⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ michael jackson x spouse! reader
summary ⋆ a prestigious awards ceremony goes wonderfully off-script when you decide to thank your husband for something you definitely shouldn’t be admitting in public. michael spends the rest of the evening trying to recover from the complete character assassination.
content ⋆ 18+, suggestive content warning, mild language, embarrassed michael, reader is a rascal, reader wears a dress but a gender is not explicitly stated
author's note ⋆ this is based on this nicki minaj clip with michael b. jordan. I KNOW SHES FALLEN OFF OVER THE YEARS BUT YOU HAVE TO AGREE THIS WAS REALLY SMOOTH OF HER. this was really funny to write, i kindaaaaa wanna make a spicier continuation of this?? we shall see.
the MTV video music awards had already stretched well past tolerable, the ceremony going deep into the evening by the time the presenters for best music video finally began making their way toward the stage. the auditorium smelled faintly of freshly opened champagne and overheated stage lights, buzzing beneath air conditioning powerful enough to lift napkins but somehow still incapable of cooling the crowd packed inside it.
at this point, both sets of cheeks hurt.
the ones on your face were stiff from smiling at cameras for three straight hours — a practiced, porcelain mask maintained for every roving lens and spontaneous cutaway. then there were the ones currently going numb against a velvet chair, the plush material beginning to feel like hard granite after the fourth commercial break. somewhere beneath the heavy linen of the table, your left foot had dissolved into pins and needles, a dull roar of static creeping up your ankle.
michael, meanwhile, had spent the better part of the ceremony staring at you as if you’d contained the secrets to the universe.
which was not helping your attempts to remain composed for the millions of viewers watching the broadcast. every single time you glanced sideways, trying to look at the stage or the teleprompter, you caught him looking.
not subtly either; it was obvious he had no pretense of interest in the surrounding spectacle.
he was just openly admiring you from across the candlelit table, his chin resting loosely against his knuckles while applause crashed somewhere else in the hall. his thumb moved in slow circles over the sensitive surface on the inside of your wrist below the table — distracted, affectionate, and almost lazy with the familiarity of it — like touching you had become second nature years ago.
‘though it is partly your fault,’ he would’ve told you if you’d confronted him about his lack of focus. the dress had made it nearly impossible for him to think about anything else.
versace had made it specifically for tonight.
black silk poured over your body like ink. fitted close through the waist, dropping lower across the hips, then falling clean against your legs. the fabric moved like liquid when you walked, dark enough to swallow the light before throwing it back in delicate flashes. the back dipped dangerously low, exposing the length of your spine beneath delicate strands of gold embellishment stitched into the silk like molten metal. the detailing arched across your shoulders and lower back in fine, constellated patterns, tiny crystals threaded between the goldwork so every flashbulb caught somewhere different.
michael had gone visibly quiet the first time he saw you wearing it in the hotel.
you still remembered the exact way he’d looked up from tying his cufflinks — a task he usually performed with effortless ease — only to forget how his hands worked.
“baby?” you’d laughed as he fumbled with the cuff.
nothing. just michael staring at you in silence, eyes roaming over the expanse of your body like he couldn’t believe you were real.
“…michael.”
his eyes had finally blinked back into focus.
“you can’t wear that,” he finally managed, his voice strained.
you’d choked on a laugh. “well, i thought showing up naked would be inappropriate.”
“no, i mean — ” he gestured vaguely toward your entire figure, visibly struggling to construct a coherent thought. “people are gonna see you.”
“well yes,” you’d said, stepping into your heels. “that is usually the purpose of attending public events.”
he had looked genuinely distressed about this for the rest of the evening, like he was mentally inventorying every available coat available in the tri-state area to drape over your shoulders the moment somebody looked at you for too long. it was a look of profound, adorable panic — the expression of a man who had realized too late that he was expected to share something he very much wanted to keep to himself.
which was precisely why you were currently fighting the urge to ruin his life a little bit, savoring the friction between his growing possessiveness and your own rising wickedness. the dress felt almost like a weapon in the way that you were more than happy to wield if it meant watching the poise of the world’s greatest performer continue to unravel below your presence.
onstage, the presenters for best music video exchanged rehearsed smiles beneath while the orchestra swelled softly through the ballroom. around you, entire tables straightened in anticipation, champagne glasses lifted, conversations cutting off mid-sentence as the cameras swept across the audience searching for reactions.
then the nominees began flashing across the displays overhead one by one: a montage of grainy cityscapes. screaming crowds. music video clips cut together in sharp bursts beneath the roar of the audience.
the opening shot from your newest single, sweet nothings, filled the LED screens surrounding the venue, your face appearing twenty feet tall in a way that made you reflexively cringe as the crowd erupted into cheers. a rain-soaked city flashed across the montage behind you, silver accents catching briefly against your stage costume beneath the neon haze while a few seconds of the chorus thundered through the speakers before the montage cut sharply to the next nominee.
beside you, michael inhaled sharply.
his arm slid instinctively around you, bringing you closer against his side as the final nominees were announced. the movement looked casual to everybody else, but you could feel the tension underneath it — the way his fingers flexed once against the silk of your dress before settling there.
because if you won this tonight, that was it. a full sweep.
artist of the year.
best choreography.
best direction.
and now this.
michael leaned down slightly, close enough for only you to hear him over the music. “you okay?”
you laughed once through your nose, though it came out tighter than intended. “ask me in thirty seconds.”
a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes stayed fixed on the stage. the envelope hadn’t even been opened yet, and somehow both of you already looked like you were bracing for impact.
"and the award goes to — "
the presenter paused for a grueling few seconds, the silver cue card catching the harsh glare of the broadcast cameras while the entire room collectively held its breath. cameras swept across the nominees one by one, flashing nervous smiles to the people at home.
beside you, michael’s hand found your knee so quickly it surprised you. then —
your name echoed into the audience.
your entire table celebrated instantly, a symphony of crashing silverware and jubilant shouts of glee.
before you could even properly process the win, michael was already on his feet beside you. he was clapping harder than anybody else in the auditorium, he looked at you with such open pride that it made your eyes sting.
“oh my god,” you mumbled, stunned and lightheaded as your composure cracked.
“you won,” he breathed, already halfway out of his chair. he gripped your shoulders, squeezing them tight with excitement. then he pulled you toward him, pressing a quick kiss against your cheekbone. “baby, you won!”
“i didn’t doubt you for a second.”
you giggled, still trying to comprehend the praise surrounding you. “well, it’s nice one of us didn’t, because i definitely did.”
michael just shook his head, smiling like the idea itself was ridiculous.
the pins and needles in your foot vanished the second you stood. you tilted your head up to kiss him quickly — lipstick, laughter, adrenaline, all of it catching between you until the intensity of the ballroom rushed back into view.
then you turned toward the stage.
though you didn’t miss the way his eyes dipped shamelessly as you walked away, his focus dropping to the curves of your dress before he dragged himself back up to public decorum.
unbelievable behavior.
the applause swelled around you as you climbed the stairs, the award finally settling into your grasp — heavier than you’d expected, cool against your palms. your reflection flashed briefly across the giant monitors surrounding the stage, chandeliers scattering fractured gold across the darkened auditorium as the crowd continued howling somewhere beneath you.
michael smiled up at you from his seat the entire time, he watched with the same intent attention he always wore whenever you talked about something you loved. his eyes felt like an anchor in the blur of bright flashes and indistinct faces, steadying your nerves every time they threatened to slip. even from across the hall, his admiration felt almost tangible.
adjusting the microphone, you gave the standard opening first: thanking the academy. your team. the collaborators who pushed your vision. supportive friends. your family.
everything was going perfectly normal.
then near the end of the speech, your eyes drifted back toward michael again. and there he was, still staring.
there was something so endearing about him — chin tucked into his fist, eyes fixed on you with complete and utter adulation — that you felt the first spark of trouble curl through your chest before you could stop it.
“and of course,” you started warmly, “shoutout to donatella versace for custom-making this dress for me tonight.”
polite applause scattered through the room. michael nodded approvingly from his table.
then you looked directly at him. a tiny smile tugged at the corner of your mouth.
and instantly his expression shifted into pure suspicion. the man who had spent the night in a daze of adoration suddenly sharpened, his eyes narrowing as he recognized the specific brand of mischief that always accompanied that particular curve of your lips.
he knew that look.
“…and shoutout to my husband michael jackson—”
the audience burst into cheers the second his name left your mouth, the sound vibrating through the floorboards. michael ducked his head, laughing coyly while the cameras swarmed toward him.
then you finished, the words pouring into the microphone with devastating precision:
“—because he’ll definitely be taking it off me later.”
silence.
for one glorious, suspended moment, the entire ballroom simply forgot how to function. the oxygen in the auditorium seemed to vanish, sucked out by the collective gasp of a thousand industry elites.
the monitors cut to him immediately.
michael froze mid-applause, his hands hovering inches apart as if the signal to clap had been abruptly severed from his brain. his eyes went wide behind impossibly long lashes as the reality of what you’d just said hit him in real time.
then the room lost its mind.
laughter surged through the auditorium in waves. people doubled over at their tables. the front row was a scene of total disarray; one prominent actress nearly fell out of her chair, needing to catch herself against the edge of the table while she desperately gasped for air.
meanwhile, you remained the picture of composure at the podium. with the award still resting beside you, you simply took a small sip of water and peered over the rim of the glass with wide, innocent eyes as though you hadn’t just publicly assassinated your husband’s dignity on live television.
“oh my god,” somebody screamed from somewhere near the back of the room, the exclamation cutting through the general din and triggering a fresh wave of delight from the audience.
at the center of the storm, michael looked like his soul had left his body. several celebrities at the surrounding tables were leaning over to congratulate him like he’d won an award himself, grabbing his shoulders, patting his back, laughing so hard some of them could barely get words out. all while michael sat there flushed deep enough to show through his stage makeup, seeming seconds away from disappearing directly into the upholstery of his chair.
by the time you returned to the table, he was hiding his face behind the nearest object he could find. which was currently a decorative vase.
“you are unbelievable,” he whispered hoarsely the second you slid back into the chair beside him, the scent of his expensive cologne mixing with the frenzied energy of the moment.
you smoothed your dress innocently. “what?”
“why would you say that?” he asked, lowering the vase just enough to reveal dazed, dark eyes. “in front of everyone?”
“because it was true.”
michael made a small, wounded noise deep in his throat, a huff of air that was half-wheeze and half-protest. around you, the nearby tables continued to ignore the actual ceremony, their occupants openly staring at the two of you and whispering behind their programs.
“oh, look at him. how precious! he's red!” somebody pointed out nearby.
they were right. the flush climbing up michael’s neck had become impossible to hide.
“baby,” he hissed under his breath, actively trying to crawl beneath the tablecloth.
a tiny stab of sympathy hit you then. you leaned closer, catching his face in between your hands and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek in apology.
unfortunately, that only made the nearby tables react even louder.
michael made a strangled sound as you kissed the corner of his mouth next, trying your very best to comfort him while simultaneously making the situation worse. his entire face had gone hot beneath your touch, eyes darting everywhere except directly at you while the cameras continued circling like vultures.
“i’m sorry,” you whispered, already collapsing against him again as your composure threatened to give out entirely.
“no you’re not,” he muttered, voice muffled into your shoulder as he tried to hide his face.
and honestly?
he was right.
the rest of the ceremony passed in a haze of cameras and secondhand mortification. every time somebody referenced your speech in the following categories, the broadcast cut back to your table, catching michael in his bewildered state all over again.
at one point, an interviewer approached your table with a grin already threatening disaster.
“so! about the dress—”
michael vanished before the question even finished.
one second he was beside you, the next he was halfway across the venue at concerning speed, pointing back toward you in silent delegation as he abandoned you to deal with the consequences alone.
fair enough.
eventually, sometime past midnight, the two of you finally escaped the barrage of flashbulbs and microphones and retreated back to your hotel suite.
the second the door shut behind you, michael turned and pointed at you accusingly.
“you embarrassed me,” he declared, though his voice lacked any real bite.
you folded in on yourself immediately, kicking off your heels to be abandoned near the doorway as you finally gave up trying to behave. you flicked a hand at him in a dismissive motion. “you survived.”
he stood by the massive window, his eyes fixed on the view overlooking los angeles, the city glittering below him like scattered diamonds. a faint pout was still playing on his lips. “barely.”
michael shook his head, his attention drifting back to you again — it followed the delicate detailing along the sides of the dress, the dangerously cut back, the way the fabric clung to every dip and swell of your body. the remnants of your stage makeup still surviving, smudged.
“i was traumatized,” he muttered weakly.
“oh please, you were smiling the whole time.”
“i was under a lot of peer pressure.”
“sureee.” you started walking toward him, letting your palms glide over the satin lapel of his suit jacket. you danced your fingers across the intricate military-style embroidery, feeling the raised threads beneath your touch. michael’s eyes tracked every motion, sharpening with desire the closer you got.
“so,” you murmured, letting go of him and turning around, showing off the gold zipper that ran down your lower back. you glanced over your shoulder at him with a playful little smile. “you gonna take this off me or what?”
something in his expression shifted.
the shy embarrassment that had followed him around all evening finally broke just enough for something steadier to ease itself underneath. his grip closed around your waist, pulling you flush against him hard enough to make you lose the rest of your sentence.
“careful,” he murmured, finally looking at you directly. “you’ve been causing problems all night.”
his voice had dropped an octave. it sent a pulse straight between your legs.
“oh, now you wanna act brave?” you teased, even as your heart raced.
michael let out a muted laugh before clasping your zipper and bringing it down agonisingly slow, tooth by tooth, letting the cool air skim across the newly exposed skin as the material gradually loosened around your body.
“you done putting on a show for everybody else?”
you opened your mouth, but he spun you around before you could answer. one strong hand slid under your thigh, lifting your leg high against his hip, forcing you to balance as he pressed you flush against him. the other hand settled possessively at the base of your spine, fingers splayed across the heat of your body.
“because,” he said, eyes dragging over your face, “i’ve been wanting to get you alone since the second you stepped out in that dress.”
the zipper traveled lower under his fingers. the dress loosened, slithering further down your shoulders and arms, barely clinging to your chest. michael’s touch slipped inside, gliding over your ass before hooking into the thin strap of your underwear. he yanked at it until it was taut, letting it snap sharply against your flesh with a soft sting that made you gasp.
he smiled at that. his mouth was on you — brushing your jaw, grazing your neck with his teeth, just enough pressure to make your breath hitch.
“hm,” he hummed, satisfied, feeling the way you trembled against him. “guess you’re done.”
he traced slowly up your spine, tugging the zipper the rest of the way down. the silk dress unraveled completely, descending further until it pooled softly around your waist and exposed the full swell of your chest. michael pulled back just enough to look at you properly.
there was still a voracity there, obvious and impossible to miss, but tangled up with something quieter too — something almost reverent in the way his eyes moved over you like he still couldn’t fully believe you were real, let alone standing here in front of him like this.
only then did he cup your face with both hands and kiss you.
the kiss started deep and warm. but the hunger he’d been holding back all night quickly took over. it grew heavier, more consuming. his tongue brushed yours, teasing as your fingers traveled to his hair. you melted into him, a soft sound leaving your throat while he tilted his head and kissed you even deeper.
one hand stayed at the nape of your neck, holding you exactly where he wanted, while the other skimmed down your bare back. every time you tried to gasp for air, he chased your lips again, refusing to let you go. his kisses turned slower, more sensual — lingering presses mixed with gentle bites to your bottom lip.
“you have no idea what you do to me,” he whispered against your mouth, voice rough and low, before diving back in. the moment stretched until your lungs finally started protesting.
you pulled back first, forehead brushing his as you tried unsuccessfully to steady yourself.
“so,” you murmured between uneven breaths, fingertips smoothing lazily along the buttons of his jacket, “i’m guessing you did like the speech?”
michael let out a light chuckle, thumb brushing slowly across your bottom lip while his eyes stayed fixed on yours. “you’re gonna be the death of me,” he whispered.
he leaned in again, mouth trailing from yours to your jaw, then lower. kisses pressed along your décolletage one by one, lingering beneath your ear before drifting down the column of your neck.
the longer he kissed you, the less restrained he became.
what started gentle turned heavier, more deliberate — the scrape of teeth, the pull of his mouth against your skin, the sting that followed whenever he sucked hard enough to leave colour behind. he took his time with it, savoring every inch, leaving a trail of bruises. by the time he finally lifted his head, faint marks had already begun blooming across your throat and collarbones beneath the dim hotel lighting.
“i loved every second of it,” he admitted quietly, lips grazing your skin between words. “even when i wanted to disappear into the floor.”
another kiss.
“all i could think about was getting you back here and ripping this dress off you.”
the dress hung low on your hips now, threatening to slip further. michael’s attention fell down. eyes outlining the way the fabric clung to your silhouette, gold detailing twisted beneath his fingers from how tightly he’d held you — it completely ruined for anyone else.
“actually keep it on a little longer,” he murmured. he tugged the material up slightly, only to let it fall again. “i’m not finished admiring it yet.”
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ michael jackson x spouse! reader
summary ⋆ a prestigious awards ceremony goes wonderfully off-script when you decide to thank your husband for something you definitely shouldn’t be admitting in public. michael spends the rest of the evening trying to recover from the complete character assassination.
content ⋆ 18+, suggestive content warning, mild language, embarrassed michael, reader is a rascal, reader wears a dress but a gender is not explicitly stated
author's note ⋆ this is based on this nicki minaj clip with michael b. jordan. I KNOW SHES FALLEN OFF OVER THE YEARS BUT YOU HAVE TO AGREE THIS WAS REALLY SMOOTH OF HER. this was really funny to write, i kindaaaaa wanna make a spicier continuation of this?? we shall see.
the MTV video music awards had already stretched well past tolerable, the ceremony going deep into the evening by the time the presenters for best music video finally began making their way onto the stage. the auditorium smelled faintly of freshly opened champagne and old mahogany, creaking beneath air conditioning powerful enough to lift napkins but somehow still incapable of cooling the crowd packed inside it.
at this point, both sets of cheeks hurt.
the ones on your face were stiff from smiling at cameras for three straight hours — a practiced, porcelain mask maintained for every roving lens and spontaneous cutaway. then there were the ones currently going numb against a velvet chair, the plush material beginning to feel like hard granite after the fourth commercial break. somewhere beneath the heavy linen of the table, your left foot had dissolved into pins and needles, a dull roar of static creeping up your ankle.
michael, meanwhile, had spent the better part of the ceremony staring at you as if you’d contained the secrets to the universe.
which was not helping your attempts to remain composed for the millions of viewers watching the broadcast. every single time you glanced sideways, trying to look at the stage or the teleprompter, you caught him looking.
not subtly either; it was obvious he had no pretense of interest in the surrounding spectacle.
he was just openly admiring you from across the candlelit table, his chin resting loosely against his knuckles while applause crashed somewhere else in the hall. his thumb moved in slow circles over the sensitive surface on the inside of your wrist below the table — distracted, affectionate, and almost lazy with the familiarity of it — like touching you had become second nature years ago.
‘though it is partly your fault,’ he would’ve told you if you’d confronted him about his lack of focus. the dress had made it nearly impossible for him to think about anything else.
versace had made it specifically for tonight.
black silk poured over your body like ink. fitted close through the waist, dropping lower across the hips, then falling clean against your legs. the fabric moved like liquid when you walked, dark enough to swallow the light before throwing it back in delicate flashes. the back dipped dangerously low, exposing the length of your spine beneath delicate strands of gold embellishment stitched into the silk like molten metal. the detailing arched across your shoulders and lower back in fine, constellated patterns, tiny crystals threaded between the goldwork so every flashbulb caught somewhere different.
michael had gone visibly quiet the first time he saw you wearing it in the hotel.
you still remembered the exact way he’d looked up from tying his cufflinks — a task he usually performed with effortless ease — only to forget how his hands worked.
“baby?” you’d laughed as he fumbled with the cuff.
nothing. just michael staring at you in silence, eyes roaming over the expanse of your body like he couldn’t believe you were real.
“…michael.”
his eyes had finally blinked back into focus.
“you can’t wear that,” he finally managed, his voice strained.
you’d choked on a laugh. “well, i thought showing up naked would be inappropriate.”
“no, i mean — ” he gestured vaguely toward your entire figure, visibly struggling to construct a coherent thought. “people are gonna see you.”
“well yes,” you’d said, stepping into your heels. “that is usually the purpose of attending public events.”
he had looked genuinely distressed about this for the rest of the evening, like he was mentally inventorying every available coat available in the tri-state area to drape over your shoulders the moment somebody looked at you for too long. it was a look of profound, adorable panic — the expression of a man who had realized too late that he was expected to share something he very much wanted to keep to himself.
which was precisely why you were currently fighting the urge to ruin his life a little bit, savoring the friction between his growing possessiveness and your own rising wickedness. the dress felt almost like a weapon in the way that you were more than happy to wield if it meant watching the poise of the world’s greatest performer continue to unravel below your presence.
onstage, the presenters for best music video exchanged rehearsed smiles beneath while the orchestra swelled softly through the ballroom. around you, entire tables straightened in anticipation, champagne glasses lifted, conversations cutting off mid-sentence as the cameras swept across the audience searching for reactions.
then the nominees began flashing across the displays overhead one by one: a montage of grainy cityscapes. screaming crowds. music video clips cut together in sharp bursts beneath the roar of the audience.
the opening shot from your newest single, sweet nothings, filled the LED screens surrounding the venue, your face appearing twenty feet tall in a way that made you reflexively cringe as the crowd erupted into cheers. a rain-soaked city flashed across the montage behind you, silver accents catching briefly against your stage costume beneath the neon haze while a few seconds of the chorus thundered through the speakers before the montage cut sharply to the next nominee.
beside you, michael inhaled sharply.
his arm slid instinctively around you, bringing you closer against his side as the final nominees were announced. the movement looked casual to everybody else, but you could feel the tension underneath it — the way his fingers flexed once against the silk of your dress before settling there.
because if you won this tonight, that was it. a full sweep.
artist of the year.
best choreography.
best direction.
and now this.
michael leaned down slightly, close enough for only you to hear him over the music. “you okay?”
you laughed once through your nose, though it came out tighter than intended. “ask me in thirty seconds.”
he let out a chuckle at that, but his eyes stayed fixed on the stage. the envelope hadn’t even been opened yet, and somehow both of you already looked like you were bracing for impact.
"and the award goes to — "
the presenter paused for a grueling few seconds, the silver cue card catching the harsh glare of the broadcast cameras while the entire room collectively held its breath. cameras swept across the nominees one by one, flashing nervous smiles to the people at home.
beside you, michael’s hand found your knee so quickly it surprised you. then —
your name echoed into the audience.
your entire table celebrated instantly, a symphony of crashing silverware and jubilant shouts of glee.
before you could even properly process the win, michael was already on his feet beside you. he was clapping harder than anybody else in the auditorium, he looked at you with such open pride that it made your eyes sting.
“oh my god,” you mumbled, stunned and lightheaded as your composure cracked.
“you won,” he breathed, already halfway out of his chair. he gripped your shoulders, squeezing them tight with excitement. then he pulled you toward him, pressing a quick kiss against your cheekbone. “baby, you won!”
“i didn’t doubt you for a second.”
you giggled, still trying to comprehend the praise surrounding you. “well, it’s nice one of us didn’t, because i definitely did.”
michael just shook his head, smiling like the idea itself was ridiculous.
the pins and needles in your foot vanished the second you stood. you tilted your head up to kiss him quickly — lipstick, laughter, adrenaline, all of it catching between you until the intensity of the ballroom rushed back into view. then you turned toward the stage.
though you didn’t miss the way his eyes dipped shamelessly as you walked away, his focus dropping to the curves of your dress before he dragged himself back up to public decorum.
unbelievable behavior.
the applause swelled around you as you climbed the stairs, the award finally settling into your grasp — heavier than you’d expected, cool against your palms. your reflection flashed briefly across the giant monitors surrounding the stage, chandeliers scattering fractured gold across the darkened auditorium as the crowd continued howling somewhere beneath you.
michael smiled up at you from his seat the entire time, he watched with the same intent attention he always wore whenever you talked about something you loved. his eyes felt like an anchor in the blur of bright flashes and indistinct faces, steadying your nerves every time they threatened to slip. even from across the hall, his admiration felt almost tangible.
adjusting the microphone, you gave the standard opening first: thanking the academy. your team. the collaborators who pushed your vision. supportive friends. your family.
everything was going perfectly normal.
then near the end of the speech, your eyes drifted back toward michael again. and there he was, still staring.
there was something so endearing about him — chin tucked into his fist, eyes fixed on you with complete and utter adulation — that you felt the first spark of trouble curl through your chest before you could stop it.
