He was deadass trapped in a depressed teen body and a child’s body at the same time, who just wanted people to be happy. A selfless person. Such a sweet boy.
summary: after your husband of nearly three decades dies, your life threatens to fall apart. little do you know that he never truly left you.
warnings: mentions of loss and grief, unhealthy lifestyle, mental health issues like depression and hints at an eating disorder, michael returns as a ghost after his death.
wordcount: 4,571
author's note: everyone, i am so nervous over this for several reasons. first of all, i think this i my first time writing for a real person rather than a fictional character. which...i just hope i didn't mess this up.
the other thing is: this chapter is actually one of the last parts of a series i'm writing (and haven't fully uploaded yet), so they have an established relationship and have been together since 1979.
enjoy. 💌
-rosie
p.s. there is no plothole! hehe. in a future part there'll be a reason as to why reader can suddenly see him.
my masterlist: ✨️rosie's neverland✨️
Life was shit.
In fact, you couldn’t even remember the last time life wasn’t shit.
The love of your life was dead. Gone. Just like that. You’d gone to a doctor’s appointment, only a few hours, nothing out of the ordinary. Your children hadn’t been there either, gone to spend the week at their grandmother’s place. So far, so good.
Michael had been feeling low for a while now and while he adored the children to the moon and back, you thought a tiny little break might do him some good. Not just for your relationship (which, if you were honest, had been a little sleepy lately) but mostly for his health. All you wanted was for him to relax a little. Nothing more.
You went to see your dentist, fixing a little ache that had been bothering you for a while now.
You remembered the moment before you left. You’d found him in bed, hunched over a book, giving you a sleepy smile with the promise to get some rest. He hadn’t slept through a whole night in…
You couldn’t even remember.
And when you got back?
God.
You’d returned, being especially quiet as though not to wake him when you heard frantic sounds from upstairs.
And there was his fuck-ass doctor, frantically trying to perform what could only be CPR.
On the bed.
You still remembered the sound you made that night. It was…not entirely human.
With the newfound strength of a soon-to-be widow, you shoved the man out of the way and started yelling at him to help you to get your husband and the floor.
A hard surface, you’d screamed. A solid surface. You’re a doctor. Are you trying to kill him?
Apparently, he had.
Months had passed and life had continued for many people.
Not so much for you.
While everyone, including your children, tried to continue with their lives as good as the circumstances allowed, you just…couldn’t.
You were lucky to have Katherine in your life because, without her, you couldn’t have made it. Not ever. She was a saint, in your eyes. She’d taken over taking care of your children when you couldn’t. And even – you.
When you lay in bed, praying to God to stop your suffering, unable to keep even a morsel down, she’d sat by your bedside, held your hand and force-fed you broth so that, at least, your children wouldn’t become full orphans soon.
Months had passed.
Of course you had come back to your senses enough to occasionally take care of yourself. Eating worked fine, though you still sometimes had trouble getting out of bed.
The children no longer cried whenever they stumbled upon you, because your strength had come back enough for you to take care of them. You tucked them in at night, though sometimes they’d still stumble into your room at night, begging to sleep with you.
And the bedroom?
God.
Some people handled grief with all the strength in the world – tucking memories away and only leaving the fond ones. You clung to everything. Every shirt, every jacket, everything that smelled of him even just slightly was still there. No one was allowed to touch anything. You needed it for the moments when you broke down crying over the fact that yes, he was indeed dead and you had just now remembered it again.
You clung to them for comfort.
For safety.
For love.
It was beyond you how people could lose their spouse and remarry.
Maybe you just weren’t at that point in your recovery yet.
Or maybe those people just hadn’t had what you had had.
It was a late Saturday night when you found yourself pacing the house at an ungodly hour. Your children were spending the night with Katherine because it was just one of those days.
Spending time at grandma’s was practically paradise because they got to have ice cream for dinner and watch old movies. Also, it made them feel close to their dad in a way that reminded them of a time before fame, pain and allegations turned everything into a circus of heartbreak.
Meanwhile, you were going mad.
Literally.
A glass of something amber in your one hand, you had turned up the music in the grand living room downstairs.
Blame it on the Boogie blasted through every room in your giant house. Once filled with warmth and love, these days it just felt hollow.
You didn’t know whether you wanted to sell it, burn it or cling to every memory attached to it.
That nasty boogie bugs me, but somehow it has drugged me…
You stumbled into the kitchen, yanking open a cupboard. In the highest drawer sat a mug – a crooked, white thing your daughter had once made for him. Right there the words Best Dad Ever stared down at you, mocking you.
