Desire, Reclaimed
Pairing: Michael Jackson x Fem!reader
Summary: Broadway's leading lady. The most famous man in the world. They've argued, they have made up, their bond is still undeniable. Is it make or break?
part 2 of Desire Interrupted
Tags: 18+, romantic! michael, soft, fluff, angst, romantic smut, YES i am capable. still filthy tbh. dangerous/history era, theatre/pop star setting, you are an actress in the 90s, michael is slightly avoidant, mentions of insomnia, time jump
Word Count: 13219+ (it might be more oop)
Author’s Note: I really didn't plan on making a part 2 to DI, but here we are, after y'all blew up my ask box and comments ;) its not perfect, and is much more of a drabble, with some timeline inconsistency (BLEGH I know) but i hope u enjoy it nonetheless. i may delete… this i am still undecided if im honest - dont rlly think it does the original plot justice YIKES ˙◠˙
If you'd to make a request, send me an ask ;)
You woke up first.
The light coming through the bedroom window was the grey of a New York morning after rain — it wasn't quite harsh, more like the gentler kind of sky that allowed you to keep the lights off at home, powered only by the cloud.
This kind of weather made the room look like a photograph someone had taken with an old SLR camera, slightly underexposed. Your bedside lamp was still on from the night before which brought a slight warmth to the otherwise still room.
You had no memory of getting into the bed. You had a vague memory of him carrying you, sometime around three, after the second round, when neither of you had been able to keep your eyes open any longer.
You were warm.
You were warm because Michael was wrapped around you from behind, one of his arms heavy across your waist and one of his legs hooked over yours, and his breath was slow and warm against the back of your neck.
You lay still for a long time. You did not want to move. To risk waking him would mean that he might once again try to leave, clouded by his insecurity.
Instead, you watched the grey light shift on the ceiling and you let yourself feel, properly, what it felt like to wake up with him actually in your life. He wasn't just a side character that reared his head when things needed to get interesting, or propel the plot forward. He was a real, living, breathing, perfect thing you wanted to hold onto forever.
Light.
That was the word for it.
Everything in your body felt lighter. Your shoulders. Your jaw unclenched. You had been carrying what felt like 3 tonnes of anxiety for three months without ever realising you were doing it.
All of it had loosened in the night. You had not understood, until now, how much you had been holding. How much energy it had taken to be the woman who held back, who let him set the pace, who was patient and grown up and careful.
You were not going to be that woman anymore. You would not hold back. Not with him. Not when you had so much to lose.
He shifted behind you. A small sound in his throat, sleepy, contented. His arm tightened briefly around your waist and then went slack again.
He wasn't quite awake yet. You could feel his eyelashes against the nape of your neck, him off in some dream world.
You closed your eyes. You smiled into the pillow.
He stirred properly about twenty minutes later.
You felt him wake up by degrees — first the shift in his breathing, then a small stretch of his arm across you, then a kind of confused pause where you knew he was working out where he was. You waited, happily on him letting it all come back.
His face pressed into the curve of your shoulder.
"Morning," you said.
He made a noise that was not quite a word.
"You alive back there?"
"Mm."
You laughed. You felt him laugh too, a small huff of breath against your skin.
He propped himself up on one elbow behind you. You turned over to face him.
His hair was a complete disaster. It had been wet when you fell asleep and had dried into something that looked like a small animal had been living in it. There was a faint pink mark on his cheekbone where he had been pressed against the rug for an hour before you'd made it to the bed. He blinked at you in the grey light, looking sleepy and rumpled and not at all like the most famous man in the world.
He looked at you for a long minute without saying anything.
Then —
"It's you."
"Hi." You said back, meekly.
He smiled. The real one. One you think you might have only ever seen a rare few times. There wasn't anything hiding behind it anymore.
"You're still here," you said.
"Where would I have gone?"
"I don't know. I half thought I'd wake up and find a note."
"A note." He said, surprised.