“and of course,” you started warmly, “shoutout to donatella versace for custom-making this dress for me tonight.”
polite applause scattered through the room. michael nodded approvingly from his table.
then you looked directly at him. a tiny smile tugged at the corner of your mouth.
and instantly his expression shifted into pure suspicion. the man who had spent the night in a daze of adoration suddenly sharpened, his eyes narrowing as he recognized the specific brand of mischief that always accompanied that particular curve of your lips. it was a look he knew far too well.
“…and shoutout to my husband michael jackson—”
the audience burst into cheers the second his name left your mouth, the sound vibrating through the floorboards. michael ducked his head, laughing coyly while the cameras swarmed toward him.
you finished your sentence, the words pouring into the microphone with devastating precision:
“—because he’ll definitely be taking it off me later.”
silence.
for one glorious, suspended moment, the entire ballroom simply forgot how to function. the oxygen in the auditorium seemed to vanish, sucked out by the collective gasp of a thousand industry elites. the monitors cut to him immediately.
michael froze mid-applause, his hands hovering inches apart as if the signal to clap had been abruptly severed from his brain. his eyes went wide behind impossibly long lashes as the reality of what you’d just said hit him in real time.
the room lost its mind.
laughter surged through the auditorium in waves. people doubled over at their tables. the front row was a scene of total disarray; one prominent actress nearly fell out of her chair, needing to catch herself against the edge of the table while she desperately gasped for air.
meanwhile, you remained the picture of composure at the podium. with the award still resting beside you, you simply took a small sip of water and peered over the rim of the glass with wide, innocent eyes as though you hadn’t just publicly assassinated your husband’s dignity on live television.
“oh my god,” somebody screamed from somewhere near the back of the room, the exclamation cutting through the general din and triggering a fresh wave of delight from the audience.
at the center of the storm, michael looked like his soul had left his body. several celebrities at the surrounding tables were leaning over to congratulate him like he’d won an award himself, grabbing his shoulders, patting his back, laughing so hard some of them could barely get words out. all while michael sat there flushed deep enough to show through his stage makeup, seeming seconds away from disappearing directly into the upholstery of his chair.
by the time you returned to the table, he was hiding his face behind the nearest object he could find. which was currently a decorative vase.
“you are unbelievable,” he whispered hoarsely the second you slid back into the chair beside him, the scent of his expensive cologne mixing with the frenzied energy of the moment.
you smoothed your dress innocently. “what?”
“why would you say that?” he asked, lowering the vase just enough to reveal dazed, dark eyes. “in front of everyone?”
“because it's true.”
michael made a small, wounded noise deep in his throat, a huff of air that was part wheeze and mostly protest. around you, the nearby tables continued to ignore the actual ceremony, their occupants openly staring at the two of you and whispering behind their programs.
“oh, look at him. how precious! he's red!” somebody pointed out nearby.
they were right. the flush climbing up michael’s neck had become impossible to hide.
“baby,” he hissed under his breath, actively trying to crawl beneath the tablecloth.
a tiny stab of sympathy hit you then. you leaned closer, catching his face in between your hands and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek in apology.
unfortunately, that only made the nearby tables react even louder.
michael squirmed slightly as you kissed the corner of his mouth next, trying your very best to comfort him while simultaneously making the situation worse. his entire face had gone hot beneath your touch, eyes darting everywhere except directly at you while the cameras continued circling like vultures.
“i’m sorry,” you whisper-giggled, you're kisses beginning to falter as you collapsed against him. your composure giving out entirely.
“no you’re not,” he muttered, voice muffled into your shoulder as he tried to hide his face.
and honestly?
he was right.
the rest of the ceremony passed in a haze of cameras and secondhand mortification. every time somebody referenced your speech in the following categories, the broadcast cut back to your table, catching michael in his bewildered state all over again.
at one point, an interviewer approached your table with a grin already threatening disaster.
“so! about the dress—”
michael vanished before the question even finished.
one second he was beside you, the next he was halfway across the venue at concerning speed, pointing back toward you in silent delegation as he abandoned you to deal with the consequences alone.
fair enough.
eventually, sometime past midnight, the two of you finally escaped the barrage of flashbulbs and microphones and retreated back to your hotel suite.
the second the door shut behind you, michael turned and pointed at you accusingly.
“you embarrassed me,” he declared, though his voice lacked any real bite.
you folded in on yourself immediately, kicking off your heels to be abandoned near the doorway as you finally gave up trying to behave. you flicked a hand at him in a dismissive motion. “you survived.”
he stood by the massive window, his eyes fixed on the view overlooking los angeles, the city glittering below him like scattered diamonds. a faint pout was still playing on his lips. “barely.”
michael shook his head, his attention drifting back to you again — it followed the delicate detailing along the sides of the dress, the dangerously cut back, the way the fabric clung to every dip and swell of your body. the remnants of your stage makeup still surviving, smudged.
“i was traumatized,” he muttered weakly.
“oh please, you were smiling the whole time.”
“i was under a lot of peer pressure.”
“sureee.” you started walking toward him, letting your palms glide over the satin lapel of his suit jacket. you danced your fingers across the intricate military-style embroidery, feeling the raised threads beneath your touch. michael’s eyes tracked every motion, sharpening with desire the closer you got.
“so,” you murmured, letting go of him and turning around, showing off the gold zipper that ran down your lower back. you glanced over your shoulder at him with a playful little smile. “you gonna take this off me or what?”
something in his expression shifted.
the shy embarrassment that had followed him around all evening finally broke just enough for something steadier to ease itself underneath. his grip closed around your waist, pulling you flush against him hard enough to make you lose the rest of your sentence.
“careful,” he murmured, finally looking at you directly. “you’ve been causing problems all night.”
his voice had dropped an octave. it sent a pulse straight between your legs.
“oh, now you wanna act brave?” you teased, even as your heart raced.
michael let out a muted laugh before clasping your zipper and bringing it down agonisingly slow, tooth by tooth, letting the cool air skim across the newly exposed skin as the material gradually loosened around your body.
“you done putting on a show for everybody else?”
you opened your mouth, but he spun you around before you could answer. one strong hand slid under your thigh, lifting your leg high against his hip, forcing you to balance as he pressed you flush against him. the other hand settled possessively at the base of your spine, fingers splayed across the heat of your body.
“because,” he said, eyes dragging over your face, “i’ve been wanting to get you alone since the second you stepped out in that dress.”
the zipper traveled lower under his fingers. the dress loosened, slithering further down your shoulders and arms, barely clinging to your chest. michael’s touch slipped inside, gliding over your ass before hooking into the thin strap of your underwear. he yanked at it until it was taut, letting it snap sharply against your flesh with a soft sting that made you gasp.
he smiled at that. his mouth was on you — brushing your jaw, grazing your neck with his teeth, just enough pressure to make your breath hitch.
“hm,” he hummed, satisfied, feeling the way you trembled against him. “guess you’re done.”
he traced slowly up your spine, tugging the zipper the rest of the way down. the silk dress unraveled completely, descending further until it pooled softly around your waist and exposed the full swell of your chest. michael pulled back just enough to look at you properly.
there was still a voracity there, obvious and impossible to miss, but tangled up with something quieter too — something almost reverent in the way his eyes moved over you like he still couldn’t fully believe you were real, let alone standing here in front of him like this.
only then did he cup your face with both hands and kiss you.
the kiss started deep and warm. but the hunger he’d been holding back all night quickly took over. it grew heavier, more consuming. his tongue brushed yours, teasing as your fingers traveled to his hair. you melted into him, a soft sound leaving your throat while he tilted his head and kissed you even deeper.
one hand stayed at the nape of your neck, holding you exactly where he wanted, while the other skimmed down your bare back. every time you tried to gasp for air, he chased your lips again, refusing to let you go. his kisses turned slower, more sensual — lingering presses mixed with gentle bites to your bottom lip.
“you have no idea what you do to me,” he whispered against your mouth, voice rough and low, before diving back in. the moment stretched until your lungs finally started protesting.
you pulled back first, forehead brushing his as you tried unsuccessfully to steady yourself.
your fingertips smoothed lazily along the buttons of his jacket, “does that mean you liked the speech?”
michael let out a light chuckle, thumb brushing slowly across your bottom lip while his eyes stayed fixed on yours. “you’re gonna be the death of me,” he whispered.
he leaned in again, mouth trailing from yours to your jaw, then lower. kisses pressed along your décolletage one by one, lingering beneath your ear before drifting down the column of your neck.
the longer he kissed you, the less restrained he became.
what started gentle turned heavier, more deliberate — the scrape of teeth, the pull of his mouth against your skin, the sting that followed whenever he sucked hard enough to leave colour behind. he took his time with it, savoring every inch, leaving a trail of bruises. by the time he finally lifted his head, faint marks had already begun blooming across your throat and collarbones beneath the dim hotel lighting.
“i loved every second of it,” he admitted quietly, lips grazing your skin between words. “even when i wanted to disappear into the floor.”
another kiss.
“all i could think about was getting you back here and ripping this damn thing off you.”
the dress hung low on your hips now, threatening to slip further. michael’s attention fell down. eyes outlining the way the fabric clung to your silhouette, gold detailing twisted beneath his fingers from how tightly he’d held you — it completely ruined for anyone else.
“actually keep it on a little longer,” he murmured. he tugged the material up slightly, only to let it fall again. “i’m not finished admiring it yet.”
Can you write a fic where reader is a musician and apart of a band but one night she has a song idea but doesn’t like how her voice sounds in it so she gives the song to prince and it ends up being his biggest song purple rain. And Michael is kinda sad she gave it to him since he barely slept when he got song ideas so ‘god wouldn’t give them to prince’ btw reader and prince are friends .also could you make her African British like me😭
the ones you throw away ✦
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ thriller era! michael jackson x rockstar gf! reader
summary ⋆ after writing a song inspired by a stranger standing in the rain, reader ends up handing it off to prince during a late-night studio conversation in los angeles. months later, sitting beside michael watching the performance on television, she’s forced to confront the possibility that she gave away more than just a song.
content ⋆ thriller era michael jackson, fem! reader, established relationship, musician reader, prince cameo, creative insecurity, third person, oc bandmates (the reader is not an oc dw), emotional arguments in hotel rooms, quiet domesticity, michael spiritually competing with prince, british spelling warning, 7.3k words O-O
author's note ⋆ I HOPE THIS FULFILLS THE REQUEST, i wasn't really sure where i wanted to go with it at first but i found my footing eventually. I'M ALSO SO SORRY, I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO ADD THE FACT THE READER AS AFRICAN INTO THE PLOT SO I KINDA JUST DIDN'T DESCRIBE HER APPEARANCE, you are free to view her as any race! i just didn't really want my representation of the nationality to be shallow. also my first time writing in third person, do you guys like it? genuinely tell me cuz i'm not sure how i feel about it and i wouldn't mind going back to second.
the rain hadn't stopped since that morning.
it was the kind that didn’t bother announcing itself, just a grey sky that had decided it was falling today and had gotten on with it. the window above the radiator had fogged softly at the edges, and outside the rain had turned the whole street reflective, streetlamps stretching their amber across the wet pavement.
she was trying to decide between two jackets.
“that one’s ugly,” michael said from the bed.
she didn’t look at him. “you said that about the last one.”
“because the last one was ugly too.”
“michael.”
"i'm just saying." she could hear him shifting against the pillows. he’d spent the better part of the last half hour watching her pack with the complete contentment of someone who, for once, had nowhere to be and was revelling in it. he'd flown in four days ago — a promotional stop for thriller that had conveniently extended itself once he'd realised she was still in the city. the label had stopped questioning his schedule adjustments. probably easier for everyone involved.
“you’re going to LA. they have a whole—” he waved his hands vaguely, trying to gesture the concept into existence, “—aesthetic over there.”
“what does that mean?” she glanced over her shoulder.
“you know. beige. tiny dogs. open shirts. everyone looks like they own a convertible.”
“LA's aesthetic is sunglasses and designer drugs." she folded the jacket and shoved it into the case anyway.
“exactly,” michael said. “with those clothes, you’ll be dressing like you solve murders.”
she raised a skeptical eyebrow and asked, "are you calling me sherlock holmes?"
he let out a snort at that before raising his hands in surrender.
“fine,” he said. “but when you’re sweating to death in leather, don’t blame me.”
she threw a rolled-up pair of socks at him without turning around properly. she heard him catch it, smug and immediate, and hated that she was smiling.
the room was warm, the radiator was ancient and had two settings: off and unreasonable. the flat smelled faintly of the candle she’d lit that morning and the remnants of last night’s takeaway she kept meaning to throw away. it felt comfortable in a way that was suddenly a little fragile knowing she was leaving in two days. southbound had a slot booked at sunset sound in los angeles: three weeks with jerry wexler, which still didn’t feel entirely real whenever she said it out loud. the band had been buzzing about it for months, danny nearly vibrating out of his skin every time someone brought it up. she was excited too. she just moved through excitement more quietly than most people.
she was trying to decide between two pairs of boots when she felt him step up behind her, his chin settling onto her shoulder.
“come lie down,” he said.
she didn’t look up from the stack of t-shirts she was currently attempting to force into a corner of the suitcase. “i’m packing.”
“you’ve been packing for forty-five minutes and that case is still half empty.” michael leaned further over her shoulder, peering into the mess of half-folded denim and miscellaneous cables with clear opinions for someone making absolutely no effort to help.
“because you keep distracting me.” she turned just enough to look at him properly. he’d put on the expression again — all wide eyes and wounded innocence despite the fact he knew perfectly well what he was doing. “michael.”
“i’m not doing anything.”
“you’re breathing on my neck.”
“that’s just breathing. i can’t really stop.”
but then he kissed the space just below her ear and she immediately regretted making eye contact with him at all.
“come lie down,” he said again. “you’ve got two days.”
“i’ve got two days and a lot to do.” she untangled herself from him carefully, pressing a quick peck to the corner of his jaw before turning back to the wardrobe. “go be decorative somewhere else.”
he made a sound of deep personal offence and retreated. a second later the bed frame creaked beneath his weight again.
“what about this?” he called a moment later. she looked over her shoulder to find him holding up the green dress she’d had since university, the one with the fraying hem she kept meaning to fix.
“put that down.”
“this is a good dress.”
“it’s falling apart.”
“vintage,” he said seriously. “that’s what they call it in the boutiques. vintage.”
“i will leave you in this flat.”
he put the dress down, laughing, and she turned back to the wardrobe while the flat settled into its comfortable noise again — rain against the glass, the radiator ticking, michael humming a tuneless melody behind her. she’d learned in the past few months that he was almost never silent. humming, tapping rhythms against his knees, half-singing words to songs that didn’t exist yet. it had become part of the texture of him somehow, the sound of him occupying space.
she was reaching for a jumper when she glanced out the window.
there was a man standing on the pavement across the street.
just — standing there. no umbrella, hood down, his coat gone dark across the shoulders from the weather. he wasn't sheltering, wasn't waiting for anyone, wasn't looking at his watch. he was just standing with his face tilted up, like he'd decided the storm was happening to him and had made his peace with it.
she stopped reaching for the jumper.
the streetlights blurred strangely through the downpour, washing everything in soft bruised colours.
the stillness of him against all that movement pulled at her immediately, the way he looked almost deliberate standing there, like he was exactly where he meant to be despite everything falling on him — and she felt a strange pull somewhere beneath her ribs. not an emotion she could name yet. just a sensation taking shape.
the melody came before she understood what it was.
four notes, barely there, just breath and pitch. she wasn't humming, not quite. it was quieter than that, more like the sound had arrived in her and was finding its way out.
she stood at the window and watched the man across the road while the melody unfolded slowly, five notes now, something wide and aching in a way that wasn't sad exactly, just — vast. like looking at too much sky at once.
behind her, michael had gone quiet.
she didn't stop. didn't reach for anything to write it down, just stayed there while it moved through her. outside, water streaked gold beneath the streetlamps and eventually the man turned and walked away, slow and unhurried, like he'd finally decided to leave.
she watched him until he disappeared around the corner.
the melody stayed.
she turned back to the wardrobe, reaching absently for the jumper, still humming under her breath without really noticing she was doing it.
“what is that?” michael asked behind her.
“don't know yet,” she murmured.
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁﹏𓊝﹏. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
it was going to be an eleven-hour flight.
danny had fallen asleep before they’d even left the taxi, which was either a talent or a medical condition; she’d never quite decided which. he was the kind of frontman who could sleep anywhere and still walk onstage looking touched by god twenty minutes later, which remained deeply irritating to the rest of the band.
across the aisle, priya had her headphones on and her eyes closed, though whether she was actually asleep or simply done with conversation was anyone’s guess.
the rest of the southbound crew were scattered somewhere further back through the cabin, and the plane had drifted into that strange late-night atmosphere long-haul flights always seemed to develop, where everyone collectively agreed to pretend they weren’t trapped in an uncomfortable metal tube somewhere over the atlantic.
michael was asleep beside her.
he’d fought it for a while — had sat upright with great personal dignity reading a magazine for approximately twenty minutes before his head had started making that gradual, negotiated descent toward her shoulder. she’d felt the exact moment he lost the argument with himself. now he was slumped against her side, breathing evenly. she’d carefully taken the magazine from his hand before it could slide into the aisle.
she should sleep too.
instead, she stared at the back of the seat in front of her for a moment, then reached into the bag beneath her feet and pulled out her notebook.
it was still there. of course it was. melodies didn’t really leave once they arrived; that was the gift and the problem with them. she’d been carrying it since the window, since the man in the rain, four notes becoming five becoming something she still couldn’t quite close her hand around. she’d caught herself humming it in the shower that morning without meaning to. had caught it on her lips while she was locking up the flat.
she clicked her pen and looked at the blank page.
there was something useful about writing on planes. the world narrowed down to a few manageable things, provided you could ignore the nausea: the engine beneath your feet, the darkness beyond the glass, the occasional rustle of somebody turning over in their sleep. no distractions. no obligations. no michael holding dresses against himself with complete sincerity until she gave up trying not to laugh.
eleven hours in the sky with nowhere else to be.
she wrote the first four notes down in the shorthand she'd been using since she was fifteen — not proper notation, just her own system, loops and dashes that would mean nothing to anyone else but were perfectly legible to her.
then the next phrase.
then the bridge that had been hovering somewhere at the edge of her thoughts since yesterday, which turned out to already be there in full once she reached for it, like it had simply been waiting for her to get quiet enough.
michael shifted beside her at some point, his hand finding her arm in his sleep automatically, like he’d gotten used to knowing where she was.
she paused, waiting to see if he’d wake. he didn’t. she kept writing.
by the time she put the pen down the page was nearly full and the cabin was almost completely dark, the endless drone beneath her feet making it impossible to tell how much time had passed anymore. she looked at what she'd written.
it was good. she knew the difference, knew that recognising something special and being capable of writing it were two entirely separate abilities. this felt like one of those songs that arrived already formed, needing very little from her except attention. she read it through twice.
southbound had always worked because everybody understood the shape of it. danny at the front with the microphone and half the room already watching him before he even opened his mouth. priya behind the drums, keeping everything moving. her further back with a guitar strapped across her shoulder, writing most of the songs and stepping in for harmonies when she needed to.
she'd spent so long existing inside that structure it had stopped feeling like a decision somewhere along the line.
this song felt different.
more exposed. less interested in hiding behind cleverness or distance. it felt awkwardly close to her somehow, like somebody had reached directly into the centre of her chest and translated what they found into music before she could stop them.
it didn’t sound like southbound.
she could already see the stage it belonged on. it sounded like the kind of song carried by one person standing alone at the centre of it.
a solo artist.
the idea made her recoil immediately.
no matter how many times she looked at the page, she couldn’t make herself believe that person was her.
the thought was sudden and ugly, and she loathed how effortlessly a part of her had embraced it as truth. this was a legacy song, the kind people got remembered for, the kind that defined a career. and she had spent most of hers standing slightly outside those kinds of moments.
then she closed the notebook and looked out into the dark. she didn’t examine that too closely. just put the notebook back into her bag and finally let herself close her eyes. michael’s hand was still resting against her arm.
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los angeles was aggressively sunny in a way that felt almost rude after london.
she’d stepped off the plane and the heat had just landed on her all at once, like the city was trying to prove a point. danny had thrown his arms open and shouted yes like he was personally accepting an award, nearly dropping to his knees to kiss the ground after that hellish flight. priya had put her sunglasses on at the airport and barely removed them for the next three days.
michael, meanwhile, had spent most of arrivals with his head down beneath a baseball cap while bill attempted to steer him through the terminal without attracting too much attention. it worked for approximately seven minutes. long enough for one person to recognise him, then another, and suddenly he was smiling politely at strangers while still visibly jet-lagged.
“you’d think they’d let me look terrible in peace,” he muttered once bill finally got them all outside.
she rolled her eyes at that as they climbed into the car, like he could ever actually look terrible.
sunset sound was on sunset boulevard and it was everything a studio on sunset boulevard should be — worn in the right places, legendary in the specific way that meant the walls had absorbed enough music to have opinions.
jerry wexler had shaken her hand and looked at the band over his glasses with the expression of a man who had heard everything and was still prepared to be surprised anyway, which she’d liked instantly.
she’d said goodbye to michael outside their hotel that morning, both of them already running late in opposite directions. his schedule was chaos at the moment, interviews and meetings and rehearsals stacked on top of each other, and southbound practically lived at the studio now that recording had started properly.
“call me when you get back,” he’d said, leaning against the car door while bill checked his watch nearby with increasing despair.
“you say that like quincy’ll let you answer.”
“that’s hurtful.”
she threw her hands up in the air in surrender, “i’m just being realistic.”
he’d laughed at that, reached over to squeeze her hand once, then ducked into the car before the growing cluster of people across the street could fully process who they were looking at.
she still found herself glancing at payphones every few hours anyway.
the first week was mostly about finding their footing.
that was normal — the first week of any recording session was less about the music and more about everyone learning the room. learning wexler’s rhythms, learning which decisions to bring to him and which ones to argue out amongst themselves before he ever heard them. danny took longer than usual, too excited to be still, singing everything at about ten percent faster than it needed to go. priya was the opposite, overcautious, doing three takes where one would have done fine.
she kept her head down and worked.
it was easy, disappearing into the band. easy to spend ten hours discussing arrangements and guitar tones and backing harmonies instead of thinking too hard about the notebook in her bag.
she didn’t take it out once. sometimes she’d unzip the front pocket just to check it was still there, fingertips brushing the cover before she closed it again. then she’d go back to whatever wexler was saying about the bridge on track four or danny’s phrasing on the second verse.
she didn’t forget about the song. that would’ve been easier. every time she thought about it for too long, she recognised too much of herself in it. she didn’t like that.
michael called every evening they weren’t together, both of them spending nights far too late at their respective studios to actually see each other.
he'd ask about wexler, about the tracks, about whether danny’s discovered the concept of tempo yet. she'd ask about the album, about the label, about whether quincy had allowed him to leave the studio at any point that week.
“how are you sleeping?” she wondered aloud one night with a yawn, the phone was wedged between her ear and shoulder while she picked at the remains of leftover takeout.
a pause. “fine.”
“michael.”
“four hours,” he admitted. “maybe five.”
“that’s not fine.”
“like you can talk.” she could hear him moving around on the other end of the line, that familiar restless energy carrying even through bad reception. “i keep — things keep showing up. you know how it is.”
she did know. she'd watched him surface from sleep at two in the morning reaching for whatever was nearest to write something down, had seen the particular focused distance that came over him when something was arriving.
“you need to sleep properly,” she said.
“tell that to the songs,” he replied, fondness tucked somewhere beneath the exhaustion. “how's yours coming?”
her breath hitched. “which one?”
“you know which one.”
her eyes flicked toward the bag across the room.
“fine,” she said after a second. “going fine.”
she changed the subject after that, and he let her. she didn't open the notebook that night either.
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁﹏𓊝﹏. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
it was the middle of the second week when she saw him.
she’d come out of the live room during a break — wexler had called fifteen minutes while he sorted something out with the sound engineer. running entirely on four hours of sleep, she’d gone looking for coffee.
the corridor outside studio b was narrow and permanently dim, lined with old session photographs. she almost walked straight into him.
he was coming the other way, jacket still on despite the heat outside, looking like he was travelling between one important place and another. he looked up at the exact same moment she did, and for half a second neither of them reacted, both caught in that strange delay that came with seeing somebody entirely out of context before recognition fully arrived.
"oh my god," she said. "what."
prince smiled — that particular smile of his, like he found most things faintly entertaining, including this conversation. “funny place to run into you.”
“what are you doing here?”
“favour session.” he gestured vaguely down the corridor toward studio a. “somebody needed a guitar part. you?”
“three weeks with wexler.”
both his eyebrows lifted briefly, which from prince was basically a standing ovation.
“wexler,” he repeated.
“i know,” she said, and felt the grin properly break across her face. she hadn’t realised until right then how badly she’d needed to see a familiar face that wasn’t coming through a phone receiver.
the last time she’d seen prince had been at the grammys back in february — that entire ridiculous evening where he’d performed little red corvette and the room had collectively lost its mind. she’d watched from her table while danny had spent most of it clutching her arm and hissing 'do you see this???’ every thirty seconds.
and even then they’d only managed about twenty minutes of actual conversation before the night swallowed them both again.