He only ever drank tea from that one, ever since he got it.
You closed your eyes, trying hard not to burst into tears.
Don't blame it on the sunshine…
You reached for the mug, wiping your face with the back of your free hand and started pouring milk. Almost blindly you reached for the container with cocoa powder next, the glass forgotten in the living room.
Chocolate milk.
One of your fondest memories. Every Sunday. Every family breakfast.
Chocolate milk.
You didn’t care to warm it, just took a sip…
And broke down crying anyway. With a choked sob, you placed the mug in the sink and stormed out of the kitchen.
You had wanted to feel something. And when you did, it knocked you right off your feet.
Don't blame it on the good times…
Back upstairs, your sorrow suddenly got replaced by something else.
Anger.
“What have I done?!”, you yelled into the hallway before you could stop yourself.
“What did I do wrong?!”
While downstairs, the record player crackled I just can't control my feet, you clung to the wall and yelled toward the sky: “What have I done to deserve this?!”
There was no answer.
No sudden lightning and thunder, no lecture about Hiob, nothing.
Just a record player downstairs. And a mad woman yelling into the night.
If only you knew.
Hours later.
Once your throat felt sore from crying, laughing and screaming at once, once your strength left you a spent mess sprawled across the bed, you finally found sleep.
“Just make me sleep; it doesn’t matter what happens.”
A terrible irony, that was.
You had never had any trouble sleeping. Before the children were born, you actually would have been able to sleep through missile attacks. Michael always used to tease you about it. Then your first child was born and suddenly you became the lightest sleeper in the world. But aside from that? You could sleep anywhere. Always. At all times. Always exhausted. Always tired. And easily switched off.
Very much unlike him.
Michael’s insomnia had become so bad that he had to get that strong medication – the kind that had you check his breathing every once in a while. There just was no other way. There had been times where he’d been awake for such long periods that it still baffled you how he’d kept from losing his mind. If you missed one night of sleep? You spiraled.
It didn’t surprise you though. He had always been stronger than you.
But since he died?
God, since he died…
You had to keep yourself awake for hours and hours on end, always keeping yourself busy until four, sometimes even five, in the morning. And only once you were so insanely tired did you finally dare to lay down. Because if you lay down even just a minute earlier, you’d start thinking. And then you’d lie awake all night. And you’d only grow more insane over it.
Ironic.
But now, as you lay sprawled across the bed on your stomach, head tilted to the side, lips softly parted in sleep, you didn’t notice how the record player had stopped a while ago. You didn’t notice the window open or the sharp rain outside causing the bedroom to smell like a summer night.
And you especially didn’t notice a pair of dark eyes resting upon you with the utmost worry.
God, if only you knew.
Michael had spent a great deal of life avoiding ever thinking about death. Not because it would have scared him particularly much. No, after the Pepsi incident, he had only realized how close he’d come to dying.
He had just always been so busy.
If he wasn’t rehearsing, he was touring. And if he wasn’t touring, he was spending quality time with his family.
Where was there ever time to think about death and what came after?
Not that he wouldn’t have cared. He did. Religion was a great part of his life, even if he didn’t share any particular fondness for the church. But he believed. Strongly so. And he had always assumed that after death came Heaven.
Rest in peace.
If only he could.
Never would he have guessed that dead simply meant pacing the places he’d visited alive now in death.
For months, he’d been up and down the house he’d lived in with his family. His children.
You.
God…
You.
It had started the very second he drew his last breath.
Just make me sleep; it doesn’t matter what happens.
It was the last memory he had – though it was blurry already. His last clear memory was you, asking if he needed anything. He’d smiled at you, told you all he wanted to do was sleep and indulged in a book. But not before kissing you of course.
Always kissing you.
Even if he didn’t actively think of death all the time – he always had to kiss you before he went anywhere. Same went for the children. He’d kiss you and tell you that he loved you. Always.
I love you, mama.
Always.
Just in case.
Turned out “just in case” was more than a quirky little saying. Sometimes, things happened.
Sometimes, drugs mixed up.
Accidents happened.
Or in his case, mistakes happened.
Whether or not it was planned was almost secondary. Because, God, the only thing he truly cared about was slowly going mad.
He’d seen you collapse after the ambulance finally came and announced his death.
You’d collapsed on the floor and shrieked for minutes straight, a sound that still made him tremble to his core. And him?
He’d collapsed right beside you, desperately trying to make you understand that he was right there.
It had taken him the best of three weeks to finally understand that there was no way for him to reach you. Not properly. When he tried to touch you…you didn’t feel it. Not really. A shiver here and there (something that made him increasingly hopeful). A glance left and right. But aside from that? There was nothing he could do.
