneyland. I said of course I would, and now we're here together, in our hotel room, mapping the night’s constellations. I’m still too self-conscious about the changes in my body, and not yet ready for sex again, but she’s telling me she has no issue waiting, and that there’s no need for our break to extend further.
She’s so patient with me, and in a sense that makes me feel guilty — because I hate to mess her around. But she always promises me she doesn’t mind.
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