“you look tired,” he observed, not unkindly.
“i’m fine. it’s good tired.” she leaned back against the wall. “you eaten? i’ve got about fifteen minutes.”
they ended up in the tiny kitchen at the end of the corridor, her with the coffee she’d originally come looking for, him with a bottle of water, sitting across from each other at a formica table.
it felt easy straight away, the way it always did with prince. just two people who’d spent enough years drifting through the same rooms to stop pretending around each other. they drifted easily between subjects: studio gossip, terrible managers, the existential horror of record executives, increasingly judgemental opinions about a mutual friend’s new record deal.
“it’s a terrible contract,” she said.
“it’s a terrible haircut,” prince corrected.
“both can be true.”
then the conversation thinned naturally for a moment, neither of them rushing to fill it. she looked down at her coffee cup.
“i’ve got a song,” she admitted.
he waited.
“i wrote it on the plane over.” she hesitated. “you ever make something and realise halfway through that it’s asking for more from you than you actually know how to give?”
prince was quiet for a moment. "play it."
she almost said i don’t have my keyboard.
but she had the notebook — the first time she’d actually taken it out of her bag in days, and of course it happened after accidentally running into prince in a studio corridor — and she had a voice even if she didn’t entirely trust it right now. so she opened to the right page and sang across the table quietly, just melody and fragments of lyrics, no accompaniment, feeling faintly ridiculous singing bare-handed in a studio kitchen in los angeles.
he didn’t say anything straight away when she finished. he’d gone strangely motionless across the table, thumb pressed briefly against his mouth like he was still listening to the shape of the melody after the sound had already faded. his thumb dragged once along the side of the water bottle in his hand, slow and absent-minded, like she’d interrupted a thought halfway through forming.
“tell me i don’t suit it,” she said.
he let out a short breath through his nose, almost disbelieving. “i can’t tell you that.”
“prince—”
“i mean it,” he interrupted. the usual amused distance had faded, replaced by a focused attention that made her suddenly aware of how quiet the room had become. “you’ve been holding onto this by yourself?”
the question caught her off guard.
“for about a week.”
another pause stretched out, punctuated only by the distant, muffled thump of a kick drum from studio b.
“huh.”
“what does that mean?”
he leaned back a little in his chair, watching her carefully.
“means i would’ve lost my mind by now,” he said. “that’s not the kind of song you leave sitting in a notebook.”
her fingers tightened around the edge of the page. “maybe i don’t know what else to do with it.”
prince tilted his head a fraction, studying her in that unnervingly direct way of his.
“maybe,” he said slowly, “or you’re just scared of it,”
the accusation landed harder than she expected. because the irritating thing was that he’d understood almost immediately. perhaps not all of it, but enough. enough to see that the problem had never really been the song.
“you know what i think?” he said after a moment.
“that i’m being dramatic and moody?”
a brief smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“that,” he agreed easily. “and i think you got too used to hiding inside bands.”
she let out a short laugh at that, mostly because hearing somebody say it out loud made her chest tense unpleasantly.
“southbound’s not exactly hiding,” she pointed out, more amused than genuinely offended. they’d worked too hard for that — years of awful touring circuits, broken equipment and overnight drives eventually turning into magazine covers and two wins at the brit awards earlier that year.
“no,” he agreed easily. “but you are.”
somebody shouted something unintelligible further down the hall. her index finger caught against the corner of the page.
and then she could see it. not herself. him.
the scale of it. the theatricality. the way the song wanted somebody completely unafraid of standing at the centre of things. somebody who knew how to carry enormity without apologising for it.
somebody like prince.
“you should take it,” she said before she could overthink it.
he blinked hard enough that she knew she’d genuinely surprised him.
“what.”
“the song.” her pulse had started climbing now that she’d said it out loud, but the idea already felt strangely certain. “you should have it.”
he held her gaze for a long second, clearly waiting for her to take it back. when she didn’t, he leaned back against the chair again.
“no.”
“but—”
“no,” he repeated, calmer this time but no less firm. “that’s your song.”
the scribbled pages felt strangely distant from her now, like she was looking at something she'd found instead of something she'd made. “i don’t think it is anymore,”
his eyebrows pulled together at that. “you wrote it.”
“that doesn’t mean i’m the person meant to sing it.”
she could practically feel him turning the idea over in his head, resisting it on instinct. which, somehow, only made her want to hand it to him more. because prince knew music. knew instinct. and if even he hesitated before taking it, then maybe she hadn’t imagined the size of the thing after all.
“you really don’t hear yourself on it?” he asked.
absently, she traced over one of the scribbled lines on the page. “no.”
prince sat there, jaw shifting slightly like he was arguing with himself internally. “you got a tape of it?”
she paused. “a demo?”
“demo. anything.”
“no.” a short laugh escaped her. “i wrote it thirty thousand feet in the air and then immediately started avoiding it, remember?”
he exhaled quietly through his nose, remaining unconvinced by the entire situation. his fingers tapped once against the book.
“alright,” he said.
“alright?”
“you’re giving me this song and i have to decode whatever the hell these notes are supposed to mean.” he glanced down at the page again. “for all i know, this could be advanced mathematics.”
she laughed. “they make sense to me.”
“that’s not reassuring.”
“what were you even gonna call it?”
she gave him a look that resembled a deer in headlights. “uhhhhh.”
“c’mon,” prince said, already sounding suspicious.
“they were mostly just placeholders.”
“that bad?”
“very.”
prince waited her out until she finally muttered: “ballad in bad weather. or… i dunno… seven minutes of rain sounds.”
his mouth went into a straight line as he processed her words. “those might be the worst titles i’ve ever heard.”
“i panicked!”
“clearly.”
she covered part of her face with one hand while he shook his head under his breath, faintly appalled.
“purple rain,” he said.
she frowned at that. “that’s annoyingly good.”
a grin spread slowly across his face, pleased. “i know.”
the words landed softly between them, certain, less like a suggestion and more like something he’d already uncovered.
purple rain.
prince read through the lyrics properly then, stopping twice to ask about the chord progression she’d translated into her bizarre shorthand. she answered automatically, strangely calm through all of it, like the decision had already been made somewhere underneath conscious thought and the rest of her was only now catching up.
further down the corridor, wexler’s voice called that they were back in five. prince handed the notebook back. she tore the page out carefully and passed it over. he folded it once and slipped it into his jacket pocket like it was a receipt, like it was nothing.
‘good.’ she thought. she also very deliberately did not look at the rough torn edge left behind in the notebook.
“good luck with wexler,” he said from the kitchen doorway.
“good luck with whatever you’re doing to that poor man’s guitar track.”
he gave her one last grin before disappearing down the corridor while she headed back toward studio b.
she finished the session that afternoon in a weird mood, slept properly for the first time in days, and absolutely did not think about the folded page sitting in prince’s jacket pocket. or at least, that’s what she told herself.
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the band left on a thursday.
they all stood outside the studio waiting for their cars, priya somehow carrying four more suitcases than she’d arrived with and danny still talking about the sessions like he was expecting somebody to adapt the experience into a documentary series. jerry wexler had shaken all their hands that morning, clearly pleased the week had turned out the way he’d hoped. somehow that felt better than outright praise would’ve.
she hugged priya first, then the rest of the band, and then danny grabbed her in a bear hug that lifted her slightly off the ground. he lowered her eventually.
“right,” he said, pointing at her with great authority. “don’t come back pregnant. i know what you and your fancy man get up to when the rest of us aren’t watching.”
she punched him in the arm hard enough that he yelped.
“ow—”
“two weeks without me,” she said. “behave yourselves.”
“we’re not the one staying behind with michael jackson—”
“danny.”
“i’m just saying. the sexual tension in that hotel room could power greater london.”
the car horn saved him from another thwack.
danny left still grinning, rubbing his arm with absolutely no sincerity, and she watched them pile into the cars — priya rolling her eyes at him from the front seat while the others tried to wedge suitcases between their knees. then they were gone, tyres disappearing into traffic while the late afternoon los angeles sun turned the whole street gold. michael was leaning against the car behind her. she turned properly then and took him in for the first time since arriving — not through a phone line, not squeezed into rushed conversations between studio sessions.
he looked exactly how she’d expected. tired around the edges, the way he got after too many nights without proper sleep, the strain underneath him more visible now than it had been three weeks ago.
but he was here. and he was smiling. right then, that felt like enough.
"hi," she said.
"hi," he said.
she crossed the distance between them and he opened his arms before she even reached him. the familiar weight of him pulled a long breath out of both of them at once.
his hotel room was on the tenth floor with a view that kept pulling her away from conversations halfway through — the city sprawling sparkling beneath the windows, nothing like london. no clear edges to it. just more and more los angeles. she drifted back toward the glass twice while michael jackson ordered room service from the phone near the bed.
“what do you want?”
“anything.”
“you say that now,” he said, already unconvinced. “then the food arrives and you’ve suddenly developed several opinions.”
“sounds about right.”
eventually he made an executive decision for both of them and she didn’t argue.
they ate cross-legged on the bed with the television low in the background while she told him about the sessions — about jerry wexler and his glasses and the way he’d just say again with absolutely no further explanation and somehow everybody instantly understood.
she told him about danny in venice beach, which took several minutes to explain properly because she kept breaking off laughing halfway through it. about the track they’d almost cut before changing their minds at the last second. about how it had somehow become her favourite thing on the album.
michael listened the way he always did: completely. his attention never drifted, he didn’t wait for his turn to speak, just genuine focus that made you feel like the thing you were saying mattered more than anything else in the room. at some point he leaned over and pressed a kiss against her temple. she leaned into it automatically and felt a ridiculous amount of happiness over something so small.
"how was the rest of it?" he asked. "outside of the beach incident."
“good. priya found a record shop she’d have moved into given half the chance.” she tore apart the last of the bread roll absently, full and pleasantly heavy from food and exhaustion. “oh — and i ran into prince. at the studio, actually. he was doing a session down the hall.”
"prince was at sunset sound?"
“favour session. some guitar thing apparently.” she shifted slightly against the pillows. “was good seeing him. felt like ages since the grammys.”
“what’d you get up to?”
“just talked. had about fifteen minutes in the kitchen between takes.”
she pulled another piece from the bread roll before adding, almost absent-mindedly “oh. i didn’t end up keeping that song.”
his expression tensed almost immediately. nothing obvious enough for anyone else to notice, but she felt it anyway.
“which song,” he said. not quite a question.
“the one i was humming. before we left.” she kept playing with her food instead of looking at him. “i played it for him and i just…” a small shrug. “asked if he wanted it.”
michael didn’t respond straight away.
his expression had gone careful in the way it always did when he was actively holding something back. he wasn’t angry — she knew what anger looked like on him and this wasn’t it. which somehow made it harder to deal with.
"you gave it to prince," he said finally.
she nodded, "yeah."
“the song you wrote on the plane.”
“michael—”
“the one you carried around for three weeks.”
“he liked it.”
michael’s face shifted slightly. “that’s not what i’m asking.”
he rested back against the headboard, studying her for a second like he was trying to figure out how to say the next part without pushing too hard.
“i heard you humming it,” he said. “in the kitchen. in the shower. half asleep on the sofa before we left.”
she kept her attention fixed on her hands.
“i woke up on the plane and you were writing it out,” he continued. “you didn’t know i was awake. i’ve never seen you look at something like that before.”
she fiddled with the sheets beneath her.
“it was right for you.”
the bread clinked against the porcelain plate as she set it back, appetite gone. “my voice doesn’t suit it.”
“it absolutely does.”
"michael."
“it does.” his hand dragged once across his face before dropping again. “you’ve spent so long convincing yourself you belong behind other people that now you don’t know what to do when something asks you to stand in front of them.”
she scoffed. “that’s not what happened.”
“isn’t it?”
she folded her arms across herself. “prince can carry a song like that.”
“so can you.”
“no, he—”
“you didn’t even give yourself the chance,” he cut in, not harshly, but with enough force to stop her anyway. “you decided beforehand that somebody else will wear it better.”
the television carried on talking to itself at the end of the bed.
“he’ll do something brilliant with it,” she said.
“you could have done something brilliant with it.” she didn’t answer. michael’s expression scrunched up further at her silence. “you just didn’t believe that.”
she hated how quickly he’d pressed against the wound.
“southbound works because we work together, i can’t just force myself to stand out.” she said finally, though it sounded weaker out loud than it had in her head.
“i know.” his voice dropped again. “but i’m not talking about the band. i’m talking about you.”
that sentence hit somewhere raw in her. the horrible feeling of recognising a truth too late. she muttered, “you heard one melody.”
his eyes stayed on her. “i heard you stop hiding, what you sound like when you stop holding yourself back.”
she pressed her lips together hard. “let it go.”
“i can’t stand watching you shrink yourself every time you have an opportunity to prove yourself."
“michael.”
“you were terrified of that song because you thought if you really stepped into it, you might not live up to it.”
that one landed hard enough she looked away entirely. beyond the windows, la had dissolved into scattered light, the city stretching endlessly beyond the horizon.
“let it go,” she whispered.
he looked at her for a long moment, all of it still there in his expression — the frustration, the fondness, and beneath both of them, the certainty of someone who believed in her more than she currently knew how to believe in herself.
then he exhaled through his nose and leaned back against the headboard again.
“fine.”
it was less of a real “fine” and more of an agreement to stop pushing. she leaned into his side and, after a moment, his arm came around her automatically.neither of them brought the song up again.
the room service went cold beside them untouched.
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the thing about the back end of 1984 was that everything felt loud and fast all the time, even when you were doing absolutely nothing.
thriller had done what thriller had done — which was everything, essentially, all at once and then somehow just kept going — and michael had come out the other side of it looking faintly stunned in the way she imagined you would if you'd made the best-selling album of all time and were still somehow the same person who left his socks on her bathroom floor.
the grammys had been held in february and she’d spent most of the night at his table trying unsuccessfully not to cry while he kept getting called back onto the stage over and over again. by the fourth award her eyes were so red she looked unwell. which had prompted michael to start squeezing her hand every time he passed the table on the way back down, trying to console her through the ordeal of being too emotional about his success.
by the end of the night there’d already been multiple camera shots of her visibly wiping tears off her face, something danny has yet to stop bringing up.
southbound’s album had come out in may and done far better than anybody had expected. nine nominations at the following year’s grammys, which danny had responded to by calling her and priya screaming from a car park for approximately forty-five straight seconds before suddenly clearing his throat and going ‘yeah no, i knew it’ like he hadn’t just made three separate strangers consider calling the police.
she was proud of the album. properly proud. the sort that stayed with you for the rest of your life.
it had been a huge year. exhausting. brilliant. slightly impossible.
and now it was the tail end of it and she was in london and michael was in london and, for the first time in months, neither of them had anywhere they urgently needed to be.
they treated those few empty days almost cautiously, like people rediscovering a language they hadn’t spoken in a while.
it was a sunday evening.
the flat was properly warm now, mostly because michael had complained exactly once about her radiator and then refused to let her keep it after that. according to him, you could not release one of the greatest rock albums of the decade and continue living with “that old-ass radiator hissing like it’s fighting for its life in the corner.”
so safe to say she got a new one.
it was raining outside because of course it was, london had one move and committed to it fully. she was on the sofa with her legs across michael’s lap, not reading the magazine she’d opened twenty minutes earlier, happy just to sit there and let the evening happen around them. michael had the television remote and had been cycling through channels while complaining that london somehow still didn’t have a dedicated disney channel, intermittently checking itv because raiders of the lost ark was supposedly starting later and he refused to miss the opening sequence.
she was almost asleep when she heard it.
four notes. five notes. and then the rest of it opened up — the wide, aching thing she remembered arriving in her chest on a rainy london afternoon, watching a stranger stand in the rain with his face tilted up. the feeling with a shape to it. the melody she'd hummed in the shower, on the plane, in a studio kitchen in los angeles before she'd sung it quietly into the silence and handed it over.
she looked at the television.
prince was on stage. the crowd was immense — she could feel the size of it even through the screen, a roar that meant something had already crossed over from song into phenomenon. he was in the rain, actual rain falling on the stage, purple light everywhere, and the song —
her song.
she wasn't sure how long she sat there before she noticed that michael had stopped cycling through channels. that his hand had frozen on the remote. that the comfortable sunday evening weight of him had morphed into something else, that same quality of static she'd felt in the hotel room in la, but deeper now, how things got when they'd had time to settle.
she had to make herself look at him.
he was watching the screen, a complicated expression moving across his face. pride came first, which caught her off guard a little. then the other feeling underneath it, the one that had apparently been sitting in him ever since that hotel room in los angeles.
on the television the crowd swelled while prince moved through the synthetic rain and the song built toward transcendence.
"that's yours," he muttered.
she looked back at the television. "yeah."
the song kept going.
she felt a strange, overwhelming attachment to it all at once. the scale of it. the permanence. the knowledge that she’d helped place one of those songs into the world that people carried around for decades afterwards. and beneath that, watching prince standing alone in the rain, carrying the entire song without flinching, she felt the late and deeply unpleasant realization that maybe she could’ve stood there too.
never like him. but maybe she’d abandoned herself too early.
the song ended. the crowd noise faded. the channel moved on. they stayed exactly where they were after it ended, pressed shoulder to shoulder in the flat.
“you wrote that,” he said finally. “you wrote a song people are still gonna be playing when we’re old.”
he still had his eyes on the television, his lips twitching like he was deciding how honest to be. “and i just…” he exhaled once through his nose. “i need you to believe things about yourself a little sooner.”
the honesty in it hit harder than the earlier argument had. she didn’t deflect this time. “yeah,” she said. “alright.”
michael nodded once, small and absent-minded, some part of him had been waiting a long time to hear her say that. the flat drifted back into its ordinary evening sounds, the beginning of raiders of the lost ark finally playing on the television while the new radiator buzzed faintly somewhere behind the sofa.
he finally turned toward her then, holding her gaze a little longer before the sincerity in his expression gave way to the look she knew best — the one she’d realised was trouble approximately three weeks into knowing him.
“you know,” he said, “here i am staying up all night trying to stop god’s good ideas from getting to prince and you just hand him the song of the decade in a studio kitchen.”
she just stared at him.
“shut up,” she said. “mr. eight-time grammy winner.”
“i’m serious.”
“no, you are literally not.”
“do you know how exhausting it is competing spiritually with that man?”
she laughed then, properly this time. she hit him with the magazine and he caught her wrist before she could do it again, grinning now, all the heaviness from earlier finally beginning to dissolve.
“you know how well i could’ve rocked purple,” he said.
“michael.”
“you never even let me audition.”
she hit him with the magazine again. he grinned, pleased with himself in a way she unfortunately still found deeply charming, letting him pull her against his side from her position at the opposite end of the couch.
outside the rain kept falling.
she looked toward the window — the wet street below, london glowing under the lamps exactly the way it always did. maybe next time she'd believe it sooner.
Can you write a fic where reader is a musician and apart of a band but one night she has a song idea but doesn’t like how her voice sounds in it so she gives the song to prince and it ends up being his biggest song purple rain. And Michael is kinda sad she gave it to him since he barely slept when he got song ideas so ‘god wouldn’t give them to prince’ btw reader and prince are friends .also could you make her African British like me😭
the ones you throw away ✦
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ thriller era! michael jackson x rockstar gf! reader
summary ⋆ you get inspired one rainy london afternoon, writing a song inspired by a stranger standing in the rain. after a lot of deliberating — facing a lot of internal conflict from your worth as a musician — you end up handing it off to prince. needless to say, michael is less than happy.
content ⋆ thriller era michael jackson, fem! reader, established relationship, musician reader, prince cameo, creative insecurity, third person, oc bandmates (the reader is not an oc dw), emotional arguments in hotel rooms, quiet domesticity, michael spiritually competing with prince, british spelling warning, 7.3k words O-O
author's note ⋆ I HOPE THIS FULFILLS THE REQUEST, i wasn't really sure where i wanted to go with it at first but i found my footing eventually. I'M ALSO SO SORRY, I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO ADD THE FACT THE READER AS AFRICAN INTO THE PLOT SO I KINDA JUST DIDN'T DESCRIBE HER APPEARANCE, you are free to view her as any race! i just didn't really want my representation of the nationality to be shallow. also my first time writing in third person, do you guys like it? genuinely tell me cuz i'm not sure how i feel about it and i wouldn't mind going back to second.
the rain hadn't stopped since that morning.
it was the kind of rain that didn’t even bother announcing itself, just a grey sky that had decided it was falling today and wanted to get it over with. the window above the radiator had fogged softly at the edges, and outside the rain had turned the whole street reflective, streetlamps stretching their amber across the wet pavement.
she was trying to decide between two jackets.
“that one’s ugly,” michael said from the bed.
she didn’t look at him. “you said that about the last one.”
“because the last one was ugly too.”
“michael.”
"i'm just saying." she could hear him shifting against the pillows. he’d spent the better part of the last half hour watching her pack with the complete contentment of someone who, for once, had nowhere to be and was revelling in it. he'd flown in four days ago — a promotional stop for thriller that had conveniently extended itself once he'd realised she was still in the city. the label had stopped questioning his schedule adjustments. probably easier for everyone involved.
“you’re going to LA. they have a whole—” he waved his hands vaguely, trying to gesture the concept into existence, “—aesthetic over there.”
“what does that mean?” she glanced over her shoulder.
“you know. beige. tiny dogs. open shirts. everyone looks like they own a convertible.”
“LA's aesthetic is sunglasses and designer drugs." she folded the jacket and shoved it into the case anyway.
“exactly,” michael said. “with those clothes, you’ll be dressing like you solve murders.”
she raised a skeptical eyebrow and asked, "are you calling me sherlock holmes?"
he let out a snort at that before raising his hands in surrender.
“fine,” he said. “but when you’re sweating to death in leather, don’t blame me.”
she threw a rolled-up pair of socks at him without turning around properly. she heard him catch it, smug and immediate, and hated that she was smiling.
the room was warm, the radiator was ancient and had two settings: off and unreasonable. the flat smelled faintly of the candle she’d lit that morning and the remnants of last night’s takeaway she kept meaning to throw away. it felt comfortable in a way that was suddenly a little fragile knowing she was leaving in two days. southbound had a slot booked at sunset sound in los angeles: three weeks with jerry wexler, which still didn’t feel entirely real whenever she said it out loud. the band had been buzzing about it for months, danny nearly vibrating out of his skin every time someone brought it up. she was excited too. she just moved through excitement more quietly than most people.
she was trying to decide between two pairs of boots when she felt him step up behind her, his chin settling onto her shoulder.
“come lie down,” he said.
she didn’t look up from the stack of t-shirts she was currently attempting to force into a corner of the suitcase. “i’m busy.”
“you’ve been 'busy' for forty-five minutes and that case is still half empty.” michael leaned further over her shoulder, peering into the mess of half-folded denim and miscellaneous cables with clear opinions for someone making absolutely no effort to help.
“because you keep distracting me.” she turned just enough to look at him properly. he’d put on the expression again — all wide eyes and wounded innocence despite the fact he knew perfectly well what he was doing. “michael.”
“i’m not doing anything.”
“you’re breathing on my neck.”
“that’s just breathing. i can’t really stop.”
but then he kissed the space just below her ear and she immediately regretted making eye contact with him at all.
“come lie down,” he said again. “you’ve got two days.”
“i’ve got two days and a lot to do.” she untangled herself from him carefully, pressing a quick peck to the corner of his jaw before turning back to the wardrobe. “go be decorative somewhere else.”
he made a sound of deep personal offence and retreated. a second later the bed frame creaked beneath his weight again.
“what about this?” he called a moment later. she looked over her shoulder to find him holding up the green dress she’d had since university, the one with the fraying hem she kept meaning to fix.
“put that down.”
“this is a good dress.”
“it’s falling apart.”
“vintage,” he said seriously. “that’s what they call it in the boutiques. vintage.”
“i will leave you in this flat.”
he put the dress down, laughing, and she turned back to the wardrobe while the flat settled into its comfortable noise again — rain against the glass, the radiator ticking, michael humming a tuneless melody behind her. she’d learned in the past few months that he was almost never silent. humming, tapping rhythms against his knees, half-singing words to songs that didn’t exist yet. it had become part of the texture of him somehow, the sound of him occupying space.
she was reaching for a jumper when she glanced out the window.
there was a man standing on the pavement across the street.
just — standing there. no umbrella, hood down, his coat gone dark across the shoulders from the weather. he wasn't sheltering, wasn't waiting for anyone, wasn't looking at his watch. he was just standing with his face tilted up, like he'd decided the storm was happening to him and had made his peace with it.
she stopped reaching for the jumper.
the streetlights blurred strangely through the downpour, washing everything in soft bruised colours.
the stillness of him against all that movement pulled at her immediately, the way he looked almost deliberate standing there, like he was exactly where he meant to be despite everything falling on him — and she felt a strange pull somewhere beneath her ribs. not an emotion she could name yet. just a sensation taking shape.
the melody came before she understood what it was.
four notes, barely there, just breath and pitch. she wasn't humming, not quite. it was quieter than that, more like the sound had arrived in her and was finding its way out.
she stood at the window and watched the man across the road while the melody unfolded slowly, five notes now, something wide and aching in a way that wasn't sad exactly, just — vast. like looking at too much sky at once.
behind her, michael had gone quiet.
she didn't stop. didn't reach for anything to write it down, just stayed there while it moved through her. outside, water streaked gold beneath the streetlamps and eventually the man turned and walked away, slow and unhurried, like he'd finally decided to leave.
she watched him until he disappeared around the corner.
the melody stayed.
she turned back to the wardrobe, reaching absently for the jumper, still humming under her breath without really noticing she was doing it.