Sometimes, when he felt extremely agitated (by your pain or his own anger), he’d managed to move something. A book falling over. A stack of cards. But nothing that ever caused you to go Michael? Are you here?
Of course not.
So all he got to do was indulge in watching what was his own personal hell: his family drowning in grief.
The first few weeks had been the worst. Everything just…fell apart and there was nothing he could do. He’d stood in the doorframe and watched as your children climbed on top of the bed you hadn’t left in days, trying to rouse you from your own near-death.
It broke his heart.
Thank God the children got better. Still heartbroken, still lonely, still confused…but better. They got the support they needed and you pulled yourself together enough to be their mother again.
But you?
You were a different thing.
Even when you made everyone believe that things were getting better ever so slightly…he saw the truth of it.
He saw you when you tried so hard to put a smiling face on.
He saw you when you refused food when you were alone.
He saw you pace the bedroom for hours on end.
He saw you scream into hallways, begging God to make the feeling stop. The loneliness. The grief. The madness.
It drove him mad. All he wanted was to hold you and make you feel better. But he couldn’t.
It made him feel helpless.
He’d often just sit beside you on the bed, trying to brush your hair back, whispering sweet nothings.
I’m right here, mama.
I’m with you.
Always.
But did it ever help you?
No.
Tonight was especially terrible.
He’d watched you pace the house, getting drunk on whiskey (and God, you hated whiskey) after not eating for two days straight.
Then his mug…the chocolate milk. The memory would have made him smile, had he not been so worried.
The record player kept spinning old songs of his – meanwhile you collapsed upstairs, finding sleep, only after crying for hours.
Had he not been dead already, he would’ve wished for death again, watching you so helplessly.
“Babygirl”, he whispered into the quiet of the night. “I’m here, my sweet. My darling, I’m here.”
Rain was thundering outside, turning the room into a scene that seemed like it had come straight from a Victorian novel.
He looked up and found you shivering against the cold, even in sleep. Without thinking about it, he rose from the bed, crossed the room and closed the window.
He watched you stir as he made his way back, not thinking much of it.
Until…
His brows drew together.
He looked from you…to the window.
Closed.
Had he just done that?
And the way you’d jolted afterwards made it feel like perhaps…
No.
If he had one sworn enemy, it was hope.
Hope was a dangerous thing these days. It made no sense for him to hope for anything. He had almost made peace with this fragile in-between-world that was supposed to be his everafter. Except for the fact that he was watching you suffer, of course.
That was his personal hell.
He sighed softly and leaned in more comfortably on the bed, resting on his side beside you like he had done a million times before. The bed didn’t dip more than it had when he did that lately but when his knuckles brushed your cheek this time, it felt…
You stirred like you would have if a fly landed on your cheek, face scrunched up. You rubbed your face sleepily, eyes blinking open in a confused, blurry manner.
He froze.
For a moment, you just stared up and he wasn’t sure whether…perhaps…you could see him, too, or whether he was seeing ghosts now.
You had had many dreams since your husband had died. Countless. Every night actually. Sometimes, they brought you comfort. On other days, you dreaded them. Mostly because they felt so real and you just hated waking up and having your whole world crumble once more right over your head.
Silly, comforting, warm and cozy – that was what you would call those dreams. Sequences. Just…him. You. Cuddled up. Curled into one another. Sometimes it were stupid memories.
Baby, where’d I put my soda can?
Baby, how’s your tooth doing?
Lookin’ good, mama. When’d you buy that dress?
Other times, it felt more blurry. You could never really tell your dream apart from reality in these moments.
And in that second…when you opened your eyes…you felt like you were caught…
A dream in a dream.
You blinked slowly, your heart rate steadily speeding up as you stared into your husband’s startled eyes. They were just as deep as you remembered, though perhaps a little wider. A little more unsure. Uncertain.
Afraid.
You blinked, rubbing at your eyes.
Any second now, you’d wake up. The alarm would go off. Your daughter would barge in. A call from your mother-in-law.
Nothing.
Even worse – your memories slowly started coming back, one by one.
The night alone. The drink. The music. And eventually, the storm that dragged you into a deep, exhausted slumber.
If you were dreaming, why were you remembering things?
Your eyes filled.
This felt different for one reason especially: when you had those dreams, you didn’t remember that your husband was dead. That made it all the more devastating when you woke up and finally did remember.
Your husband was dead.
You had buried him.
Gone.
And yet, here he was, staring at you with the same expression a deer in headlights would give you.
For what felt like an eternity, you didn’t dare breathe.