“what is that?” michael asked behind her.
“don't know yet,” she murmured.
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it was going to be an eleven-hour flight.
danny had fallen asleep before they’d even left the taxi, which was either a talent or a medical condition; she’d never quite decided which. he was the kind of frontman who could sleep anywhere and still walk onstage looking touched by god twenty minutes later, which remained deeply irritating to the rest of the band.
across the aisle, priya had her headphones on and her eyes closed, though whether she was actually asleep or simply done with conversation was anyone’s guess.
the rest of the southbound crew were scattered somewhere further back through the cabin, and the plane had drifted into that strange late-night atmosphere long-haul flights always seemed to develop, where everyone collectively agreed to pretend they weren’t trapped in an uncomfortable metal tube somewhere over the atlantic.
michael was asleep beside her.
he’d fought it for a while — had sat upright with great personal dignity reading a magazine for approximately twenty minutes before his head had started making that gradual, negotiated descent toward her shoulder. she’d felt the exact moment he lost the argument with himself. now he was slumped against her side, breathing evenly. she’d carefully taken the magazine from his hand before it could slide into the aisle.
she should sleep too.
instead, she stared at the back of the seat in front of her for a moment, then reached into the bag beneath her feet and pulled out her notebook.
it was still there. of course it was. melodies didn’t really leave once they arrived; that was the gift and the problem with them. she’d been carrying it since the window, since the man in the rain, four notes becoming five becoming something she still couldn’t quite close her hand around. she’d caught herself humming it in the shower that morning without meaning to. had caught it on her lips while she was locking up the flat.
she clicked her pen and looked at the blank page.
there was something useful about writing on planes. the world narrowed down to a few manageable things, provided you could ignore the nausea: the engine beneath your feet, the darkness beyond the glass, the occasional rustle of somebody turning over in their sleep. no distractions. no obligations. no michael holding dresses against himself with complete sincerity until she gave up trying not to laugh.
eleven hours in the sky with nowhere else to be.
she wrote the first four notes down in the shorthand she'd been using since she was fifteen — not proper notation, just her own system, loops and dashes that would mean nothing to anyone else but were perfectly legible to her.
then the next phrase.
then the bridge that had been hovering somewhere at the edge of her thoughts since yesterday, which turned out to already be there in full once she reached for it, like it had simply been waiting for her to get quiet enough.
michael shifted beside her at some point, his hand finding her arm in his sleep automatically, like he’d gotten used to knowing where she was.
she paused, waiting to see if he’d wake. he didn’t. she kept writing.
by the time she put the pen down the page was nearly full and the cabin was almost completely dark, the endless drone beneath her feet making it impossible to tell how much time had passed anymore. she looked at what she'd written.
it was good. she knew the difference, knew that recognising something special and being capable of writing it were two entirely separate abilities. this felt like one of those songs that arrived already formed, needing very little from her except attention. she read it through twice.
southbound had always worked because everybody understood the shape of it. danny at the front with the microphone and half the room already watching him before he even opened his mouth. priya behind the drums, keeping everything moving. her further back with a guitar strapped across her shoulder, writing most of the songs and stepping in for harmonies when she needed to.
she'd spent so long existing inside that structure it had stopped feeling like a decision somewhere along the line.
this song felt different.
more exposed. less interested in hiding behind cleverness or distance. it felt awkwardly close to her somehow, like somebody had reached directly into the centre of her chest and translated what they found into music before she could stop them.
it didn’t sound like southbound.
she could already see the stage it belonged on. it sounded like the kind of song carried by one person standing alone at the centre of it.
a solo artist.
the idea made her recoil immediately.
no matter how many times she looked at the page, she couldn’t make herself believe that person was her.
the thought was sudden and ugly, and she loathed how effortlessly a part of her had embraced it as truth. this was a legacy song, the kind people got remembered for, the kind that defined a career. and she had spent most of hers standing slightly outside those kinds of moments.
then she closed the notebook and looked out into the dark. she didn’t examine that too closely. just put the notebook back into her bag and finally let herself close her eyes. michael’s hand was still resting against her arm.
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los angeles was aggressively sunny in a way that felt almost rude after london.
she’d stepped off the plane and the heat had just landed on her all at once, like the city was trying to prove a point. danny had thrown his arms open and shouted yes like he was personally accepting an award, nearly dropping to his knees to kiss the ground after that hellish flight. priya had put her sunglasses on at the airport and barely removed them for the next three days.
michael, meanwhile, had spent most of arrivals with his head down beneath a baseball cap while bill attempted to steer him through the terminal without attracting too much attention. it worked for approximately seven minutes. long enough for one person to recognise him, then another, and suddenly he was smiling politely at strangers while still visibly jet-lagged.
“you’d think they’d let me look terrible in peace,” he muttered once bill finally got them all outside.
she rolled her eyes at that as they climbed into the car, like he could ever actually look terrible.
sunset sound was on sunset boulevard and it was everything a studio on sunset boulevard should be — worn in the right places, legendary in the specific way that meant the walls had absorbed enough music to have opinions.
jerry wexler had shaken her hand and looked at the band over his glasses with the expression of a man who had heard everything and was still prepared to be surprised anyway, which she’d liked instantly.
she’d said goodbye to michael outside their hotel that morning, both of them already running late in opposite directions. his schedule was chaos at the moment, interviews and meetings and rehearsals stacked on top of each other, and southbound practically lived at the studio now that recording had started properly.
“call me when you get back,” he’d said, leaning against the car door while bill checked his watch nearby with increasing despair.
“you say that like quincy’ll let you answer.”
“that’s hurtful.”
she threw her hands up in the air in surrender, “i’m just being realistic.”
he’d laughed at that, reached over to squeeze her hand once, then ducked into the car before the growing cluster of people across the street could fully process who they were looking at.
she still found herself glancing at payphones every few hours anyway.
the first week was mostly about finding their footing.
that was normal — the first week of any recording session was less about the music and more about everyone learning the room. learning wexler’s rhythms, learning which decisions to bring to him and which ones to argue out amongst themselves before he ever heard them. danny took longer than usual, too excited to be still, singing everything at about ten percent faster than it needed to go. priya was the opposite, overcautious, doing three takes where one would have done fine.
she kept her head down and worked.
it was easy, disappearing into the band. easy to spend ten hours discussing arrangements and guitar tones and backing harmonies instead of thinking too hard about the notebook in her bag.
she didn’t take it out once. sometimes she’d unzip the front pocket just to check it was still there, fingertips brushing the cover before she closed it again. then she’d go back to whatever wexler was saying about the bridge on track four or danny’s phrasing on the second verse.
she didn’t forget about the song. that would’ve been easier. every time she thought about it for too long, she recognised too much of herself in it. she didn’t like that.
michael called every evening they weren’t together, both of them spending nights far too late at their respective studios to actually see each other.
he'd ask about wexler, about the tracks, about whether danny’s discovered the concept of tempo yet. she'd ask about the album, about the label, about whether quincy had allowed him to leave the studio at any point that week.
“how are you sleeping?” she wondered aloud one night with a yawn, the phone was wedged between her ear and shoulder while she picked at the remains of leftover takeout.
a pause. “fine.”
“michael.”
“four hours,” he admitted. “maybe five.”
“that’s not fine.”
“like you can talk.” she could hear him moving around on the other end of the line, that familiar restless energy carrying even through bad reception. “i keep — things keep showing up. you know how it is.”
she did know. she'd watched him surface from sleep at two in the morning reaching for whatever was nearest to write something down, had seen the particular focused distance that came over him when something was arriving.
“you need to sleep properly,” she said.
“tell that to the songs,” he replied, fondness tucked somewhere beneath the exhaustion. “how's yours coming?”
her breath hitched. “which one?”
“you know which one.”
her eyes flicked toward the bag across the room.
“fine,” she said after a second. “going fine.”
she changed the subject after that, and he let her. she didn't open the notebook that night either.
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it was the middle of the second week when she saw him.
she’d come out of the live room during a break — wexler had called fifteen minutes while he sorted something out with the sound engineer. running entirely on four hours of sleep, she’d gone looking for coffee.
the corridor outside studio b was narrow and permanently dim, lined with old session photographs. she almost walked straight into him.
he was coming the other way, jacket still on despite the heat outside, looking like he was travelling between one important place and another. he looked up at the exact same moment she did, and for half a second neither of them reacted, both caught in that strange delay that came with seeing somebody entirely out of context before recognition fully arrived.
"oh my god," she said. "what."
prince smiled — that particular smile of his, like he found most things faintly entertaining, including this conversation. “funny place to run into you.”
“what are you doing here?”
“favour session.” he gestured vaguely down the corridor toward studio a. “somebody needed a guitar part. you?”
“three weeks with wexler.”
both his eyebrows lifted briefly, which from prince was basically a standing ovation.
“wexler,” he repeated.
“i know,” she said, and felt the grin properly break across her face. she hadn’t realised until right then how badly she’d needed to see a familiar face that wasn’t coming through a phone receiver.
the last time she’d seen prince had been at the grammys back in february — that entire ridiculous evening where he’d performed little red corvette and the room had collectively lost its mind. she’d watched from her table while danny had spent most of it clutching her arm and hissing 'do you see this???’ every thirty seconds.
and even then they’d only managed about twenty minutes of actual conversation before the night swallowed them both again.
“you look tired,” he observed, not unkindly.
“i’m fine. it’s good tired.” she leaned back against the wall. “you eaten? i’ve got about fifteen minutes.”
they ended up in the tiny kitchen at the end of the corridor, her with the coffee she’d originally come looking for, him with a bottle of water, sitting across from each other at a formica table.
it felt easy straight away, the way it always did with prince. just two people who’d spent enough years drifting through the same rooms to stop pretending around each other. they drifted easily between subjects: studio gossip, terrible managers, the existential horror of record executives, increasingly judgemental opinions about a mutual friend’s new record deal.
“it’s a terrible contract,” she said.
“it’s a terrible haircut,” prince corrected.
“both can be true.”
then the conversation thinned naturally for a moment, neither of them rushing to fill it. she looked down at her coffee cup.
“i’ve got a song,” she admitted.
he waited.
“i wrote it on the plane over.” she hesitated. “you ever make something and realise halfway through that it’s asking for more from you than you actually know how to give?”
prince was quiet for a moment. "play it."
she almost said i don’t have my keyboard.
but she had the notebook — the first time she’d actually taken it out of her bag in days, and of course it happened after accidentally running into prince in a studio corridor — and she had a voice even if she didn’t entirely trust it right now. so she opened to the right page and sang across the table quietly, just melody and fragments of lyrics, no accompaniment, feeling faintly ridiculous singing bare-handed in a studio kitchen in los angeles.
he didn’t say anything straight away when she finished. he’d gone strangely motionless across the table, thumb pressed briefly against his mouth like he was still listening to the shape of the melody after the sound had already faded. his thumb dragged once along the side of the water bottle in his hand, slow and absent-minded, like she’d interrupted a thought halfway through forming.
“tell me i don’t suit it,” she said.
he let out a short breath through his nose, almost disbelieving. “i can’t tell you that.”
“prince—”
“i mean it,” he interrupted. the usual amused distance had faded, replaced by a focused attention that made her suddenly aware of how quiet the room had become. “you’ve been holding onto this by yourself?”
the question caught her off guard.
“for about a week.”
another pause stretched out, punctuated only by the distant, muffled thump of a kick drum from studio b.
“huh.”
“what does that mean?”
he leaned back a little in his chair, watching her carefully.
“means i would’ve lost my mind by now,” he said. “that’s not the kind of song you leave sitting in a notebook.”
her fingers tightened around the edge of the page. “maybe i don’t know what else to do with it.”
prince tilted his head a fraction, studying her in that unnervingly direct way of his.
“maybe,” he said slowly, “or you’re just scared of it,”
the accusation landed harder than she expected. because the irritating thing was that he’d understood almost immediately. perhaps not all of it, but enough. enough to see that the problem had never really been the song.
“you know what i think?” he said after a moment.
“that i’m being dramatic and moody?”
a brief smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“that,” he agreed easily. “and i think you got too used to hiding inside bands.”
she let out a short laugh at that, mostly because hearing somebody say it out loud made her chest tense unpleasantly.
“southbound’s not exactly hiding,” she pointed out, more amused than genuinely offended. they’d worked too hard for that — years of awful touring circuits, broken equipment and overnight drives eventually turning into magazine covers and two wins at the brit awards earlier that year.
“no,” he agreed easily. “but you are.”
somebody shouted something unintelligible further down the hall. her index finger caught against the corner of the page.
and then she could see it. not herself. him.
the scale of it. the theatricality. the way the song wanted somebody completely unafraid of standing at the centre of things. somebody who knew how to carry enormity without apologising for it.
somebody like prince.
“you should take it,” she said before she could overthink it.
he blinked hard enough that she knew she’d genuinely surprised him.
“what.”
“the song.” her pulse had started climbing now that she’d said it out loud, but the idea already felt strangely certain. “you should have it.”
he held her gaze for a long second, clearly waiting for her to take it back. when she didn’t, he leaned back against the chair again.
“no.”
“but—”
“no,” he repeated, calmer this time but no less firm. “that’s your song.”
the scribbled pages felt strangely distant from her now, like she was looking at something she'd found instead of something she'd made. “i don’t think it is anymore,”
his eyebrows pulled together at that. “you wrote it.”
“that doesn’t mean i’m the person meant to sing it.”
she could practically feel him turning the idea over in his head, resisting it on instinct. which, somehow, only made her want to hand it to him more. because prince knew music. knew instinct. and if even he hesitated before taking it, then maybe she hadn’t imagined the size of the thing after all.
“you really don’t hear yourself on it?” he asked.
absently, she traced over one of the scribbled lines on the page. “no.”
prince sat there, jaw shifting slightly like he was arguing with himself internally. “you got a tape of it?”
she paused. “a demo?”
“demo. anything.”
“no.” a short laugh escaped her. “i wrote it thirty thousand feet in the air and then immediately started avoiding it, remember?”
he exhaled quietly through his nose, remaining unconvinced by the entire situation. his fingers tapped once against the book.
“alright,” he said.
“alright?”
“you’re giving me this song and i have to decode whatever the hell these notes are supposed to mean.” he glanced down at the page again, holding it up to the light as if that would make it any clearer. “for all i know, this could be a map to atlantis.”
she laughed. “they make sense to me.”
“not really reassuring.” he glanced at you, just having thought of something. “what were you gonna call it anyway?”
she gave him a look that resembled a deer in headlights. “uhhhhh.”
“c’mon,” prince said, already sounding suspicious.
“they were mostly just placeholders.”
“that bad?”
“very.”
prince waited her out until she finally muttered: “ballad in bad weather. or… i dunno… seven minutes of rain sounds.”
his mouth went into a straight line as he processed her words. “those might be the worst titles i’ve ever heard.”
“i panicked!”
“clearly.”
she covered part of her face with one hand while he shook his head under his breath, faintly appalled.
“purple rain,” he said.
she frowned at that. “that’s annoyingly good.”
a grin spread slowly across his face, pleased. “i know.”
the words landed softly between them, certain, less like a suggestion and more like something he’d already uncovered.
purple rain.
prince read through the lyrics properly then, stopping twice to ask about the chord progression she’d translated into her bizarre shorthand. she answered automatically, strangely calm through all of it, like the decision had already been made somewhere underneath conscious thought and the rest of her was only now catching up.
further down the corridor, wexler’s voice called that they were back in five. prince handed the notebook back. she tore the page out carefully and passed it over. he folded it once and slipped it into his jacket pocket like it was a receipt, like it was nothing.
‘good.’ she thought. she also very deliberately did not look at the rough torn edge left behind in the notebook.
“good luck with wexler,” he said from the kitchen doorway.
“good luck with whatever you’re doing to that poor man’s guitar track.”
he gave her one last grin before disappearing down the corridor while she headed back toward studio b.
she finished the session that afternoon in a weird mood, slept properly for the first time in days, and absolutely did not think about the folded page sitting in prince’s jacket pocket. or at least, that’s what she told herself.
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the band left on a thursday.
they all stood outside the studio waiting for their cars, priya somehow carrying four more suitcases than she’d arrived with and danny still talking about the sessions like he was expecting somebody to adapt the experience into a documentary series. jerry wexler had shaken all their hands that morning, clearly pleased the week had turned out the way he’d hoped. somehow that felt better than outright praise would’ve.
she hugged priya first, then the rest of the band, and then danny grabbed her in a bear hug that lifted her slightly off the ground. he lowered her eventually.
“right,” he said, pointing at her with great authority. “don’t come back pregnant. i know what you and your fancy man get up to when the rest of us aren’t watching.”
she punched him in the arm hard enough that he yelped.
“ow—”
“two weeks without me,” she said. “behave yourselves.”
“we’re not the one staying behind with michael jackson—”
“danny.”
“i’m just saying. the sexual tension in that hotel room could power greater london.”
the car horn saved him from another thwack.
danny left still grinning, rubbing his arm with absolutely no sincerity, and she watched them pile into the cars — priya rolling her eyes at him from the front seat while the others tried to wedge suitcases between their knees. then they were gone, tyres disappearing into traffic while the late afternoon los angeles sun turned the whole street gold. michael was leaning against the car behind her. she turned properly then and took him in for the first time since arriving — not through a phone line, not squeezed into rushed conversations between studio sessions.
he looked exactly how she’d expected. tired around the edges, the way he got after too many nights without proper sleep, the strain underneath him more visible now than it had been three weeks ago.
but he was here. and he was smiling. right then, that felt like enough.
"hi," she said.
"hi," he said.
she crossed the distance between them and he opened his arms before she even reached him. the familiar weight of him pulled a long breath out of both of them at once.
his hotel room was on the tenth floor with a view that kept pulling her away from conversations halfway through — the city sprawling sparkling beneath the windows, nothing like london. no clear edges to it. just more and more los angeles. she drifted back toward the glass twice while michael jackson ordered room service from the phone near the bed.
“what do you want?”
“anything.”
“you say that now,” he said, already unconvinced. “then the food arrives and you’ve suddenly developed several opinions.”
“sounds about right.”
eventually he made an executive decision for both of them and she didn’t argue.
they ate cross-legged on the bed with the television low in the background while she told him about the sessions — about jerry wexler and his glasses and the way he’d just say again with absolutely no further explanation and somehow everybody instantly understood.
she told him about danny in venice beach, which took several minutes to explain properly because she kept breaking off laughing halfway through it. about the track they’d almost cut before changing their minds at the last second. about how it had somehow become her favourite thing on the album.
michael listened the way he always did: completely. his attention never drifted, he didn’t wait for his turn to speak, just genuine focus that made you feel like the thing you were saying mattered more than anything else in the room. at some point he leaned over and pressed a kiss against her temple. she leaned into it automatically and felt a ridiculous amount of happiness over something so small.
"how was the rest of it?" he asked. "outside of the beach incident."
“good. priya found a record shop she’d have moved into given half the chance.” she tore apart the last of the bread roll absently, full and pleasantly heavy from food and exhaustion. “oh — and i ran into prince. at the studio, actually. he was doing a session down the hall.”
"prince was at sunset sound?"
“favour session. some guitar thing apparently.” she shifted slightly against the pillows. “was good seeing him. felt like ages since the grammys.”
“what’d you get up to?”
“just talked. had about fifteen minutes in the kitchen between takes.”
she pulled another piece from the bread roll before adding, almost absent-mindedly “oh. i didn’t end up keeping that song.”
his expression tensed almost immediately. nothing obvious enough for anyone else to notice, but she felt it anyway.
“which song,” he said. not quite a question.
“the one i was humming. before we left.” she kept playing with her food instead of looking at him. “i played it for him and i just…” a small shrug. “asked if he wanted it.”
michael didn’t respond straight away.
his expression had gone careful in the way it always did when he was actively holding something back. he wasn’t angry — she knew what anger looked like on him and this wasn’t it. which somehow made it harder to deal with.
"you gave it to prince," he said finally.
she nodded, "yeah."
“the song you wrote on the plane.”
“michael—”
“the one you carried around for three weeks.”
“he liked it.”
michael’s face shifted slightly. “that’s not what i’m asking.”
he rested back against the headboard, studying her for a second like he was trying to figure out how to say the next part without pushing too hard.
“i heard you humming it,” he said. “in the kitchen. in the shower. half asleep on the sofa before we left.”
she kept her attention fixed on her hands.
“i woke up on the plane and you were writing it out,” he continued. “you didn’t know i was awake. i’ve never seen you look at something like that before.”
she fiddled with the sheets beneath her.
“it was right for you.”
the bread clinked against the porcelain plate as she set it back, appetite gone. “my voice doesn’t suit it.”
“it absolutely does.”
"michael."
“it does.” his hand dragged once across his face before dropping again. “you’ve spent so long convincing yourself you belong behind other people that now you don’t know what to do when something asks you to stand in front of them.”
she scoffed. “that’s not what happened.”
“isn’t it?”
she folded her arms across herself. “prince can carry a song like that.”
“so can you.”
“no, he—”
“you didn’t even give yourself the chance,” he cut in, not harshly, but with enough force to stop her anyway. “you decided beforehand that somebody else will wear it better.”
the television carried on talking to itself at the end of the bed.
“he’ll do something brilliant with it,” she said.
“you could have done something brilliant with it.” she didn’t answer. michael’s expression scrunched up further at her silence. “you just didn’t believe that.”
she hated how quickly he’d pressed against the wound.
“southbound works because we work together, i can’t just force myself to stand out.” she said finally, though it sounded weaker out loud than it had in her head.
“i know.” his voice dropped again. “but i’m not talking about the band. i’m talking about you.”
that sentence hit somewhere raw in her. the horrible feeling of recognising a truth too late. she muttered, “you heard one melody.”
his eyes stayed on her. “i heard you stop hiding, what you sound like when you stop holding yourself back.”
she pressed her lips together hard. “let it go.”
“i can’t stand watching you shrink yourself every time you have an opportunity to prove yourself."
“michael.”
“you were terrified of that song because you thought if you really stepped into it, you might not live up to it.”
that one landed hard enough she looked away entirely. beyond the windows, la had dissolved into scattered light, the city stretching endlessly beyond the horizon.
“let it go,” she whispered.
he looked at her for a long moment, all of it still there in his expression — the frustration, the fondness, and beneath both of them, the certainty of someone who believed in her more than she currently knew how to believe in herself.
then he exhaled through his nose and leaned back against the headboard again.
“fine.”
it was less of a real “fine” and more of an agreement to stop pushing. she leaned into his side and, after a moment, his arm came around her automatically.neither of them brought the song up again.
the room service went cold beside them untouched.
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the back end of 1984 was simultaneously loud and overwhelmingly fast all the time, even when you didn't want it to be.
thriller had done what thriller had done — which was everything, essentially, all at once and then somehow just kept going — and michael had come out the other side of it looking faintly stunned. in the way she imagined you would if you'd made the best-selling album of all time and were still somehow the same person who left his socks on her bathroom floor.
the grammys had been held in february and she’d spent most of the night at his table trying (unsuccessfully) not to cry while he kept getting called back up onto the stage over and over again. by the fourth award her eyes were so red she looked unwell. which had prompted michael to start squeezing her hand every time he passed the table on the way back down, trying to console her through the ordeal of being too emotional about his success.
by the end of the night there’d already been multiple camera shots of her visibly wiping tears off her face, something danny has yet to stop bringing up.
southbound’s album had come out in may and done far better than anybody had expected. nine nominations at the following year’s grammys, which danny had responded to by calling her and priya screaming from a parking lot for approximately forty-five seconds straight before suddenly clearing his throat and going ‘yeah no, i knew it’ like he hadn’t just made three separate strangers consider calling the police.
she was proud of the album. properly proud. a pride that stayed with you for the rest of your life. it had been a huge year. absolutely exhausting. brilliant. impossible.
and now it was the tail end of it and she was in london and michael was in london and, for the first time in months, neither of them had anywhere they urgently needed to be. they treated those few empty days almost cautiously ,as if they were rediscovering a language they hadn’t spoken in a while.
it was a sunday evening.
the flat was properly warm now, mostly because michael had complained exactly once about her radiator and then refused to let her keep it after that. according to him, you could not release one of the greatest rock albums of the decade and continue living with “that old-ass radiator hissing like it’s fighting for its life in the corner.”
so safe to say she got a new one.
it was raining outside because of course it was, london had one move and it would never stopped playing it. she was on the sofa with her legs across michael’s lap, not reading the magazine she’d opened twenty minutes earlier, happy just to sit there and let the evening happen around them. michael had the television remote and had been cycling through channels, whining about how london somehow still didn’t have disney channel. he was intermittently checking ITV because raiders of the lost ark was supposedly starting later and he refused to miss the opening sequence.
she was almost asleep when she heard it.
four notes. five notes. and then the rest of it opened up — the wide, aching thing she remembered arriving in her chest on a rainy london afternoon, watching a stranger stand in the rain with his face tilted up. the feeling with a shape to it. the melody she'd hummed in the shower, on the plane, in a studio kitchen in los angeles before she'd sung it quietly into the silence and handed it over.
she looked at the television.
prince was on stage. the crowd was immense — she could feel the size of it even through the screen, a roar that meant something had already crossed over from song into phenomenon. he was in the rain, actual rain falling on the stage, purple light everywhere, and the song —
her song.
she wasn't sure how long she sat there before she noticed that michael had stopped cycling through channels. that his hand had frozen on the remote. that the comfortable sunday evening weight of him had morphed into something else, that same quality of static she'd felt in the hotel room in LA, but deeper now — or lighter? she wasn't sure. the friction from before having had time to settle. she had to make herself look at him.
he was watching the screen, a complicated expression moving across his face. pride came first, which caught her off guard a little. then the other feeling underneath it.
on the television the crowd swelled while prince moved through the synthetic rain and the song built toward transcendence.
"that's yours," he muttered.
she looked back at the television. "yeah."
the song kept going.
she felt a strange, overwhelming attachment to it all at once. the scale of it. the permanence. the knowledge that she’d helped place one of those songs into the world that people carried around for decades afterwards. and beneath that, watching prince standing alone in the rain, carrying the entire song without flinching, she felt the late and deeply unpleasant realization that maybe she could’ve stood there too.
never like him. but maybe she’d abandoned herself too early.
the song ended. the crowd noise faded. the channel moved on. they stayed exactly where they were after it ended, pressed shoulder to shoulder in the flat.
“you wrote that,” he said finally. “you wrote a song people are still gonna be playing when we’re old.”
he still had his eyes on the television, his lips twitching like he was deciding how honest to be. “and i just…” he exhaled once through his nose. “i need you to believe things about yourself a little sooner.”
the honesty in it hit harder than the earlier argument had. she didn’t deflect this time. “yeah,” she said. “alright.”
michael nodded once, small and absent-minded, some part of him had been waiting a long time to hear her say that. the flat drifted back into its ordinary evening sounds, the beginning of raiders of the lost ark finally playing on the television while the new radiator buzzed faintly somewhere behind the sofa.
he finally turned toward her then, holding her gaze a little longer before the sincerity in his expression gave way to the look she knew best — the one she’d realised was trouble approximately three weeks into knowing him.
“you know,” he said, “here i am staying up all night trying to stop god’s good ideas from getting to prince and you just hand him the song of the decade in a studio kitchen.”
she just stared at him.
“shut up,” she said, pushing a hand into his stupid face. “mr. eight-time grammy winner.”
“i’m serious.”
“no, you are literally not.”
“do you know how exhausting it is competing for god's attention with that man?”
she laughed then, properly this time. she hit him with the magazine and he caught her wrist before she could do it again, grinning now, all the heaviness from earlier finally beginning to dissolve.
“you know how well i could’ve rocked purple,” he said.
“michael.”
“you never even let me audition.”
she hit him with the magazine again. he grinned, pleased with himself in a way she unfortunately still found deeply charming, letting him pull her against his side from her position at the opposite end of the couch.
outside the rain kept falling.
she looked toward the window — the wet street below, london glowing under the lamps exactly the way it always did. maybe next time she'd believe it sooner.
Helloooo! I love your works especially the MJ ones. Do you have any recos for other blogs that write MJ as well? Would really appreciate that, thank youuuu! ❤️
hellooooo!
yes i do!! there are genuinely so many insanely talented mj writers on here, but here are a few of my personal favourites:
@michaeldiary
@hcwait
@urbanfunkchild
@2222bad
@mionellsparlockinevier-mj
@starlightz4mj
also Mjsdiiana on ao3 writes beautifully written fics as well, though i’m not sure if they’re on tumblr
and to everyone i tagged, i hope you don’t mind (๑/////๑" ) i absolutely adore all of your works and i’m always excited whenever you post!!
Your Michael fics are just so precious and so good! I see a lot of famous/celebrity reader fanfics for Michael but not many fan reader. May I make a lil silly request for a bad era Michael with a Korean fan fem reader (if that’s okey, I’m Asian) . She’s just a regular person who owns a bakery , she can sing really well but she keeps it as a small hobby for fun, and on her break day she gets curious about the Micheal concert & goes on her day off to unwind. During the performance Michael chooses someone to come up stage and sing a bit with him , to her surprise she gets chosen and is a lil nervous due to stage fright, and when the microphone was given to her she hesitated but started to sing & her voice is really good & imagine the surprise from Michael and the audience. This is honestly just a lil silly thought I got at 3 am in the morning 😂 I hope it doesn’t sound weird or anything.
stage fright! ✦
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ bad era! michael jackson x fan! reader
summary ⋆ a quiet bakery worker travels to tokyo with her wildly michael jackson-obsessed best friend for the bad tour, fully expecting the trip to be nothing more than a fun, one and done experience. instead, one impulsive decision during the concert suddenly puts her onstage beside michael himself — and neither of them are entirely prepared for what happens next.
content ⋆ bad era! michael jackson, fem! reader, bakery worker! reader, singer! reader, strangers to ????, stage fright, slighttt second hand embarrassment, mutual fascination, humour, best friend oc (not the reader), existential crisis
author's note ⋆ i might have gotten a little silly with this one... mimi is definitely not based off of anyone i know, nooo no way hahahahahahaha
the security guard’s hand is wrapped around your wrist, a steady, unyielding anchor, and your feet are barely touching the ground. that’s the first thing you become aware of: the weightlessness of your own body as you are hauled through the surging crowd.
the second is the noise.
it isn't music exactly, not in any recognizable sense. it’s bigger than that. a monolithic force. tens of thousands of people are screaming at once until the sound stops feeling like sound and starts feeling physical, a jagged vibration rattling through your ribs and teeth and somewhere deep in your chest where it absolutely should not be.
the third thing you become aware of is the realization that you cannot feel your own legs. you look down instinctively, searching for some sign of life.
they’re still there. moving — stumbling over discarded light sticks and plastic cups. just apparently no longer connected to your nervous system, as if your brain has opted to shut down all non-essential communication in favor of pure, unadulterated panic.
why can’t i feel my legs.
“wait — hold on — ” you gasp, the words swallowed by the roar of the stadium.
nobody holds on.
lights sweep across the crowd like searchlights, hitting you directly in the face and turning your vision white for a second. someone in the sea of sweating bodies grabs your arm — whether to steady you or because they think you’re part of the show now, you genuinely cannot tell — and then the security guard tugs harder with professional efficiency, and you’re moving again, forward into the belly of the beast.
the entire tokyo dome pulses around you like a living organ. bass shakes through the floor hard enough that you can feel it in your teeth, a rhythmic thrumming that matches the frantic beating of your heart.
i’m going to die in japan.
mimi’s voice cuts through the wall of sound anyway.
you can’t see her through the forest of raised hands, the strobing lights, and the shifting crush of bodies, but you can hear her, which is impressive given the circumstances and suggests she’s shouting at a volume that should probably be classified as inhuman.
“GO! GO! OH MY GOD — GO!”
“mimi i can’t feel my legs—”
“THAT MAN WANTS YOU.”
the stage comes fully into view as you move forward. which is unfortunate. because from the audience it had looked large. manageable, even. from here it looks like the final arena of a video game where you fight god.
thick plumes of synthetic smoke roll around towering lights, catching the violet and gold beams that slice through the hazy air. high above, cameras sweep on long, silent necks, capturing the chaos of the front row. somewhere behind the impenetrable wall of noise, the band crashes through the opening chords of i just can't stop loving you.
and standing at the centre of it all, draped in black fabric and cinched with silver buckles, is michael jackson. he leans slightly forward, smiling at you with a sincerity that feels almost more frightening than the crowd itself. it’s an encouraging look, the kind somebody might give across a dinner table instead of in front of fifty thousand people, like this entire situation — your catastrophic panic included — is somehow perfectly normal.
it is not.
the stage is closer now, the heat from the pyrotechnics still lingering in the air. a production crew member, wearing a headset and an expression of unnatural calm, leans over the barrier. he stretches a hand toward you, his eyes steady, having clearly spent too many years working around 2000+ decibel crowds to be phased by a single girl losing her mind.
michael points directly at you like he’s known you forever. he holds your gaze, locking you into his orbit, and mouths two words that feel like a shove:
come on
every thought leaves your body. the next thing you know, someone is lifting you over the barrier. a microphone is being pressed into your hand. your eyes widen so much they physically hurt, you think you’re going to cry.
“how — ” you hear yourself say faintly as the audience loses their minds around you, “ — how did i get here?”
TWO WEEKS EARLIER
it had been a relatively quiet morning at haneul bakery. or as quiet as anything could possibly be: with mimi ferociously wrestling the blue rotary phone in the corner booth as if she were trying to extract state secrets from the japanese ticket hotline.
“this is discrimination,” she grumbles to nobody in particular before aggressively redialing. “i’m being oppressed, i’m calling my lawyer.”
“they’re just concert tickets.” you snorted, polishing the glass pastry case for what was probably the twelfth time that morning.
“i’m fighting for my future,” mimi shot back without looking up from the phone. “michael jackson could be my future husband for all i know.”
you slid another tray of soboro-ppang onto the front counter, hot and steaming from the ovens. the temperature from the appliances had already started creeping under your collar. you pulled one of the pale pink bakery ribbons from the wrapping station and tied your hair back loosely with it before reaching for another tray.
the bakery smelled like sweet bread and butter and red bean paste. it was so familiar that you didn’t registered it anymore. outside, seoul moved lazily through another humid summer morning while the radio near the kitchen crackled through a whitney houston song. you started singing along while arranging pastries inside the display case, unaware of how easily your voice filled the tiny bakery.
mimi slammed the phone down. busy tone. again.
"you know — " you said, reaching for another paper bag, " — this would probably be easier if you stopped trying to break the phone."
"i'm not trying to break it."
the landline gave a concerning rattling noise in mimi’s hands as she dialed yet again with a force capable of snapping the plastic. “mimi.”
"they need to understand i'm serious. every busy signal is a personal attack on our friendship, and frankly, on the very future of music," she griped.
you sighed, shifting your weight. the stress radiating off mimi could probably bake the bread faster than your ovens. “they don’t even know who you are,” you pointed out while reaching for another tray. “it’s a ticket hotline in japan. all they hear is a ringing phone.”
mimi paced around the bakery, her hair wild.
“they hear the soul of a woman who belongs in the front row,” she declared. “now hush, i think it’s actually ringing this time.”
a man stepped into the shop, the small chime above the entrance announcing his arrival. he made his way to the counter and pointed toward the tray beside the register. “two milk breads please.”
“of course.” you smiled politely and reached for the tongs while behind you mimi muttered death threats at the rotary phone under her breath.
honestly, this had been your life for the past month.
ever since michael jackson announced his bad tour japan dates, mimi had transformed into something between a devoted fan and a woman preparing for the apocalypse. your apartment floor had disappeared beneath imported paraphernalia and extensively detailed handwritten travel plans. she’d somehow acquired three vhs tapes of bad tour footage through methods you genuinely did not want explained. every conversation now inevitably circled back to michael jackson within roughly four minutes.
you handed the customer his bag.
he was about to give you his payment when—
“I GOT THEM.”
the entire store froze. mimi shot upright so violently her chair tipped backwards, falling with an audible thump!
“I GOT THE FUCKING TICKETS.”
the elderly woman sitting near the window was startled hard, clutching her chest in raw fear. mimi, meanwhile, had already started sprinting laps around the tables like she’d just won the lottery.
“MICHAEL JACKSON IS GONNA SEE MY FACE.”
you leaned both hands against the counter, already feeling a headache forming. “unfortunately.”
“he’s gonna look into the crowd and immediately know i’m the one for him.”
“you don’t even speak the same language,” you said, watching her nearly collide with a display of castella cakes. “need i remind you that you failed english class in high school?”
mimi waved this away like it was a minor inconvenience. “love transcends language.”
“love also apparently transcends common sense.”
mimi stopped beside the counter and glared at you with absolute conviction, one hand planted against her hip. “you’re just jealous because he’s going to fall in love with me first.”
“i am jealous of nobody threatening japanese customer service workers at eight in the morning.”
“you’ll see,” she said confidently.
“you need to shut up before mrs. han calls the police.” near the window, mrs. han looked up from her coffee and nodded in agreement before returning to her newspaper.
by closing time, mimi had become completely unusable as a member of society.
somewhere around lunch she’d abruptly realised that after the concert ended there was a very real possibility she would never see michael jackson again for the rest of her life and had spiralled into a full existential crisis about post-concert depression before the concert had even happened.
by three o’clock she was lying face-down across one of the bakery booths mourning “what could’ve been.”
and by the time you locked up for the night she had become so overwhelmed by the concept of temporality that you physically had to drag her back toward your apartment, all while she mournfully listed all the ways michael would probably never recover from not meeting her personally.
“life is just a short series of highs,” she grieved out into your shoulder while you searched your pockets for your keys, “and then really, really long stretches of eh.”
your apartment door finally swung open and mimi promptly collapsed face-first onto the floor instead of taking the remaining three steps toward the couch like a normal person.
“you need help.”
she turns around on the tiles to face you. “what i need is michael jackson.”
a week later, mimi had calmed down. or at least started redirecting all of her energy into preparing for the trip.
michael jackson magazines, records, and photocards covered nearly every available surface. one of mimi’s thriller discs sat balanced precariously on top of the television while she dug frantically through drawers looking for her passport.
“do you understand,” she said, grabbing you by the shoulders hard enough to wrinkle the shirt you were wearing, her pink acrylic nails digging into your skin, “that in two weeks we are going to exist in the same building as michael jackson.”
you pouted at her. “well you’re existing in the same building as me right now and you still forgot to pay for your takeout.”
“that’s different.”
mimi finally released you only to resume pacing barefoot across the apartment, stepping over open travel brochures and tangled cassette tapes while muttering frantic half-sentences about hotel reservations and whether airport security would let her bring fourteen disposable cameras.
you crouched beside your suitcase to zip up one side before she immediately reopened it again.
“you need nicer clothes,” she announced.
“it’s a concert, not a un summit.”
“what if he sees you?”
snorting, you rolled a dress into a tighter fold. “fifty thousand people, mims. he is not going to see me.”
mimi looked up from unzipping your suitcase like you’d just said something personally offensive. “he could!”
you placed one of mimi’s discarded shirts back into the closet. “uh huh.”
“i’m serious.”
“you think every man with functioning eyesight is one glance away from falling in love.”
“that is because you refuse to acknowledge your own market value.”
you threw a bra at her. she let it land on her head without even looking up from the pamphlet she’d been annotating.
“and if he pulls me onstage?” she continued dramatically, flipping a page. “i already know exactly what i’m doing.”
“you’d faint.”
“beautifully.” she sighed dreamily, already imagining the moment.
“what if he asks you to sing?” you asked teasingly, reaching deeper into your wardrobe for a sweater.
mimi stopped moving entirely. then, very slowly, she lowered the pamphlet. proceeding to throw herself mournfully on your bed. “oh no,” she groaned into the blankets. “i’m finished.”
a giggle left you at that. her head snapped up abruptly, as if she’d just had an epiphany.
“but if he picked you,” she continued suddenly, lifting herself to squint at you from across the room, “he’d be obsessed with you like, instantly.”
you stared at her blankly, lifting an eyebrow. “what on earth are you talking about?”
mimi pushed herself into a sitting position, her nails tapping impatiently on the fabric of her jean capris. “i’m serious. your voice is ridiculous.”
“i sing while baking bread,” you rolled your eyes at her, “it’s not exactly a superpower.”
“and somehow you still sound better than people with actual recording contracts.”
you shushed her and turned back toward your open suitcase before she could continue, focusing instead on the comforting routine of folding clothes while mimi descended further from reality behind you.
“no, i mean it,” mimi insisted, swinging her feet off the bed. “if michael jackson pulled you onstage and handed you a microphone, you’d ruin his life.”
you paused, looking up with a half-smile. “ruin?”
“you know what i mean.”
still laughing to yourself, you reached beneath a pile of clothes for the enormous concert poster mimi had stolen from somewhere weeks earlier. michael stared back at you from glossy paper in a mess of black leather and silver buckles beneath giant red lettering announcing the japan shows. for a moment, excitement fluttered low in your stomach. the trip suddenly felt real. you thought briefly about what mimi had said.
thankfully, there was absolutely no possibility of any of that ever happening.
2 DAYS BEFORE THE CONCERT
by the time the two of you actually arrived in japan, mimi had ascended into a different spiritual plane.
she spent the entire train ride from the airport with her face pressed against the window, narrating the city skyline like she was starring in a coming-of-age film about self-discovery. you didn’t have the heart to remind her about how unsanitary public transport windows probably were.
“this air smells different,” she whispered solemnly, staring out at the blur of neon signs and passing traffic.
“yeah, that’s because you’re sitting beside a man smoking.”
“it smells like him.”
you coughed pointedly into your elbow as cigarette smoke drifted past. “—ahem. nicotine.”
your hotel room ended up being approximately the size of a generous shoebox. two tiny beds sat pushed together beneath dim yellow lighting, sanrio shopping bags already beginning to colonise the floor as the muffled sounds of tokyo traffic drifted through the window from several stories below.
mimi launched herself onto one of the beds, bouncing so vigorously she nearly cracked her head against the ceiling. “we’re in the same country as him!”
“i know, you’ve said that already.” you couldn’t quite hold back your grin at how genuinely excited she looked.
“and i’ll say it again!”
you dragged your suitcase toward the wall with your foot, exhausted. the flight had been miserable, and your shoulders still ached from hauling bags through crowded train stations all afternoon before mimi dragged you through the enormous don quijote she’d insisted on exploring.
and somehow, she still had the energy to insist on karaoke.
“you cannot simply come to japan and not do karaoke.”
you let yourself sink into the mattress of your own bed. “i can actually think of several ways.”
“no,” mimi said firmly, already reaching for her shoes again. “you’re disrespecting the culture.”
“this is just you wanting an excuse to sing dirty diana in public.”
she was already gone before you finished your sentence, skipping down the narrow motel hallway in mismatched socks. “you’re paying for the room!”
which was how you ended up squeezed into a tiny neon-lit karaoke booth an hour later with three untouched bowls of snacks, two sweating glasses of soda, and mimi fully committed to performing beat it like her life depended on it. the tiny television mounted in the corner flashed rapidly through low-quality music video graphics while coloured disco lights spun across the ceiling. down the hallway, other karaoke rooms bled muffled singing and laughter through the walls.
mimi had fully abandoned her dignity. she lunged across the booth during the chorus, frantically waving her arms in what was clearly intended to resemble michael’s choreography but instead looked like somebody fighting invisible bees.
you snorted into your drink while she spun toward the television again just in time to miss the next line. halfway through the song she shoved the second microphone toward you, a grim look on her face.
“your turn. we’re training for the real thing.”
“no.”
“yes.”
“i’m sitting down.”
“you can sing sitting down.”
unfortunately, she knew you well enough to know exactly how long to push before you gave in. the karaoke remote eventually landed in your lap.
you sighed. “fine. one song.”
mimi squealed very much not internally.
the opening instrumental of human nature filled the tiny room while you leaned back against the cracked leather sofa, still laughing quietly under your breath as you lifted the microphone. you didn’t really think about singing when it was just for fun. it had always existed in the same category as humming while cleaning or singing softly while kneading dough at six in the morning. familiar. private. nothing important.
so you started casually, as you always did. and somewhere around the second verse, the noise outside shifted.
mimi’s expression changed first. the manic excitement she’d been carrying around for the past two weeks gradually dissolved from her face as she listened, shoulders lowering while she swayed gently against the edge of the table. like your voice had temporarily sedated her.
you kept singing.
outside the glass door, two strangers had stopped walking. then three. a salaryman holding a briefcase paused mid-step. someone further down the hallway physically doubled back. by the chorus, people were openly staring through the little window in the karaoke room door, trying and failing to pretend they weren’t listening.
you finally noticed halfway through a note. your voice cracked.
“…why is everyone looking in here?”
mimi looked seconds away from climbing onto the table. “because you sing like that.”
you stared at her. “what?”
“what do you mean what?”
the song kept playing in the background, instrumental filling the silence while you dropped the microphone into your lap. “i’m just singing normally.”
mimi put both hands over her face. “oh my god.”
THE DAY OF THE CONCERT: 1 HOUR BEFORE GOD ABANDONS YOU
the first thing you think when michael jackson walks onto the stage is that he doesn’t look real.
you’d expected that. you’d seen the posters, the magazines, the concert footage mimi had forced you to watch approximately four hundred times in preparation for tonight. you knew the white shirt beneath the buckled jacket.the black pants with the white stripe. the white socks. you'd thought you were prepared.
you were not prepared.
even from the eighth row — which mimi had described as “basically front row” in denial while crying over the ticket prices — he felt unreal in a way that was difficult to explain. the stage lights caught the silver buckles across his jacket and scattered shards of light into the crowd while thousands of people collectively lost their minds around him.
beside you, mimi made a sound you had genuinely never heard another human being produce before.
“mimi—”
“don’t.” her voice came out flat. she stared at the stage with the expression of somebody actively fighting back tears. “don’t talk to me right now.”
and then the music started. talking became impossible after that anyway. the entire stadium seemed to shift the second michael moved, somewhere behind you, someone had passed out already. honestly, you understood it a little.
because even from impossibly far away, every time michael looked into the audience it felt strangely direct somehow, entire sections of the crowd buckling under the force of one turn of his head. every movement landed exactly where it needed to before you’d even processed what he was doing, sharp one second and loose the next.
beside you, mimi grabbed your arm hard enough to bruise. “i understand every bad decision women have ever made now, i understand billie jean.”
you wheezed, the sound disappearing beneath another wave of howling as michael propelled into the way you make me feel.
you couldn’t stop staring at him.
not even in the sense of being starstruck. more like fascination. the disorienting realization that somebody could actually possess that level of presence in real life. up there with the music thundering around him, he didn’t feel entirely human. more like somebody engineered specifically for performance, assembled from flashing cameras and pure hysteria before somehow being brought to life.
by the time the opening chords of i just can’t stop loving you began drifting through the stadium, the atmosphere around you had turned electric. beside you, mimi suddenly grabbed your arm hard. “oh my god,” she whispered.
you turned toward her. she looked moments away from respiratory distress, staring at the stage with the widest eyes you’ve ever seen.
“what?”
“she’s not here.”
“what?”
mimi pointed frantically toward the stage where michael stood alone beneath the wash of blue and gold lights, no second microphone stand anywhere beside him. “siedah,” she hissed. “she’s not here.”
and then michael smiled into the microphone. “siedah couldn’t be here tonight…”
the audience erupted immediately.
“oh my god,” mimi repeated, now strangling both of your shoulders. “oh my god.”
michael laughed at the audience’s reaction, pacing toward the edge of the stage while floodlights danced across the crowd.
“but…” he continued, dragging the word out teasingly, “i think maybe somebody out here can help me sing it tonight.”
the noise somehow swelled even further. which should not have been possible. girls several rows ahead were crying. one woman near the barricade looked moments away from fainting.
mimi physically climbed onto her seat. “MICHAEL,” she yelled with her entire body, “I HAVE A VOICE.”
you focused on trying to drag her back down before she broke her spine — or somebody else’s. “you are going to get us kicked out.”
“I AM READY.”
security started moving along the barricades while michael scanned the audience, amused by the chaos unfolding in front of him — thousands of raised hands, people practically climbing over each other trying to get noticed.
and then his attention caught somewhere near your section. you didn’t realise he was looking at you specifically.
why would you?
you were still halfway doubled over laughing at mimi, who by this point had both hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles had gone pale, her face folded inward, red in fierce concentration. on what exactly? you had no idea. maybe she was praying. maybe she was attempting to manifest herself onto the stage through utter delusion. maybe she’d floated beyond human understanding entirely.
that was probably the problem.
because unlike everybody else around you desperately flinging their arms and fighting for attention, you looked entirely unprepared for the possibility of being chosen at all. he found that funny. you were relaxed. amused. completely unaware of what he’d already decided was about to happen to you tonight.
michael’s gaze settled on you properly then. you somehow felt the exact moment it happened. and before you could even process it, he pointed directly into the crowd.
straight at you.
your laughter died as your attention returned to the stage. you looked behind yourself. then beside yourself. then back at him. before pointing at yourself dumbly. “…me?”
even from the stage, you could see him grin wider at your horrified confusion. next to you, mimi made a noise usually associated with heavy machinery. “oh my god.”
michael motioned you forward with hand, still smiling innocently, like he found your panic genuinely endearing. and then suddenly security was moving toward you.
fast.
one guard reached for your wrist while another started helping clear space through the horde and the reality of what was happening hit you all at once.