Couldn’t think.
Not even a blink.
Until a sound tore out of you, sharp and terrified and heartbroken.
“What-“
You pulled back and sat up against the headboard. It wasn’t that you were afraid of him – it was just…everything.
You were afraid of having fallen victim to a sick prank.
Some imposter? Someone who broke into your home and dressed up as your deceased husband?
Impossible. Right?
And even worse –
An option that felt so heartbreakingly devastating that it nearly tore a sob from your chest.
Had he faked it?
Were the tabloids right and he had, unbeknownst to you, decided to fake his own death in order to get his life to work out properly again? And he had just now decided to let you in on it?
No.
No, I had seen his lifeless body.
I was there.
I clung to his pulse.
It wasn’t there.
“You’re dead”, you whispered in a voice so soft and shaky that you hardly even recognized it as your own.
Your eyes burned. Tears streamed down before you could stop them and you suddenly felt sick to your stomach. Had you not been so damn starved, you would have thrown up on the spot.
“You- You’re-“
The moment he saw your eyes widen, he knew. His mind wasn’t playing tricks on him, nor was his own personal purgatory. He was really here and you could really see him.
His own expression betrayed nothing except for a profound sense of terror. No love, no recognition – only fear.
God, what was happening?
Had everything he had dared to believe in during his life had been false?
Had he been fooling himself all along?
And worst of all –
Was he about to drag you through the worst heartbreak of your life yet again?
The second you reeled back, he reached out instinctively – muscle memory – before he quickly shoved his arms back to his sides like he didn’t know whether he still had the right. He sat up very slowly, holding up his hands as though he meant to make you understand that he was no threat.
Funny thing, that.
He swallowed hard, his eyes near black as he refused to move even an inch. Suddenly, he very much felt the ghost-part – and not in a “Ghost” music video kind of way. Certainly not like a zombie who suddenly pulled an insane choreography (which you had helped orchestrate a lifetime ago, too). No, this was different.
This was oh God, I’m scaring her.
Something that hadn’t happened in decades of marriage.
Something he had sworn to himself would never happen.
And yet, here he was.
Scaring you.
For a solid three seconds, you just stared at each other.
And then you broke down sobbing.
“What is happening?”, you screamed into the quiet of the room which might also have been a void. “I saw you dying! You died! I was there!”
“Sweetheart-“, his voice cracked on the word before he’d even fully gotten it out. He didn’t even realize when his own eyes filled, a soft breath leaving him from lungs that had long since stopped pumping. “Darlin’-“, he whispered again, instinctively reaching out and stopping awkwardly mid-air, both hands just hovering like a specter hunting a long-lost love, which would never be forgotten though.
A choked sound left you – a sob mixed with something even more heartbroken – as you looked at his hands; the same big hands that had held you through every step of your relationship ever since you met all those years ago.
Dancing. Swaying in the moonlight. Whispering secrets under the covers where neither the stars nor the tabloids could hear.
And whatever it was – a prank, a hallucination or a terrifyingly convincing dream – none of it mattered.
Because he was there.
And if this hallucination should turn out to last only a second or a minute or even just the blink of an eye – you would make the most of it.
With another choked sob, you surged forward. Right into his arms.
Colder than before, though aside from that, not so much different, he felt exactly as he always had.
Michael.
Your Michael.
His arms enveloped you with a strength that seemed to startle him though it didn’t cause him to draw back. No, instead, he sat with his arms encircling you, tightly enough so to make breathing hard.
And, God…
Neither of you seemed to breathe.
You clung to him, your hands everywhere. At his back, his neck, the back of his head, his cheeks. Every blink you would touch a different part of him, desperately so, trying to feel every bit at once.
“Oh God”, you cried. “Oh God, I almost died.”
“I know”, he breathed, the second his voice finally obeyed him again.
His eyes had gone from comically wide to squeezed shut within a moment. A hug that felt like a lifetime that felt like a second.
His hands buried in your hair, pulling gently at the roots before they roamed your back. Eventually, he cupped your face, pulling back just enough to get a proper look at you. Tear-stained eyes and cheeks were a sight he’d become accustomed to – tears he could never wipe away again.
Except, he suddenly could.
His thumbs brushed under your eyes, where your cheekbones glistened. Thinner now, than you had once been. It was no surprise with how you’d been living.
But no less beautiful. Not to him.
“Oh God, my baby. My darlin’, my love”, he cried in a voice that you’d recognize only from private, emotional declarations and a few selected songs. “I’m here. I’m here.”
You gave yourself just a while longer to just feel him before you ever dared look at him properly (without ever taking your hands off him, that was).