“no wait— hold on—”
which brought you directly to your current situation.
one second you’d been in the crowd. the next you were standing onstage with michael jackson while somewhere near the barricade mimi was experiencing a full on meltdown on your behalf. michael laughed softly beside you, leaning down slightly so you could actually hear him over the stadium. “you okay?”
no.
not remotely.
you looked at him unblinkingly instead, your eyes darting frantically around the stage — to the drummer, to the bassist, to the guitarist who noticed you were staring and offered a deeply sympathetic shrug in return. you were still trying (and failing) to process the reality of your circumstances.
up close, he somehow looked even less real.
his sweat shone gold beneath the glow pouring across the arena. dark curls clung damply against his forehead while heat shimmered visibly through the air around him. every single detail felt sharpened to almost impossible levels, like your brain had abruptly switched into some higher definition purely to process him properly.
and worse somehow, he smelled good.
he looked thoroughly entertained by your complete inability to answer him. “you know this one?” he asked gently, gesturing for you to lift your microphone.
you nodded. then paused.
then shook your head.
then nodded again.
michael let out a startled laugh, shoulders pulling inward as he ducked his head slightly. your face flushed, and for once it wasn’t because of the audience or the suffocating warmth of the stage.
his laugh was unfairly pretty.
“oh, she’s nervous,” he said into the microphone, his tone attempting to be reassuring. you wanted the stage to open beneath your feet and consume you already.
michael signalled the band to start the song again, beginning the first verse alone.
the crowd reacted every single time his attention shifted toward you. and it kept shifting toward you. he drifted closer during one line, smiling faintly while he sang, and suddenly you understood exactly how this man had spent an entire decade destroying people’s lives and permanently altering the public’s expectations of male love interests forever.
at one point he reached for your hand during a lyric and you could sense mimi die somewhere in the sea of people.
you were so busy disintegrating that you almost forgot you were supposed to sing next. the instrumental swelled gradually toward siedah’s verse while michael turned toward you expectantly, still grinning like this was all going to go perfectly fine.
your brain emptied itself like somebody had yanked a plug from the base of your skull.
you knew this song.
you had known this song for weeks now. mimi had practically brain washed you into memorising it during the two weeks before the concert. and yet, suddenly every lyric vanished from your consciousness completely.
the cue arrived.
and passed.
you stared at the microphone in your hands in absolute silence while fifty thousand people collectively waited for you to do literally anything. the entire audience seemed to inhale at the same time, collectively bracing for disaster.
your eyes widened in horror. “oh my god—”
blood rushed visciously into your face. you could already hear people laughing pitifully. you wanted to launch yourself directly into the sun.
“it’s alright,” he said quietly so that only you heard it beneath the noise of the stadium. “take your time.”
something about the sweetness of it snapped you back into place. your shoulders slacked. you inhaled sharply. and tried again. this time the note landed.
still shaky around the edges, trembling slightly with nerves. but there now. real and clear beneath the music instead of collapsing halfway out of your mouth. enough for michael’s expression to change almost immediately.
his head tilted slightly toward you. the performer in him was still there, all easy charisma and practiced charm, but something more focused slid underneath it. recognition. curiosity. like he was trying to figure you out in real time.
you kept singing, mostly because your body had entered survival mode and stopping now would kill you instantly. and somewhere around the next few lines, the dread finally faded enough for instinct to take over. your voice naturally relaxed into the melody.
michael blinked once. and suddenly the air between you shifted.
“oh,” he mouthed silently before the next line, looking momentarily caught off guard by you. you watched surprise glimmer briefly across his face before something easier replaced it entirely. like this had become far more interesting than he’d expected.
michael stepped closer during the next harmony, his shoulder nearly brushing yours as he sang, “i just can’t stop loving you…”
you answered back: “i just can’t stop loving you…”
your voice had stopped shaking. the notes settled instinctively between the two of you. the next chorus came easier after that. michael guided you through it, subtle little nods keeping you in time whenever your nerves threatened to trip you again. every now and then he’d glance toward you mid-line with this visibly delighted expression that only made the entire situation feel more surreal.
the world seemed to narrow, the roar of the stadium fading into something distant and indistinct. michael turned fully toward you while the entire tokyo dome seemed to hold its breath. “we can change all the world tomorrow…”
you replied, automatically now, adrenaline finally overriding fear. “we can sing songs of yesterday…”
and somewhere between one melody and the next, the dynamic between you shifted. you were actually singing with him now. matching him.
michael’s expression softened as the two of your voices blended together beneath the music, his attention fixed entirely on you now instead of the crowd beyond the stage. no longer performer and audience participant. together.
at some point during the final chorus, your hair ribbon slipped loose from your ponytail. one second it was there. the next, your hair fell free around your shoulders while the pale satin drifted soundlessly onto the stage below you.
his eyes followed the movement briefly before returning to your face, momentary curiosity crossing his expression at the tiny pink ribbon lying against the black stage floor, strangely delicate beneath all the shine and spectacle surrounding it.
but then the final phrase arrived before either of you could linger on it. “i just can’t stop loving you…”
your voices folded against each other one final time, clean and effortless now in a way that felt impossible considering how apprehensive you had started. and when the final note rang out across the arena, everything froze.
the band stilled. the lights burned overhead.
people stared back at the stage in shock, like nobody seemed entirely sure what had just happened.
then suddenly the arena detonated.
noise crashed back all at once, people screaming and stomping so loudly the stadium probably registered as a minor seismic event somewhere. behind you, the band started laughing in astonishment that michael’s impulsive little stunt had somehow worked perfectly.
you stood there trying to remember how to breathe while the adrenaline ebbed from your system, finally leaving room for every mistake you’d made since stepping onstage to come rushing back in painful detail. you winced remembering it.
michael lowered his microphone first.
the shift felt strangely intimate after singing into amplified sound moments earlier, like the entire world had abruptly shrunk down into the small space between the two of you while disorder unfolded everywhere else.
you immediately tucked your hair behind your ear nervously.
“oh my god,” you blurted, trembling. “i’m so sorry.”
michael stared at you like he genuinely couldn’t fathom why that was your first response.“for what?”
“i missed the cue,” you said quickly. “and then i almost missed the second one too and i think i blacked out halfway through the bridge—”
that startled a laugh out of him. “you did good.”
“no i didn’t.”
“you did.” he looked at you properly, still sounding a little caught off guard by the entire situation. “real good.”
your face warmed instantly. you shook your head anyway, still clutching the microphone too tightly. neither of you moved.
the roar of the audience felt strangely far away, muffled by the ringing in your ears while michael looked at you with an expression that was becoming increasingly dangerous to experience in person. movement stirred at the edge of the stage. security and crew were running in, already dismantling the previous setup. one of the guards approached cautiously.
one of the guards approached carefully. “we gotta clear.”
michael nodded distractedly, but his eyes stayed locked on you. then, without thinking, he stepped forward abruptly, one hand lifting like he was about to pull you into a hug. “wait—”
but security had already started guiding you backward toward the stage exit. his hand fell back to his side empty a second later.
you were swept off the stage and back into the ocean of bodies. a jumble of noise, lights and people. michael was still standing near center stage, watching you disappear. for a split second, something like disappointment flickered across his face before the crowd pulled you under.
unfortunately, after that, the rest of the night became a blur.
the second you stumbled back toward the barricade, mimi grabbed your face with both hands, eyes wild, shouting something directly into your stunned expression.
you had no idea what she was saying.
your brain had officially hit capacity and shut down all non-essential functions. at some point during “smooth criminal,” she shook you so hard your teeth clicked together.
“YOU JUST SANG WITH MICHAEL JACKSON,” she kept repeating like you were the one who’d forgotten.
“i know,” you mumbled.
“NO, I DON’T THINK YOU DO.”
honestly, you weren’t entirely convinced you hadn’t hallucinated the entire thing.
honestly, you weren’t entirely convinced you hadn’t hallucinated the entire thing. the memory already felt slippery and unreal, like it belonged to someone else. the heat of the flood lights, the way michael had looked at you, the way he reached for you at the end — it all felt distorted.
mimi became erratic in the following days. for the remainder of the trip, all she could talk about was the concert. at one point in the airport, she grabbed a stranger by the shirt collar to ask if they had attended the concert, solely so she could inform them that her best friend had sung with michael jackson.
you had to apologise in two languages while pulling her away.
and then normal life resumed.
a few days later you were back in korea waking up before sunrise again, tying aprons behind your back while ovens warmed the bakery into a fervour. customers still wandered in half-asleep asking for coffee and sweet buns like your entire life hadn’t briefly derailed itself in japan.
the world, annoyingly, had continued turning.
by the second week back, you had convinced yourself the whole thing had been completely imaginary. a manic episode triggered by the heat of the moment.
you kneaded dough. you cleaned counters. you tied your hair back with another piece of packing ribbon.
and every now and then, during the quieter mornings, you’d catch yourself humming i just can’t stop loving you under your breath before immediately stopping like your own brain had betrayed you.
but that was all it had been, really.
a surreal little collision of circumstances. one impossible evening dropped briefly into your ordinary life before disappearing again. you were never going to experience anything like that for the rest of your days.
you were beginning to understand mimi’s pre-concert existential crisis a little more than you wanted to.
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backstage after the concert was pure chaos.
managers barked over one another, security hauled equipment through slim hallways, and stagehands brushed past with tangled cables spilling out their arms. the air smelled of smoke and sweat. a pressure still crackled through the arena like static.
and through all of it, michael couldn’t focus. his mind kept circling back to her.
the girl security had dragged onstage looked like she might actually pass out — eyes huge, hands trembling badly enough that the microphone visibly shook between her fingers. she’d stared into the crowd like it was a firing squad.
then she started singing.
not the slick, studio-perfect sound he was used to. no over-rehearsed runs, no artificial flair or crowd-manipulating tricks. just pure, natural talent — rich, warm, and shockingly good. her voice had a rare, effortless quality most trained singers spent years trying to manufacture, like she’d stopped trying to perform halfway through and forgotten to be afraid instead.
michael dropped onto a battered equipment case near the monitors, ignoring the water bottle someone shoved into his hand. he could still hear her voice in his head. and weirder somehow, he kept replaying tiny details he had no business remembering:
the nervous laugh when she missed the cue.
the way she’d apologized with her eyes.
that ribbon tied in her hair.
how she’d somehow looked more beautiful the less aware she became of the audience watching her. beautiful in a way that felt refreshing. she hadn’t tried to flirt with him. hadn’t tried to impress the crowd or turn the moment into something bigger. half the time she’d looked genuinely confused about why she was there at all.
and then afterward, she’d disappeared. vanishing back into the dark before he could stop her.
michael leaned forward slowly, elbows resting against his knees while everything else meshed together around him.
he knew stadiums full of people. crowds. cities.
endless faces pressed against barricades every night of the tour. and somehow the one person who had managed to surprise him had slipped through his hands in under ten minutes. the realization hit strangely hard now that the rush from the performance was beginning to dwindle. he hadn’t even gotten her name.
he should’ve said something. anything.
don’t go.
stay for a minute.
can i see you again?
instead, he’d just stood there like an idiot, stunned by how fast everything had happened. michael rubbed tiredly at the back of his neck, staring blankly toward the floor.
“michael!” one of the managers called his name. “we need you for a few quick photos before you head out.”
he nodded, but didn’t move right away. his eyes drifted toward the stage steps instead — and that’s when he saw it.
his gaze caught on something near the edge of the stage steps — a small, pale scrap of fabric half-trampled during the encore. he walked over and picked it up.
a small, pale pink ribbon lying near the edge. wrinkled and trampled but still intact. he stood up and walked over, bending down to pick it up. smooth satin. a few faint smudges of flour along one edge. and stamped in delicate ink across the ribbon was a bakery name. haneul bakery.
michael stared at it for a long moment, thumb brushing over the letters. a slow, disbelieving smile tugged at his lips.
“you’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
the universe, it seemed, had its own sense of humor.
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁﹏𓊝﹏. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
the bell above the bakery door chimed, barely audible beneath the familiar ambience of the bakery waking up around you.
you didn’t even look up at first, still half-focused on pulling a hot tray of pastries from the oven, trying to shake off the early morning fog. flour dusted your apron, and a few loose strands of hair had escaped your ponytail.
“good morning,” you called out on autopilot, distracted.
no response. you frowned and glanced up.
and you nearly died on the spot.
baseball cap pulled low. dark sunglasses. jacket collar turned up. michael jackson stood in the middle of your tiny bakery like he’d wandered in from another planet. at six in the morning, he looked completely out of place next to your glass cake display.
for about ten seconds, neither of you moved. they were the longest ten seconds of your life.
you stared at him completely startled. he stared back, looking weirdly nervous. then slowly, he lifted one hand and held up something pale pink between his fingers.
your bakery ribbon.
a startled sound escaped you before your brain could catch up. “…huh?”
michael’s expression curved into a small, sheepish smile. a soft laugh escaped him, like he couldn’t quite help it. “you dropped this.”
you stood there trying unsuccessfully to process the absurdity of the situation. the same man who sold out the tokyo dome was now standing in your bakery, holding your forgotten hair ribbon like it was the only reason he needed to be here.
“you came all the way here,” you said slowly, still sounding half asleep from shock, “just to return my ribbon?”
michael looked down at the ribbon still looped around his fingers, as if only now realizing how ridiculous the whole thing sounded out loud. “when you say it like that,” he admitted, “it does sound a little strange.”
“a little?” you giggled, finally regaining a sliver of composure.
“a medium amount strange.”
the industrial mixer continued droning somewhere behind you while the scent of sugar filled the silence stretching awkwardly between the two of you.
“you took a flight for this?” you asked.
he ducked his head slightly. “i’ve had to take flights for less.”
you parted your lips, and hugged your arms tighter, still staring at him like he might vanish if you blinked. “how did you even find me…?”
“i just asked around a little.”
“you asked around, huh?”
michael glanced down briefly at that, embarrassed, like he knew exactly how slightly incriminating it sounded. “it sounds worse when you say it like that,”
you pressed a hand over your mouth, trying — and failing — to hold back another laugh. the second michael noticed you losing the battle, his whole expression brightened, relief flashing across his face. “you know,” he said, leaning one elbow casually against the counter, “most people are usually a lot happier to see me.”
you raised an eyebrow, still smiling. “most people didn’t get yanked onto stage with zero warning. i think i’m still recovering.”
that earned a laugh out of him. “fair point.” his gaze lingered on you for a moment longer than necessary. “but i’m glad you were there that night.”
michael looked away briefly before adding, almost under his breath: “you have a beautiful voice.”
the mixer finally clicked off behind you, leaving the bakery strangely quiet apart from the faint ticking of the wall clock and the crackle of cooling pastries. without really thinking about it, you reached for two mugs and poured coffee for both of you.
“so…” you said, sliding one mug toward him, “now that you’ve returned my very important ribbon…”
michael’s expression shifted with anticipation. “…yeah?”
“what exactly happens now?” you asked, surprising yourself with the sudden boldness. if this was a fever dream, you figured you might as well make the most of it.
michael wrapped his fingers around the beverage, his eyes lifting to yours with a tender expression that made your stomach flip. “i was kind of hoping you’d tell me.”
Your Michael fics are just so precious and so good! I see a lot of famous/celebrity reader fanfics for Michael but not many fan reader. May I make a lil silly request for a bad era Michael with a Korean fan fem reader (if that’s okey, I’m Asian) . She’s just a regular person who owns a bakery , she can sing really well but she keeps it as a small hobby for fun, and on her break day she gets curious about the Micheal concert & goes on her day off to unwind. During the performance Michael chooses someone to come up stage and sing a bit with him , to her surprise she gets chosen and is a lil nervous due to stage fright, and when the microphone was given to her she hesitated but started to sing & her voice is really good & imagine the surprise from Michael and the audience. This is honestly just a lil silly thought I got at 3 am in the morning 😂 I hope it doesn’t sound weird or anything.
stage fright! ✦
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ bad era! michael jackson x fan! reader
summary ⋆ you travel to tokyo with your wildly michael jackson-obsessed best friend for the bad tour, fully expecting the trip to be nothing more than a fun, a one and done kind of experience. instead you somehow find yourself on stage with the man himself — and neither of you are entirely prepared for what happens next.
content ⋆ bad era! michael jackson, fem! reader, fan! reader, bakery worker! reader, strangers to ????, stage fright, slighttt second hand embarrassment, mutual fascination, humour, best friend oc (not the reader), existential crisis
author's note ⋆ i might have gotten a little silly with this one... mimi is definitely not based off of anyone i know, nooo no way hahahahahahaha
the security guard’s hand is wrapped around your wrist, a steady, unyielding anchor, and your feet are barely touching the ground. that’s the first thing you become aware of: the weightlessness of your own body as you are hauled through the surging crowd.
the second is the noise.
it isn't music exactly, not in any recognizable sense. it’s bigger than that. a monolithic force. tens of thousands of people are screaming at once until the sound stops feeling like sound and starts feeling physical, a jagged vibration rattling through your ribs and teeth and somewhere deep in your chest where it absolutely should not be.
the third thing you become aware of is the realization that you cannot feel your own legs. you look down instinctively, searching for some sign of life.
they’re still there. moving — stumbling over discarded light sticks and plastic cups. just apparently no longer connected to your nervous system, as if your brain has opted to shut down all non-essential communication in favor of pure, unadulterated panic.
why can’t i feel my legs.
“wait — hold on — ” you gasp, the words swallowed by the roar of the stadium.
nobody holds on.
lights sweep across the crowd like searchlights, hitting you directly in the face and turning your vision white for a second. someone in the sea of sweating bodies grabs your arm — whether to steady you or because they think you’re part of the show now, you genuinely cannot tell — and then the security guard tugs harder with professional efficiency, and you’re moving again, forward into the belly of the beast.
the entire tokyo dome pulses around you like a living organ. bass shakes through the floor hard enough that you can feel it in your teeth, a rhythmic thrumming that matches the frantic beating of your heart.
i’m going to die in japan.
mimi’s voice cuts through the wall of sound anyway.
you can’t see her through the forest of raised hands, the strobing lights, and the shifting crush of bodies, but you can hear her, which is impressive given the circumstances and suggests she’s shouting at a volume that should probably be classified as inhuman.
“GO! GO! OH MY GOD — GO!”
“mimi i can’t feel my legs—”
“THAT MAN WANTS YOU.”
the stage comes fully into view as you move forward. which is unfortunate. because from the audience it had looked large. manageable, even. from here it looks like the final arena of a video game where you fight god.
thick plumes of synthetic smoke roll around towering lights, catching the violet and gold beams that slice through the hazy air. high above, cameras sweep on long, silent necks, capturing the chaos of the front row. somewhere behind the impenetrable wall of noise, the band crashes through the opening chords of i just can't stop loving you.
and standing at the centre of it all, draped in black fabric and cinched with silver buckles, is michael jackson. he leans slightly forward, smiling at you with a sincerity that feels almost more frightening than the crowd itself. it’s an encouraging look, the kind somebody might give across a dinner table instead of in front of fifty thousand people, like this entire situation — your catastrophic panic included — is somehow perfectly normal.
it is not.
the stage is closer now, the heat from the pyrotechnics still lingering in the air. a production crew member, wearing a headset and an expression of unnatural calm, leans over the barrier. he stretches a hand toward you, his eyes steady, having clearly spent too many years working around 2000+ decibel crowds to be phased by a single girl losing her mind.
michael points directly at you like he’s known you forever. he holds your gaze, locking you into his orbit, and mouths two words that feel like a shove:
come on
every thought leaves your body. the next thing you know, someone is lifting you over the barrier. a microphone is being pressed into your hand. your eyes widen so much they physically hurt, you think you’re going to cry.
“how — ” you hear yourself say faintly as the audience loses their minds around you, “ — how did i get here?”
TWO WEEKS EARLIER
it had been a relatively quiet morning at haneul bakery. or as quiet as anything could possibly be: with mimi ferociously wrestling the blue rotary phone in the corner booth as if she were trying to extract state secrets from the japanese ticket hotline.
“this is discrimination,” she grumbles to nobody in particular before aggressively redialing. “i’m being oppressed, i’m calling my lawyer.”
“they’re just concert tickets.” you snorted, polishing the glass pastry case for what was probably the twelfth time that morning.
“i’m fighting for my future,” mimi shot back without looking up from the phone. “michael jackson could be my future husband for all i know.”
you slid another tray of soboro-ppang onto the front counter, hot and steaming from the ovens. the temperature from the appliances had already started creeping under your collar. you pulled one of the pale pink bakery ribbons from the wrapping station and tied your hair back loosely with it before reaching for another tray.
the bakery smelled like sweet bread and butter and red bean paste. it was so familiar that you didn’t registered it anymore. outside, seoul moved lazily through another humid summer morning while the radio near the kitchen crackled through a whitney houston song. you started singing along while arranging pastries inside the display case, unaware of how easily your voice filled the tiny bakery.
mimi slammed the phone down. busy tone. again.
"you know — " you said, reaching for another paper bag, " — this would probably be easier if you stopped trying to break the phone."
"i'm not trying to break it."
the landline gave a concerning rattling noise in mimi’s hands as she dialed yet again with a force capable of snapping the plastic. “mimi.”
"they need to understand i'm serious. every busy signal is a personal attack on our friendship, and frankly, on the very future of music," she griped.
you sighed, shifting your weight. the stress radiating off mimi could probably bake the bread faster than your ovens. “they don’t even know who you are,” you pointed out while reaching for another tray. “it’s a ticket hotline in japan. all they hear is a ringing phone.”
mimi paced around the bakery, her hair wild.
“they hear the soul of a woman who belongs in the front row,” she declared. “now hush, i think it’s actually ringing this time.”
a man stepped into the shop, the small chime above the entrance announcing his arrival. he made his way to the counter and pointed toward the tray beside the register. “two milk breads please.”
“of course.” you smiled politely and reached for the tongs while behind you mimi muttered death threats at the rotary phone under her breath.
honestly, this had been your life for the past month.
ever since michael jackson announced his bad tour japan dates, mimi had transformed into something between a devoted fan and a woman preparing for the apocalypse. your apartment floor had disappeared beneath imported paraphernalia and extensively detailed handwritten travel plans. she’d somehow acquired three vhs tapes of bad tour footage through methods you genuinely did not want explained. every conversation now inevitably circled back to michael jackson within roughly four minutes.
you handed the customer his bag.
he was about to give you his payment when—
“I GOT THEM.”
the entire store froze. mimi shot upright so violently her chair tipped backwards, falling with an audible thump!
“I GOT THE FUCKING TICKETS.”
the elderly woman sitting near the window was startled hard, clutching her chest in raw fear. mimi, meanwhile, had already started sprinting laps around the tables like she’d just won the lottery.
“MICHAEL JACKSON IS GONNA SEE MY FACE.”
you leaned both hands against the counter, already feeling a headache forming. “unfortunately.”
“he’s gonna look into the crowd and immediately know i’m the one for him.”
“you don’t even speak the same language,” you said, watching her nearly collide with a display of castella cakes. “need i remind you that you failed english class in high school?”
mimi waved this away like it was a minor inconvenience. “love transcends language.”
“love also apparently transcends common sense.”
mimi stopped beside the counter and glared at you with absolute conviction, one hand planted against her hip. “you’re just jealous because he’s going to fall in love with me first.”
“i am jealous of nobody threatening japanese customer service workers at eight in the morning.”
“you’ll see,” she said confidently.
“you need to shut up before mrs. han calls the police.” near the window, mrs. han looked up from her coffee and nodded in agreement before returning to her newspaper.
by closing time, mimi had become completely unusable as a member of society.
somewhere around lunch she’d abruptly realised that after the concert ended there was a very real possibility she would never see michael jackson again for the rest of her life and had spiralled into a full existential crisis about post-concert depression before the concert had even happened.
by three o’clock she was lying face-down across one of the bakery booths mourning “what could’ve been.”
and by the time you locked up for the night she had become so overwhelmed by the concept of temporality that you physically had to drag her back toward your apartment, all while she mournfully listed all the ways michael would probably never recover from not meeting her personally.
“life is just a short series of highs,” she grieved out into your shoulder while you searched your pockets for your keys, “and then really, really long stretches of eh.”
your apartment door finally swung open and mimi promptly collapsed face-first onto the floor instead of taking the remaining three steps toward the couch like a normal person.
“you need help.”
she turns around on the tiles to face you. “what i need is michael jackson.”
a week later, mimi had calmed down. or at least started redirecting all of her energy into preparing for the trip.
michael jackson magazines, records, and photocards covered nearly every available surface. one of mimi’s thriller discs sat balanced precariously on top of the television while she dug frantically through drawers looking for her passport.
“do you understand,” she said, grabbing you by the shoulders hard enough to wrinkle the shirt you were wearing, her pink acrylic nails digging into your skin, “that in two weeks we are going to exist in the same building as michael jackson.”
you pouted at her. “well you’re existing in the same building as me right now and you still forgot to pay for your takeout.”
“that’s different.”
mimi finally released you only to resume pacing barefoot across the apartment, stepping over open travel brochures and tangled cassette tapes while muttering frantic half-sentences about hotel reservations and whether airport security would let her bring fourteen disposable cameras.
you crouched beside your suitcase to zip up one side before she immediately reopened it again.
“you need nicer clothes,” she announced.
“it’s a concert, not a UN summit.”
“what if he sees you?”
snorting, you rolled a dress into a tighter fold. “fifty thousand people, mims. he is not going to see me.”
mimi looked up from unzipping your suitcase like you’d just said something personally offensive. “he could!”
you placed one of mimi’s discarded shirts back into the closet. “uh huh.”
“i’m serious.”
“you think every man with functioning eyesight is one glance away from falling in love.”
“that is because you refuse to acknowledge your own market value.”
you threw a bra at her. she let it land on her head without even looking up from the pamphlet she’d been annotating.
“and if he pulls me onstage?” she continued dramatically, flipping a page. “i already know exactly what i’m doing.”
“you’d faint.”
“beautifully.” she sighed dreamily, already imagining the moment.
“what if he asks you to sing?” you asked teasingly, reaching deeper into your wardrobe for a sweater.
mimi stopped moving entirely. then, very slowly, she lowered the pamphlet. proceeding to throw herself mournfully on your bed. “oh no,” she groaned into the blankets. “i’m finished.”
a giggle left you at that. her head snapped up abruptly, as if she’d just had an epiphany.
“but if he picked you,” she continued suddenly, lifting herself to squint at you from across the room, “he’d be obsessed with you like, instantly.”
you stared at her blankly, lifting an eyebrow. “what on earth are you talking about?”
mimi pushed herself into a sitting position, her nails tapping impatiently on the fabric of her jean capris. “i’m serious. your voice is ridiculous.”
“i sing while baking bread,” you rolled your eyes at her, “it’s not exactly a superpower.”
“and somehow you still sound better than people with actual recording contracts.”
you shushed her and turned back toward your open suitcase before she could continue, focusing instead on the comforting routine of folding clothes while mimi descended further from reality behind you.
“no, i mean it,” mimi insisted, swinging her feet off the bed. “if michael jackson pulled you onstage and handed you a microphone, you’d ruin his life.”
you paused, looking up with a half-smile. “ruin?”
“you know what i mean.”
still laughing to yourself, you reached beneath a pile of clothes for the enormous concert poster mimi had stolen from somewhere weeks earlier. michael stared back at you from glossy paper in a mess of black leather and silver buckles beneath giant red lettering announcing the japan shows. for a moment, excitement fluttered low in your stomach. the trip suddenly felt real. you thought briefly about what mimi had said.
thankfully, there was absolutely no possibility of any of that ever happening.
2 DAYS BEFORE THE CONCERT
by the time the two of you actually arrived in japan, mimi had ascended into a different spiritual plane.
she spent the entire train ride from the airport with her face pressed against the window, narrating the city skyline like she was starring in a coming-of-age film about self-discovery. you didn’t have the heart to remind her about how unsanitary public transport windows probably were.
“this air smells different,” she whispered solemnly, staring out at the blur of neon signs and passing traffic.
“yeah, that’s because you’re sitting beside a man smoking.”
“it smells like him.”
you coughed pointedly into your elbow as cigarette smoke drifted past. “—ahem. nicotine.”
your hotel room ended up being approximately the size of a generous shoebox. two tiny beds sat pushed together beneath dim yellow lighting, sanrio shopping bags already beginning to colonise the floor as the muffled sounds of tokyo traffic drifted through the window from several stories below.
mimi launched herself onto one of the beds, bouncing so vigorously she nearly cracked her head against the ceiling. “we’re in the same country as him!”
“i know, you’ve said that already.” you couldn’t quite hold back your grin at how genuinely excited she looked.
“and i’ll say it again!”
you dragged your suitcase toward the wall with your foot, exhausted. the flight had been miserable, and your shoulders still ached from hauling bags through crowded train stations all afternoon before mimi dragged you through the enormous don quijote she’d insisted on exploring.
and somehow, she still had the energy to insist on karaoke.
“you cannot simply come to japan and not do karaoke.”
you let yourself sink into the mattress of your own bed. “i can actually think of several ways.”
“no,” mimi said firmly, already reaching for her shoes again. “you’re disrespecting the culture.”
“this is just you wanting an excuse to sing dirty diana in public.”
she was already gone before you finished your sentence, skipping down the narrow motel hallway in mismatched socks. “you’re paying for the room!”
which was how you ended up squeezed into a tiny neon-lit karaoke booth an hour later with three untouched bowls of snacks, two sweating glasses of soda, and mimi fully committed to performing beat it like her life depended on it. the tiny television mounted in the corner flashed rapidly through low-quality music video graphics while coloured disco lights spun across the ceiling. down the hallway, other karaoke rooms bled muffled singing and laughter through the walls.
mimi had fully abandoned her dignity. she lunged across the booth during the chorus, frantically waving her arms in what was clearly intended to resemble michael’s choreography but instead looked like somebody fighting invisible bees.
you snorted into your drink while she spun toward the television again just in time to miss the next line. halfway through the song she shoved the second microphone toward you, a grim look on her face.
“your turn. we’re training for the real thing.”
“no.”
“yes.”
“i’m sitting down.”
“you can sing sitting down.”
unfortunately, she knew you well enough to know exactly how long to push before you gave in. the karaoke remote eventually landed in your lap.
you sighed. “fine. one song.”
mimi squealed very much not internally.
the opening instrumental of human nature filled the tiny room while you leaned back against the cracked leather sofa, still laughing quietly under your breath as you lifted the microphone. you didn’t really think about singing when it was just for fun. it had always existed in the same category as humming while cleaning or singing softly while kneading dough at six in the morning. familiar. private. nothing important.
so you started casually, as you always did. and somewhere around the second verse, the noise outside shifted.
mimi’s expression changed first. the manic excitement she’d been carrying around for the past two weeks gradually dissolved from her face as she listened, shoulders lowering while she swayed gently against the edge of the table. like your voice had temporarily sedated her.
you kept singing.
outside the glass door, two strangers had stopped walking. then three. a salaryman holding a briefcase paused mid-step. someone further down the hallway physically doubled back. by the chorus, people were openly staring through the little window in the karaoke room door, trying and failing to pretend they weren’t listening.
you finally noticed halfway through a note. your voice cracked.
“…why is everyone looking in here?”
mimi looked seconds away from climbing onto the table. “because you sing like that.”
you stared at her. “what?”
“what do you mean what?”
the song kept playing in the background, instrumental filling the silence while you dropped the microphone into your lap. “i’m just singing normally.”
mimi put both hands over her face. “oh my god.”
THE DAY OF THE CONCERT: 1 HOUR BEFORE GOD ABANDONS YOU
the first thing you think when michael jackson walks onto the stage is that he doesn’t look real.
you’d expected that. you’d seen the posters, the magazines, the concert footage mimi had forced you to watch approximately four hundred times in preparation for tonight. you knew the white shirt beneath the buckled jacket.the black pants with the white stripe. the white socks. you'd thought you were prepared.
you were not prepared.
even from the eighth row — which mimi had described as “basically front row” in denial while crying over the ticket prices — he felt unreal in a way that was difficult to explain. the stage lights caught the silver buckles across his jacket and scattered shards of light into the crowd while thousands of people collectively lost their minds around him.
beside you, mimi made a sound you had genuinely never heard another human being produce before.
“mimi—”
“don’t.” her voice came out flat. she stared at the stage with the expression of somebody actively fighting back tears. “don’t talk to me right now.”
and then the music started. talking became impossible after that anyway. the entire stadium seemed to shift the second michael moved, somewhere behind you, someone had passed out already. honestly, you understood it a little.
because even from impossibly far away, every time michael looked into the audience it felt strangely direct somehow, entire sections of the crowd buckling under the force of one turn of his head. every movement landed exactly where it needed to before you’d even processed what he was doing, sharp one second and loose the next.
beside you, mimi grabbed your arm hard enough to bruise. “i understand every bad decision women have ever made now, i understand billie jean.”
you wheezed, the sound disappearing beneath another wave of howling as michael propelled into the way you make me feel.
you couldn’t stop staring at him.
not even in the sense of being starstruck. more like fascination. the disorienting realization that somebody could actually possess that level of presence in real life. up there with the music thundering around him, he didn’t feel entirely human. more like somebody engineered specifically for performance, assembled from flashing cameras and pure hysteria before somehow being brought to life.
by the time the opening chords of i just can’t stop loving you began drifting through the stadium, the atmosphere around you had turned electric. beside you, mimi suddenly grabbed your arm hard. “oh my god,” she whispered.
you turned toward her. she looked moments away from respiratory distress, staring at the stage with the widest eyes you’ve ever seen.
“what?”
“she’s not here.”
“what?”
mimi pointed frantically toward the stage where michael stood alone beneath the wash of blue and gold lights, no second microphone stand anywhere beside him. “siedah,” she hissed. “she’s not here.”
and then michael smiled into the microphone. “siedah couldn’t be here tonight…”
the audience erupted immediately.
“oh my god,” mimi repeated, now strangling both of your shoulders. “oh my god.”
michael laughed at the audience’s reaction, pacing toward the edge of the stage while floodlights danced across the crowd.
“but…” he continued, dragging the word out teasingly, “i think maybe somebody out here can help me sing it tonight.”
the noise somehow swelled even further. which should not have been possible. girls several rows ahead were crying. one woman near the barricade looked moments away from fainting.
mimi physically climbed onto her seat. “MICHAEL,” she yelled with her entire body, “I HAVE A VOICE.”
you focused on trying to drag her back down before she broke her spine — or somebody else’s. “you are going to get us kicked out.”
“I AM READY.”
security started moving along the barricades while michael scanned the audience, amused by the chaos unfolding in front of him — thousands of raised hands, people practically climbing over each other trying to get noticed.
and then his attention caught somewhere near your section. you didn’t realise he was looking at you specifically.
why would you?
you were still halfway doubled over laughing at mimi, who by this point had both hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles had gone pale, her face folded inward, red in fierce concentration. on what exactly? you had no idea. maybe she was praying. maybe she was attempting to manifest herself onto the stage through utter delusion. maybe she’d floated beyond human understanding entirely.
that was probably the problem.
because unlike everybody else around you desperately flinging their arms and fighting for attention, you looked entirely unprepared for the possibility of being chosen at all. he found that funny. you were relaxed. amused. completely unaware of what he’d already decided was about to happen to you tonight.
michael’s gaze settled on you properly then. you somehow felt the exact moment it happened. and before you could even process it, he pointed directly into the crowd.
straight at you.
your laughter died as your attention returned to the stage. you looked behind yourself. then beside yourself. then back at him. before pointing at yourself dumbly. “…me?”
even from the stage, you could see him grin wider at your horrified confusion. next to you, mimi made a noise usually associated with heavy machinery. “oh my god.”
michael motioned you forward with hand, still smiling innocently, like he found your panic genuinely endearing. and then suddenly security was moving toward you.
fast.
one guard reached for your wrist while another started helping clear space through the horde and the reality of what was happening hit you all at once.
“no wait— hold on—”
which brought you directly to your current situation.
one second you’d been in the crowd. the next you were standing onstage with michael jackson while somewhere near the barricade mimi was experiencing a full on meltdown on your behalf. michael laughed softly beside you, leaning down slightly so you could actually hear him over the stadium. “you okay?”
no.
not remotely.
you looked at him unblinkingly instead, your eyes darting frantically around the stage — to the drummer, to the bassist, to the guitarist who noticed you were staring and offered a deeply sympathetic shrug in return. you were still trying (and failing) to process the reality of your circumstances.
up close, he somehow looked even less real.
his sweat shone gold beneath the glow pouring across the arena. dark curls clung damply against his forehead while heat shimmered visibly through the air around him. every single detail felt sharpened to almost impossible levels, like your brain had abruptly switched into some higher definition purely to process him properly.
and worse somehow, he smelled good.
he looked thoroughly entertained by your complete inability to answer him. “you know this one?” he asked gently, gesturing for you to lift your microphone.
you nodded. then paused.
then shook your head.
then nodded again.
michael let out a startled laugh, shoulders pulling inward as he ducked his head slightly. your face flushed, and for once it wasn’t because of the audience or the suffocating warmth of the stage.
his laugh was unfairly pretty.
“oh, she’s nervous,” he said into the microphone, his tone attempting to be reassuring. you wanted the stage to open beneath your feet and consume you already.
michael signalled the band to start the song again, beginning the first verse alone.
the crowd reacted every single time his attention shifted toward you. and it kept shifting toward you. he drifted closer during one line, smiling faintly while he sang, and suddenly you understood exactly how this man had spent an entire decade destroying people’s lives and permanently altering the public’s expectations of male love interests forever.
at one point he reached for your hand during a lyric and you could sense mimi die somewhere in the sea of people.
you were so busy disintegrating that you almost forgot you were supposed to sing next. the instrumental swelled gradually toward siedah’s verse while michael turned toward you expectantly, still grinning like this was all going to go perfectly fine.
your brain emptied itself like somebody had yanked a plug from the base of your skull.
you knew this song.
you had known this song for weeks now. mimi had practically brain washed you into memorising it during the two weeks before the concert. and yet, suddenly every lyric vanished from your consciousness completely.
the cue arrived.
and passed.
you stared at the microphone in your hands in absolute silence while fifty thousand people collectively waited for you to do literally anything. the entire audience seemed to inhale at the same time, collectively bracing for disaster.
your eyes widened in horror. “oh my god—”
blood rushed visciously into your face. you could already hear people laughing pitifully. you wanted to launch yourself directly into the sun.
“it’s alright,” he said quietly so that only you heard it beneath the noise of the stadium. “take your time.”
something about the sweetness of it snapped you back into place. your shoulders slacked. you inhaled sharply. and tried again. this time the note landed.
still shaky around the edges, trembling slightly with nerves. but there now. real and clear beneath the music instead of collapsing halfway out of your mouth. enough for michael’s expression to change almost immediately.
his head tilted slightly toward you. the performer in him was still there, all easy charisma and practiced charm, but something more focused slid underneath it. recognition. curiosity. like he was trying to figure you out in real time.
you kept singing, mostly because your body had entered survival mode and stopping now would kill you instantly. and somewhere around the next few lines, the dread finally faded enough for instinct to take over. your voice naturally relaxed into the melody.
michael blinked once. and suddenly the air between you shifted.
“oh,” he mouthed silently before the next line, looking momentarily caught off guard by you. you watched surprise glimmer briefly across his face before something easier replaced it entirely. like this had become far more interesting than he’d expected.
michael stepped closer during the next harmony, his shoulder nearly brushing yours as he sang, “i just can’t stop loving you…”
you answered back: “i just can’t stop loving you…”
your voice had stopped shaking. the notes settled instinctively between the two of you. the next chorus came easier after that. michael guided you through it, subtle little nods keeping you in time whenever your nerves threatened to trip you again. every now and then he’d glance toward you mid-line with this visibly delighted expression that only made the entire situation feel more surreal.
the world seemed to narrow, the roar of the stadium fading into something distant and indistinct. michael turned fully toward you while the entire tokyo dome seemed to hold its breath. “we can change all the world tomorrow…”
you replied, automatically now, adrenaline finally overriding fear. “we can sing songs of yesterday…”
and somewhere between one melody and the next, the dynamic between you shifted. you were actually singing with him now. matching him.
michael’s expression softened as the two of your voices blended together beneath the music, his attention fixed entirely on you now instead of the crowd beyond the stage. no longer performer and audience participant. together.
at some point during the final chorus, your hair ribbon slipped loose from your ponytail. one second it was there. the next, your hair fell free around your shoulders while the pale satin drifted soundlessly onto the stage below you.
his eyes followed the movement briefly before returning to your face, a momentary wonderment crossing his expression at the tiny pink ribbon lying on the black stage floor, strangely delicate beneath all the shine and spectacle surrounding it.
but then the final phrase arrived before either of you could linger on it. “i just can’t stop loving you…”
your voices folded against each other one final time, clean and effortless now in a way that felt impossible considering how apprehensive you had started. and when the final note rang out across the arena, everything froze.
the band stilled. the lights burned overhead.
people stared back at the stage in shock, like nobody seemed entirely sure what had just happened.
then suddenly the arena detonated.
noise crashed back all at once, people screaming and stomping so loudly the stadium probably registered as a minor seismic event somewhere. behind you, the band started laughing in astonishment that michael’s impulsive little stunt had somehow worked perfectly.
you stood there trying to remember how to breathe while the adrenaline ebbed from your system, finally leaving room for every mistake you’d made since stepping onstage to come rushing back in painful detail. you winced remembering it.
michael lowered his microphone first.
the shift felt strangely intimate after singing into amplified sound moments earlier, like the entire world had abruptly shrunk down into the small space between the two of you while disorder unfolded everywhere else.
you immediately tucked your hair behind your ear nervously.
“oh my god,” you blurted, trembling. “i’m so sorry.”
michael stared at you like he genuinely couldn’t fathom why that was your first response.“for what?”
“i missed the cue,” you said quickly. “and then i almost missed the second one too and i think i blacked out halfway through the bridge—”
that startled a laugh out of him. “you did good.”
“no i didn’t.”
“you did.” he looked at you properly, still sounding a little caught off guard by the entire situation. “real good.”
your face warmed instantly. you shook your head anyway, still clutching the microphone too tightly. neither of you moved.
the roar of the audience felt strangely far away, muffled by the ringing in your ears while michael looked at you with an expression that was becoming increasingly dangerous to experience in person. movement stirred at the edge of the stage. security and crew were running in, already dismantling the previous setup. one of the guards approached cautiously.
one of the guards approached carefully. “we gotta clear.”
michael nodded distractedly, but his eyes stayed locked on you. then, without thinking, he stepped forward abruptly, one hand lifting like he was about to pull you into a hug. “wait—”
but security had already started guiding you backward toward the stage exit. his hand fell back to his side empty a second later.
you were swept off the stage and back into the ocean of bodies. a jumble of noise, lights and people. michael was still standing near center stage, watching you disappear. for a split second, something like disappointment flickered across his face before the crowd pulled you under.
unfortunately, after that, the rest of the night became a blur.
the second you stumbled back toward the barricade, mimi grabbed your face with both hands, eyes wild, shouting something directly into your stunned expression.
you had no idea what she was saying.
your brain had officially hit capacity and shut down all non-essential functions. at some point during “smooth criminal,” she shook you so hard your teeth clicked together.
“YOU JUST SANG WITH MICHAEL JACKSON,” she kept repeating like you were the one who’d forgotten.
“i know,” you mumbled.
“NO, I DON’T THINK YOU DO.”
honestly, you weren’t entirely convinced you hadn’t hallucinated the entire thing. the memory already felt slippery and unreal, like it belonged to someone else. the heat of the flood lights, the way michael had looked at you, the way he reached for you at the end — it all felt distorted.
mimi became erratic in the following days. for the remainder of the trip, all she could talk about was the concert. at one point in the airport, she grabbed a stranger by the shirt collar to ask if they had attended the concert, solely so she could inform them that her best friend had sung with michael jackson.
you had to apologise in two languages while pulling her away.
and then normal life resumed.
a few days later you were back in korea waking up before sunrise again, tying aprons behind your back while ovens warmed the bakery into a fervour. customers still wandered in half-asleep asking for coffee and sweet buns like your entire life hadn’t briefly derailed itself in japan.
the world, annoyingly, had continued turning.
by the second week back, you had convinced yourself the whole thing had been completely imaginary. a manic episode triggered by the heat of the moment.
you kneaded dough. you cleaned counters. you tied your hair back with another piece of packing ribbon.
and every now and then, during the quieter mornings, you’d catch yourself humming i just can’t stop loving you under your breath before immediately stopping like your own brain had betrayed you.
but that was all it had been, really.
a surreal little collision of circumstances. one impossible evening dropped briefly into your ordinary life before disappearing again. you were never going to experience anything like that for the rest of your days.
you were beginning to understand mimi’s pre-concert existential crisis a little more than you wanted to.
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backstage after the concert was pure chaos.
managers barked over one another, security hauled equipment through slim hallways, and stagehands brushed past with tangled cables spilling out their arms. the air smelled of smoke and sweat. a pressure still crackled through the arena like static.
and through all of it, michael couldn’t focus. his mind kept circling back to her.
the girl security had dragged onstage looked like she might actually pass out — eyes huge, hands trembling badly enough that the microphone visibly shook between her fingers. she’d stared into the crowd like it was a firing squad.
then she started singing.
not the slick, studio-perfect sound he was used to. no over-rehearsed runs, no artificial flair or crowd-manipulating tricks. just pure, natural talent — rich, warm, and shockingly good. her voice had a rare, effortless quality most trained singers spent years trying to manufacture, like she’d stopped trying to perform halfway through and forgotten to be afraid instead.
michael dropped onto a battered equipment case near the monitors, ignoring the water bottle someone shoved into his hand. he could still hear her voice in his head. and weirder somehow, he kept replaying tiny details he had no business remembering:
the nervous laugh when she missed the cue.
the way she’d apologized with her eyes.
that ribbon tied in her hair.
how she’d somehow looked more beautiful the less aware she became of the audience watching her. beautiful in a way that felt refreshing. she hadn’t tried to flirt with him. hadn’t tried to impress the crowd or turn the moment into something bigger. half the time she’d looked genuinely confused about why she was there at all.
and then afterward, she’d disappeared. vanishing back into the dark before he could stop her.
michael leaned forward slowly, elbows resting against his knees while everything else meshed together around him.
he knew stadiums full of people. crowds. cities.
endless faces pressed against barricades every night of the tour. and somehow the one person who had managed to surprise him had slipped through his hands in under ten minutes. the realization hit strangely hard now that the rush from the performance was beginning to dwindle. he hadn’t even gotten her name.
he should’ve said something. anything.
don’t go.
stay for a minute.
can i see you again?
instead, he’d just stood there like an idiot, stunned by how fast everything had happened. michael rubbed tiredly at the back of his neck, staring blankly toward the floor.
“michael!” one of the managers called his name. “we need you for a few quick photos before you head out.”
he nodded, but didn’t move right away. his eyes drifted toward the stage steps instead — and that’s when he saw it.
his gaze caught on something near the edge of the stage steps — a small, pale scrap of fabric half-trampled during the encore. he walked over and picked it up.
a small, pale pink ribbon lying near the edge. wrinkled and trampled but still intact. he stood up and walked over, bending down to pick it up. smooth satin. a few faint smudges of flour along one edge. and stamped in delicate ink across the ribbon was a bakery name. haneul bakery.
michael stared at it for a long moment, thumb brushing over the letters. a slow, disbelieving smile tugged at his lips.
“you’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
the universe, it seemed, had its own sense of humor.
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁﹏𓊝﹏. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
the bell above the bakery door chimed, barely audible beneath the familiar ambience of the bakery waking up around you.
you didn’t even look up at first, still half-focused on pulling a hot tray of pastries from the oven, trying to shake off the early morning fog. flour dusted your apron, and a few loose strands of hair had escaped your ponytail.
“good morning,” you called out on autopilot, distracted.
no response. you frowned and glanced up.
and you nearly died on the spot.
baseball cap pulled low. dark sunglasses. jacket collar turned up. michael jackson stood in the middle of your tiny bakery like he’d wandered in from another planet. at six in the morning, he looked completely out of place next to your glass cake display.
for about ten seconds, neither of you moved. they were the longest ten seconds of your life.
you stared at him completely startled. he stared back, looking weirdly nervous. then slowly, he lifted one hand and held up something pale pink between his fingers.
your bakery ribbon.
a startled sound escaped you before your brain could catch up. “…huh?”
michael’s expression curved into a small, sheepish smile. a soft laugh escaped him, like he couldn’t quite help it. “you dropped this.”
you stood there trying unsuccessfully to process the absurdity of the situation. the same man who sold out the tokyo dome was now standing in your bakery, holding your forgotten hair ribbon like it was the only reason he needed to be here.
“you came all the way here,” you said slowly, still sounding half asleep from shock, “just to return my ribbon?”
michael looked down at the ribbon still looped around his fingers, as if only now realizing how ridiculous the whole thing sounded out loud. “when you say it like that,” he admitted, “it does sound a little strange.”