“How is this possible?”, you whispered breathlessly.
His smile that had formed only just when he saw your eyes again, trembled.
His gaze fell to where your hand was currently pressed against his chest. You followed his gaze and, almost absently, pressed your hand more firmly against him.
And then it hit you.
No heartbeat.
He waited a few seconds, obviously waiting for the inevitable realization, and therefore either fear or terror. Maybe both.
But it never came.
You had buried your husband. He was dead. You had mourned him. You had never stopped mourning him. Therefore his death wasn’t new to you.
However, having him back, was.
You stared up at him in quiet wonder.
“You’re…But you’re…”
His hand cupped your cheek, thumb drawing small, gentle circles along your skin.
“I saw you”, he whispered very softly.
You stilled.
“…What?”, you whispered back, feeling a mixture of dread and confusion. “What do you mean, you saw me?”
His gaze which had been crawling up and down the length of your body, making sure you were still in one piece, making sure you were still with him, flicked back up to your eyes.
God.
His eyes.
Of all the things you’d missed about him –
His soft voice…his gentle hands…his arms that would always find a way to sneak around your waist and pull you closer at night…
His eyes had devastated you the most. Of the fact that you could never look at them again. That no one would ever look at you with the same depth and tenderness again.
And now here he was, doing exactly that.
“I mean…”, he began tentatively, “I saw you. Your…your tears. Your screaming. Your grief. Everything that has happened. Starting from the day you went to the dentist.”
You went completely, utterly still beside him.
So he continued anyway.
“I saw you…but I couldn’t touch you. Couldn’t talk to you. I could only…watch”, his voice cracked on the last word. “I saw you break down and I could only…I could only watch, baby. I thought…” He smiled through a thick veil of tears. “I thought maybe this is my punishment. Maybe I’ve done somethin’ so awful that it deserved me that.”
You broke.
You didn’t even care about the logistics of it. The logic. Everything you used to believe in.
You cared only about him and the tears that had gathered in his eyes. The way his voice cracked.
“Oh, baby”, you whispered hoarsely.
Before you even realized it, you leaned in again. Your arms came around his neck, still holding tightly, but gentler than before. Still desperate – but softer still.
“My love”, you kept whispering.
“My baby.”
“Michael.”
A sound escaped him which, combined with the way his shoulders shook once, told you just how hard this had weighed upon him, too.
“Oh God”, you whispered. “I don’t understand it and I- I don’t need to.”
You pulled back again, palms gently framing his beautiful face.
His eyes scanned your face, brows drawn together. He looked unchanged. Just as he had that day when you left.
If only you hadn’t.
Without thinking much, you leaned in and pressed your lips to his cheek, right where a tear had escaped him.
His breath hitched; and so did yours, when you realized just how easy it felt. How natural. How real.
The tears on your lips tasted just as salty as they had after he’d had his accident. Just as they did after you bore your first child.
His hands found your hair again, fingers gently digging into your scalp.
“Oh, darlin’”, he whispered in that soft voice of his. Too gentle to be true.
Just…yours.
A part of you still expected the moment to break any second. To wake up.
To wake up with the same hollow feeling of loss in your chest. The fear alone was enough to make you tremble. But you didn’t mention any of it to him. Because in that second – he was there.
It was all that counted.
Your breath left you in a sharp pant against his cheek.
That alone was enough for his eyes to flutter shut.
“Baby…”, he whispered in a way that sent a shiver down your spine.
God, it was the same voice.
I got you, mama.
Your own eyes fluttered shut as your lips brushed yet again against his cheek. And again. Until they reached the corner of his mouth, where his breath trembled and mingled with yours.
“Baby”, he whispered again.
His fingers seized your chin with all the gentleness in the world. He looked at you as though he wanted to say more, ask more, make sure more – but the way you looked at him?
It was the exact same way you’d looked at him years and years ago.
And, God, he was in no position to resist you.
“Darlin’…”, he whispered, as soft as breath.
“I’m here”, he breathed, only seconds before his lips finally brushed yours.
friend who thinks about family annihilators too much: you don't get it, this is important because of how we as a society react to the crime. a guy who kills his wife is not seen as on the level of evil as a family annihilator even with the exact same pathology and potential. a lot of mass shooters had records of domestic violence but they were not considered such a threat until they escalated. why is hurting women never a warning sign? there is more concern over the future of a man who hurts an animal than one who hurts a woman. if he hurts an animal, he's acting like a serial killer. if he hurts a woman, it's one mistake that shouldn't ruin his life. do you ever think about that