“a little?” you giggled, finally regaining a sliver of composure.
“a medium amount strange.”
the industrial mixer continued droning somewhere behind you while the scent of sugar filled the silence stretching awkwardly between the two of you.
“you took a flight for this?” you asked.
he ducked his head slightly. “i’ve had to take flights for less.”
you parted your lips, and hugged your arms tighter, still staring at him like he might vanish if you blinked. “how did you even find me…?”
“i just asked around a little.”
“you asked around, huh?”
michael glanced down briefly at that, embarrassed, like he knew exactly how slightly incriminating it sounded. “it sounds worse when you say it like that,”
you pressed a hand over your mouth, trying — and failing — to hold back another laugh. the second michael noticed you losing the battle, his whole expression brightened, relief flashing across his face. “you know,” he said, leaning one elbow casually against the counter, “most people are usually a lot happier to see me.”
you raised an eyebrow, still smiling. “most people didn’t get yanked onto stage with zero warning. i think i’m still recovering.”
that earned a laugh out of him. “fair point.” his gaze lingered on you for a moment longer than necessary. “but i’m glad you were there that night.”
michael paused briefly before adding, almost under his breath: “you have a beautiful voice.”
the mixer finally clicked off behind you, leaving the bakery strangely quiet apart from the faint ticking of the wall clock and the crackle of cooling pastries. without really thinking about it, you reached for two mugs and poured coffee for both of you.
“so…” you said, sliding one mug toward him, “now that you’ve returned my very important ribbon…”
michael’s expression shifted with anticipation. “…yeah?”
“what exactly happens now?” you asked, surprising yourself with the sudden boldness. if this was a fever dream, you figured you might as well make the most of it.
michael wrapped his fingers around the beverage, his eyes lifting to yours with a tender expression that made your intestines flip. “i was kind of hoping you’d tell me.”
just a tiny disclaimer for anyone currently on my taglist / anyone who’d like to join in the future, and also just for all taglists in general
please make sure your account settings allow you to be tagged! i’ve noticed that for some people, your username doesn’t properly link back to your page when i try to tag you, which means you unfortunately might not be receiving notifications for posts even if you’re already on the list. also highkey i just realized that tumblr only tags the first 20 mentions which is annoying so i'm going to have to do separate comment tags now T-T UNLESS THAT ALSO DOESN'T WORK??
i’m not entirely sure whether this is an issue on my end or tumblr being tumblr, but i thought i’d mention it just in case! so if you joined a taglist recently and haven’t been tagged in anything yet, that’s probably why
thank you so much for reading my silly little stories and wanting to be included in them, it genuinely means the world to me <33
LOOK AT U STUDYING THE GREATS 🥹🥹 (purple hibiscus mention summoned me) - intheshoeshine
HAHA YEAH, it was honestly kind of a traumatizing read 😭😭 so so so impactful and beautiful as a story but god damn, it was a lot HEAVY stuff for past 15 year old me to have to read. it was probably one of my favourite books for GCSE tho!! you know the more that i think about it why tf did they have us read such traumatizing books, like of mice and men nearly made me have a crisis 🥲
question, how interested would yall be in a bad era! michael jackson x paediatric surgeon! reader series type thing? asking for a friend.
p.s. can you tell i like starting series
p. p. s. CAN YOU TELL I'M INTERESTED IN MEDICINE. if i had a nickel for everytime i started a series where the reader was a surgeon i'd have 2 nickels, which isn't a lot but its weird that it happened twice
Hello!💗 I just wanted to say my first impression of your writing was the MJ stories and honestly everything about them is incredible! Your sentences are like written captured moments that truly happened, the slight humour too, adds the cherry on top! I’m curious, what kind of books do you enjoy reading, and what are the names? I’d like to read them and understand where the beautiful literacy had come from! :)
IM SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER 😭 i already replied in dms but i thought i’d answer properly here too in case anyone else was interested!!! and genuinely thank you so much for all the kind words :,) i’ve only recently gotten back into writing after years of not really doing it seriously, so hearing stuff like this is genuinely really encouraging <3
honestly my inspirations are kind of all over the place
humour wise i'd say i'm mainly influenced by general internet humour, for some reason its also comprised of a lot of educational youtube videos like Tom Scott and Oversimplified. idk i just find them weirdly funny sometimes. Also stuff like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is genuinely hilarious, would highly recommend!!
i also don’t read as much as people probably expect (ᵕ—ᴗ—), i consume more fanfiction than actual books honestly. one of my BIGGEST writing inspirations is this Izuku Midoriya x reader fic called something (just like this) by @ ofmermaidstories (they're here on tumblr i'm just too scared to tag them AH). genuinely one of my favourite writing styles everrrrr. it’s beautifully written and honestly one of the things that inspired me to get back into writing in general
i also ended up becoming weirdly obsessed with descriptive writing despite HATING it in school. i spent my gcse english years complaining constantly but now i’m lowkey grateful because a lot of those skills ended up becoming super useful and genuinely fun to use again
so a lot of my inspiration comes from literature i had to study:
Purple Hibiscus, Of Mice and Men, Macbeth, An Inspector Calls, etc.
then i got REALLY into classical literature because of a certain anime (ahem Bungou Stray Dogs) and that sent me spiralling into Dostoevsky and a bunch of other authors. honestly a lot of my writing style probably comes from the “describe one thing for way too long and temporarily forget the plot exists” school of literature
some books/writers i especially love stylistically:
The Setting Sun — Osamu Dazai
The Great Gatsby (THE GREEN LIGHT SCENE AHHHHH)
Frankenstein — Mary Shelley
To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
Agatha Christie in general
The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy
The Ocean at the End of the Lane — Neil Gaiman
and Lolita too unfortunately. hate hate HATE the actual subject matter but the prose itself is genuinely beautiful and i think pretending otherwise would be lying (っ╥﹏╥ς)
i think overall though, the biggest thing i’m inspired by is writing that makes very small moments feel strangely huge and alive. like conversations that feel overheard instead of scripted, or descriptions that make a place feel physically real. i love stories that feel like somebody just accidentally captured a real moment happening somewhere
HI HI GUYS I SWEAR I'M GETTING AROUND TO WRITING MY REQUESTS, i'm just very picky about proof reading them cuz you guys requested them so i need to make sure they aren't shite. thank you for your patience with me (,,>﹏<,,)
⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ dad! michael jackson x wife! reader
summary ⋆ on your daughter’s first day of school, you try to enjoy one ordinary afternoon in suburbia, navigating the strange balance between fame and family life. but when michael arrives for school pickup, the fragile illusion of normalcy begins unraveling in increasingly catastrophic ways.
content ⋆ dad! michael jackson, fem! reader, fictional daughter - not meant to represent anyone in real life, domestic humour, fame and public scrutiny, family dynamics, fluff, not proof-read.
author's note ⋆ y'know, ik i said this series is mostly for short stuff but i kinda got away with this one T-T. i got a stroke of inspiration at like 3am in the morning and really wanted to do a version with michael as a dad cuz, also the disguises i am describing him in are based on real pictures of real disguises he wore, we are nothing if not historically accurate in this house. this chapter has: doobi's thoughts on how motherhood would be like whilst she is way too young to be a motherrrrr
the first day of school had gone surprisingly smoothly.
scratch that — suspiciously smoothly
no dramatic clinging to your leg. no sudden declarations that kindergarten was a government conspiracy designed specifically to indoctrinate children into the masses. no tears (spoiler warning: at least not from your daughter).
she had marched into the classroom clutching her tiny backpack with all the confidence of a CEO arriving late to a board meeting, waved at you exactly once, then vanished into the sea of brightly coloured cubbies without a second thought. which in theory should have been great, right? a day blissfully free of fuss; emotional catastrophes; or having to peel a sobbing child off your body while reassuring her that yes, you would still exist when school ended.
your daughter had, apparently, adapted to formal education quite well. you were proud of her.
you, on the otherhand, could not say the same for yourself. as you had begun crying senselessly as soon as you entered your porsche.
the rest of your day had been spent aimlessly driving around town, still unable to process the fact that your child was now in school when you could still vividly remember holding her tiny, bald, freshly squeezed-out head in your arms just yesterday. you ran errands you absolutely did not need to run. bought candles you definitely didn’t need. stood in the middle of a department store staring at a display of tiny light-up shoes for nearly fifteen minutes before realizing, with mounting horror, that you were actively becoming one of those mothers.
at one point you caught yourself picking up a much too miniature cardigan and thinking:
oh, she would’ve looked adorable in this.
which felt slightly humiliating.
you coped with the devastation by purchasing an iced coffee approximately the size of your own head and wandering through town in a vaguely dissociative haze while your brain continuously supplied increasingly horrifying reminders that one day your daughter would: stop holding your hand in public, develop opinions on politics, become too cool to watch cartoons with you, inevitably learn how taxes worked
somewhere between an unnecessary candle purchase and a deeply touching encounter with a display of children’s lunchboxes, you realized parenthood was essentially just a never-ending cycle of becoming attached to tiny versions of people who were biologically destined to leave you one day.
which honestly felt a little rude of evolution. it was on days like this you wished humans had evolved more like sea turtles — pop them out, bury a few eggs in the sand, and then go about your day.
by the time school pickup rolled around, you had managed to pull yourself together somewhat. enough to pass as a functioning adult… a little bit…
the school itself was painfully run-of-the-mill in a way you’d become increasingly grateful for over the years. hopscotch grids lined the pavement. PTA mothers stood chatting near the gates. somebody’s toddler was licking a traffic cone for reasons beyond human comprehension.
mundane. blessedly, beautifully mundane.
you leaned against the fence with an iced coffee in hand, enjoying the rare sense of anonymity while waiting for the bell to ring for dismissal. embracing the lack of screaming crowds, photographers hiding behind bushes, or hovering security teams. for once, you were just another parent waiting outside a school, trying not to think too hard about how your child was already old enough to realize neither of her parents could be trusted with teaching her basic mathematics.
which was when michael’s words from that morning started to replay ominously in your head.
“i really wanna pick her up with you.”
you had stopped halfway through buttoning your coat, the heavy wool fabric feeling suddenly stifling as you prepared for the morning drop-off. michael was leaning against the doorframe, still looking soft and rumpled from sleep.
“…michael.” you let the name hang in the air.
“it’s her first day,” he reminded you, his voice low and carrying a specific stubbornness he got whenever his heart was set on something.
“i know that,”
you quietly finished the last button. you knew better than anyone that he lived for these milestones, the small, human moments that fame usually stripped away from him.
“i don’t wanna miss it,” he persisted, his dark eyes searching yours with genuine hope.
and that was the crux of the issue. because internally, your response had been a resounding: no. it was a terrible idea — a societal collapse waiting to happen in the middle of a school zone.
but looking at him — standing there half-awake in his plaid pajama pants, hair wildly unbrushed, radiating pure excitement at the prospect of being a regular dad at a regular school — you started to fold. because the thing was — despite everything else michael jackson happened to be — he was also an obscenely devoted father who just wanted to stand outside a gate and wait for his daughter.
and how exactly were you supposed to look your husband in the eyes and tell him he couldn’t participate in something as average and important as his child’s first day of school because the public lacked self-control?
especially when he had looked so thrilled about it.
you had still attempted resistance anyway, if only for the sake of the poor personal bodyguards who would inevitably be forced to deal with whatever mess the two of you created.
“michael,” you said carefully, “the last time we tried this, we accidentally shut down a supermarket.”
he gave you an incredulous expression. “that wasn’t my fault, how was i supposed to know people would recognize me?”
“michael, you were wearing a wide-brimmed black fedora, a silk scarf, and what looked looked to be a masquerade mask stolen from the set of zorro.”
“all of my face was covered though...”
you remembered just staring at him in an exhausted silence. because there was no real way to explain to him that disguises generally worked best when they did not make innocent civilians stop and stare in abject terror.
still, he had persisted.
“i really wanna be there…” he murmured softly, reaching for your hand and pulling it toward his cheek before pressing a small kiss against your palm.
and that finally broke you.
he never got ordinary things. not really. not without havoc and mayhem attached to them somehow. and maybe that was why you couldn’t bring yourself to say no, even when the logical part of your brain screamed otherwise.
so eventually you relented in defeat. “…you have to wear a disguise.”
“a good one,” you interrupted before he could say anything.
he wrapped his arms around you from behind, cheek pressed lightly into your coat while you could practically feel the grin stretched across his face. “i know how to dress normally.”
you sighed deeply.
another parent beside you smiled politely, pulling you from your train of thought. “first week?”
you smiled back, though it came out slightly crooked from the anticipation of what was most likely about to befall this poor elementary school. “first day.”
“oh god,” she laughed sympathetically. “how are you holding up?”
“um so far — poorly.”
the woman snorted softly at that, relaxing into conversation afterward. you were just two exhausted parents trapped together in pickup lines. talking about: bedtimes. lunchboxes. the delicate art of distributing cookies amongst toddlers who all believed they had somehow been personally wronged.
you accidentally admitted your daughter had once eaten half a crayon because “it looked delicious,” which seemed to delight the other parent immensely.
“and she just… kept eating it?” the woman asked through giggles.
“that’s the concerning part,” you sighed. “i asked why she didn’t stop after realizing it wasn’t, in fact, delicious.”
“and?”
you stared blankly into the distance at the memory. “she told me she was already committed.”
the woman doubled over laughing; it was almost unnervingly conventional. just suburban parents standing outside an equally suburban elementary school whilst the faint sound of children screaming somewhere inside the building blended seamlessly into the afternoon air. you felt yourself begin easing into the small talk.
until the fatal question came
“so what does your husband do?”
you had considered pretending you hadn’t heard her. because there was simply no justifiably acceptable way to answer that question without permanently altering the trajectory of the conversation. you couldn’t exactly say:
oh, he’s michael jackson.
because that felt like the fastest possible way to make everyone think you were insane. nor could you realistically explain the actual mechanics of your life.
well, occasionally he disappears into sold-out stadiums while forty thousand people scream themselves into unconsciousness.
your brain frantically cycled through increasingly useless descriptions. singer? performer? entertainer? international cultural phenomenon? overdressed father of the year?
“uh…music,” you said finally. technically true.
the woman smiled warmly. “oh nice! is he in a band?”
you nearly inhaled your own tongue trying not to laugh. “…he was.”
unfortunately, that was the exact moment a familiar black SUV slowly turned into the pickup lane.
oh no.
oh no no no—
you suddenly felt the instinctive urge to lie down directly on the pavement and allow the earth to reclaim you. the vehicle hadn’t even fully stopped before you spotted him scrambling out the car, a butt load of inconspicuously dressed security following suit.
you proceeded to take one look at him. and instantly understood — that michael had, somehow, created the single worst disguise ever conceived by man.
baseball cap. aviator sunglasses. beige trench coat. the sort of outfit that did not make him look less like michael jackson so much as it made him look like michael jackson attempting to commit tax fraud in miami. worse still, he was moving with the confidence of a man who believed he had absolutely nailed the art of subtlety. he honestly looked ready to write a book about it.
your husband glanced around casually before spotting you near the gates, his entire face visibly lighting up beneath the sunglasses.
the problem with disguising michael jackson (regardless of his own obliviousness regarding discreet costuming) was that eventually he still had to behave like michael jackson. and unfortunately for everyone involved, michael possessed a type of presence that drew attention even before people fully recognized him.
and the worst part was that he had arrived exactly on time from his rehearsal. right as the school bell rang.
children began spilling out of the building in droves while parents straightened from where they stood waiting near the gates. for one fleeting moment, the noise and movement almost seemed enough to conceal him amongst the crowd.
almost.
it happened in stages: one child gasped loudly enough to turn several heads. another froze mid-sentence before pointing in a the slow horror. a teacher near the entrance squinted once toward the parking lot, visibly paled, then promptly started fixing her hair.
then, somewhere behind you, a horrified little voice screamed: “THAT’S MICHAEL JACKSON.”
the atmosphere shattered instantly.
parents froze mid-conversation. teachers waving students goodbye turned their heads so fast it bordered on inhuman. somebody dropped a juice box directly onto the pavement, the sound signaling the start of the end times.
beside you, the other parent slowly turned in your direction, her expression akin to somebody realizing they had accidentally spent the last twenty minutes in conversation with bigfoot.
you watched the exact moment the pieces connected in her head: the vague answers, the way you had dissociated when she asked what your husband did, your increasingly strained smile as she slowly processed the implications in real time.
and, most notably, the fact that what appeared to be michael jackson was currently heading towards you. his stride suggesting that of a man who shared both your bed and mortgage.
she stared at you bug-eyed.
you grinned awkwardly. “…surprise?”
meanwhile, michael still seemed blissfully unaware of the fact everyone had begun spontaneously combusting around him. which sounded about right. your husband had become so accustomed to public hysteria over the years that he barely seemed to register it anymore unless somebody was actively screaming his full legal name within his immediate hearing distance.
“hi baby,” he said cheerfully, giving your nose a light peck.
then he leaned down slightly, lowering his sunglasses just enough to glance toward the gates. “where is she?”
people were already beginning to gather. one teacher near the entrance had gone static, staring at michael clearly overwhelmed and trying very hard to remain composed in the face of near cardiac arrest.
“michael,” you hissed under your breath.
“what?”
“it seems you've caused a disturbance.”
he blinked once before finally looking at the destabilizing pickup area around him.
“…oh.”
oh???
oh???
before you could even begin protesting, the familiar pitter-patter of light-up crocs slapping against the concrete sidewalk caught your attention.
tiny. rapid. unmistakable.
then—
“daddy!”
your daughter came barreling through the gate at an alarming speed, backpack bouncing wildly against her shoulders with every step, the little lights embedded in her shoes flashing beneath her feet like emergency warning signals.
michael crouched just in time for her to launch herself directly at him, hard enough to nearly send his sunglasses flying clean off his face. he caught her easily, laughing softly as she wrapped herself around him with enough force to physically rock him backwards.
“mommy!” she screeched quickly afterward like you weren’t standing literally two feet away from her. michael smiled so brightly that it was honestly a miracle nobody passed out from the sight of it alone.
“hi sweetheart.” he chuckled softly. you could practically feel the crowd around you melting in real time; though you didn’t exactly share their sentiment, your own brain latching onto a concerning realization.
“oh my god,” you muttered under your breath, already feeling the beginnings of a stress headache forming. “these people know where our child goes to school.”
michael looked perfectly unbothered, balancing your daughter against his hip while you mentally spiralled through several different worst-case scenarios.
though as you watched your daughter enthusiastically babble through every single detail of her day to her father — the classroom, the crayons, the little boy who had apparently thrown up during recess — you found it increasingly difficult to care about the chaos surrounding you.
maybe you’d just let yourself worry about everything tomorrow.
meanwhile, michael listened to her with complete seriousness, nodding along attentively as she recounted the tragic loss of her glitter glue. and for the first time that entire day, you stopped waiting for something to go wrong. you breathed out slowly, releasing all the tension that had been sitting stiffly between your shoulders for the last few minutes before leaning forward to press a kiss against your daughter’s cheek.
then one of the nearby children stared openly at him for several long seconds before finally gathering enough courage to ask:
“are you michael jackson?”
your daughter looked genuinely confused by the question, answering it for him.
“yeah,” she said slowly, as though this was painfully obvious information. “that’s my dad.”
you let out a small laugh, mostly because there was something absurdly funny about your daughter’s complete obliviousness to who her father actually was. he wasn't michael jackson. he was just dad.
unfortunately, the rest of the pickup line did not seem nearly as grounded about this revelation.
security was already attempting to subtly usher you toward the SUV before the situation escalated further, but it was too late. the pickup line had devolved into complete disorder. conversations had dissolved into overlapping noise, people drifting closer despite clearly knowing they shouldn’t, the orderly rhythm of dismissal buckling beneath the gravitational pull of michael’s existence.
and through all of this, he leaned slightly toward you, finally finding a brief moment to address the rigidity you had previously been expressing.
“you okay?”
you looked at him properly for what felt like the first time since he’d arrived. beneath the absurd disguise, your husband looked beautiful. beautiful in the way he always did when he was with the people he loved, even amidst all the unravelling around you.
one arm securely wrapped around your daughter’s little body while she smiled sleepily against his shoulder, the weight of her day finally beginning to catch up with her. his attention remained fixed on her despite the overwhelming noise of the afternoon. the soft crinkling near his eyes when he smiled. how he adjusted her backpack strap so it sat more comfortably against her shoulder.
it hit you all over again that for all the world’s obsession with michael jackson the superstar, this was the version of him you loved most. your husband. the father of your child.
michael looked at his little family like it was the only part of his life that had ever truly belonged to him.
a bubbled up inside you before it escaped through your lips. you reached over to smack his shoulder lightly before taking the hand not currently occupied with holding your daughter into yours.
“did you seriously think this was a usable disguise?”
michael rolled his eyes playfully.
“it looked normal.” he carefully lowered your daughter into her car seat, ignoring your blatant slander of his fashion choices.
“you look like you’re pretending to be a substitute geography teacher.”
from the backseat, your daughter burst into a fit of laughter. michael gasped softly in mock betrayal at the both of you, making his way into the driver’s seat while you climbed into the passenger seat. you let yourself sink into the quiet warmth of simply being together again.
eventually, the car pulled away from the curb, the sound of the pickup line slowly fading behind you. only then did the exhaustion really begin seeping into your body, the adrenaline slowly leaving your system and taking the last of your energy with it.
and yet—
as the school disappeared further into the distance, you glanced sideways and caught the quiet smile still lingering on michael’s face while your daughter frantically waved goodbye to her new friends from behind the tinted window.
despite the screaming, the staring, the inevitable tabloid headlines coming out tomorrow morning.
he looked happy. quietly happy. the kind of happiness the public rarely got to see from him. dad happy.
you reached out and rested your hand over his on the center console, letting your eyes drift shut. you supposed some things were worth a little chaos.
do you have any michael jjba headcanons? like Michael as a jojo character, his stand and it’s abilities, his poses, etc. 😭
DO I EVER???
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING ME THIS. i tell you the amount of times i've seen fanart of michael jackson as a jojo character i'm surprised araki hasn't already made a character based off of him.
i honestly see michael as an extremely passionate, eccentric genius; somewhat similar to rohan but without the uhhh, how you say... 'extreme oddities"...? i think his jojo pose would definitely be the absoulutely iconic toe rise, like imagine him and his stand doing that it would be so cool.
as a character i could see him being in part 6 or 7!! and yes because they are based in america :'). or to be honest maybe in part 3. you know more that i think about it technically michael is, by association, already cannon in jojo since joseph once mentioned weird al's version of 'beat it', 'eat it', which would mean that 'beat it' would have already had to exist? IDK but in my imagination, michael would be a character everyone else would doubt is actually michael jackson, like how people are unsure if mikitaka is actually in alien. i just think that would be funny, like jolyne going, "hey, call me crazy but that guy can't actually be michael jackson right?" and michael's not doing anything to confirm or deny it cuz he likes being dragged into the jojo character's weirdness and just being treated like a normal person. he'd definitely still be our soft-spoken, kind michael but secretly be one of the strongest characters there is. there's this one story where he allegedly roughed 2-pac up so i think that michael being a fighting badass is definitely possible.
stand wise, it's so hard to pick between his songsss. so many would make such good stand names but if i HAD to choose: "off the wall". mostly because i think it sounds the most like a stand name. ability wise, i'm definitely thinking something related to dance and rhythm. do you know that michael jackson: the experience rhythm game? like imagine the moment his stand activates his opponent has to follow his dance moves or they slowly get they're energy drained and transferred to michael. or something like michael having to follow a certain rhythm (perhaps to beat it it or something like that) to get a power up, so each step he does has to be rhythmically in time to that song in order for his attacks to have an amplified effect. SOMETHING LIKE THAT, THERE'S A LOT OF WAYS YOU COULD GO ABOUT THIS
BUT THANK YOU FOR ASKING ME THIS, THIS IS GENUINELY A TOPIC I'M REALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT LIKE, 2 OF MY FAVOURITES COMBINED?? YES PLEASE. let me know if you ever want me to continue cuz i can keep going but i feel bad making this answer this long T-T
BRUHHHHHHH BY ALL MEANS PLS KEEP GOING BC I WAS THINKING ABT HIS STAND BEING CALLED TABLOID JUNKIE AND IT BEING LIKE A PSYCHOLOGICALLY MANIPULATIVE STAND
idk if this is established alr, but i sometimes think abt jojo charas with opposite gender stands.
LIKE IMAGINE DIRTY DIANA AS AN ILLUSION LIKE STAND THAT CAN MAKE YOU THINK ITS UR ALLY??? BREAK OF DAWN'S ABILITY BEING A POWER AMPLIFIER BUT IT CAN ONLY GO TILL THE BREAK OF DAWN??? 2000 WATTS BEING A COLONY OF LITTLE LIGHTNING SPARKS LIKE SEX PISTOLS???