"On the kitchen counter. Something polite. Dear Y/N. Thank you for last night. I have several pressing engagements in Geneva."
He laughed, a loud, achingly cute cackle. He buried his face in the pillow next to yours after realising how loud he was.
"Geneva." He mumbled.
"It very well could have happened, knowing your crazy schedule."
"I don't even know where Geneva is."
"It's in Switzerland, Michael."
"Okay, well I do know where Switzerland is."
He turned his face back toward you.
The look on his face reminded you of the first dinner you had. It had only been a few months back, but everything just felt so different. You felt like you had known him in all of the alternate universes.
He reached out and brushed a strand of your hair out of your face. His hand stayed at your jaw afterward. He just held it there for a moment.
"How are you feeling?" he asked. Quiet and caring.
You thought about it.
"Lighter," you said. "I feel really light."
He nodded slowly.
"Me too."
There was a beat.
"I was so tired," he said. "I didn't know how tired I was until I flopped into your comfy bed."
"I know."
"I've been carrying this for so long. I don't know how long. Years, maybe. Just a genuine disbelief that anything romantic could ever work out for me"
"I know, love."
The word came out before you knew you were going to say it. You had never called him that before. Not in the time you had spent together You had been so careful with the names you used for him, so professional about it — Michael. It felt almost too formal now.
He didn't say anything. But you saw his eyes change. Soft and surprised and a little wet.
You watched him take the word and hold it.
Then he leaned over, and kissed you. Slow. Lazy. A morning kiss.
He tasted like sleep.
His mouth was warm and unhurried and there was no urgency in him, none of the desperation of last night, just a man kissing a woman, not allowing preconceived false truths to hold him back.
When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead against yours.
"I want to make you breakfast," he said.
"Do you cook?"
"I cook a… little."
"How little?"
He looked at you, eyes serious, still very close. You could see his smile lines, his eyes bare, no eyeliner, no makeup at all really. He was gorgeous his skin patchy in areas, but it felt a little like looking at constellations.
"I can make toast."
"That is not cooking, Michael." You stated, matter of factly.
"I have a range of toast techniques."
You couldn't help but cackle now. You threw your head back, completely unguarded. He looked so genuinely pleased with himself for the joke.
"Alright," you recovered. "Show me your range, Jackson."
₊˚°⊹˚
Your kitchen, in the daylight, looked exactly like what it was; a small, gritty New York apartment kitchen that had been chosen by a single woman in her early thirties, who did most of her serious eating at the restaurants other people took her to.
There was a kettle, and an old vintage toaster; a loaf of sourdough on the counter from the bakery on the corner, which you bought every Sunday and which lasted you until Thursday; you mostly ate it as toast at 3am when the adrenaline from the show was haunting you.
It sat lamely beside your fruit bowl, that looked like it belonged in a sad conceptual painting hung in a museum.
He stood in the middle of your kitchen in a pair of his boxer shorts and the undershirt he had been wearing last night, hands on his hips. He surveyed your countertop like a man planning an expedition.
"Right," he said. "Toast."
He whipped his head around to you as you hovered in the doorway.
"Do you have butter?"
"I have butter, in the refrigerator."
"Do you have jam?"
"I might have jam."
"Then we are well within my range, m'lady."
You sat down at your kitchen table in his dress shirt — the one from the night before, the white one, which you had pulled on while he was still asleep and which came halfway down your thighs — and you watched him.
He was so focused on the toast.
"Michael."
"Mm."
"You can walk away. It'll pop up when it's done."
"I prefer to monitor the cooking situation."
You just eyed him, unsure that toasting bread could be labelled 'cooking'.
"I have had bad experiences." He finally said, breaking the brief pause.
"With toast?"
He turned around and grinned at you, clearly not wishing to elaborate.
It was a cheeky and boyish look.
The toaster popped.
His face did something complicated.
"It's a bit dark," he said.
You got up and then looked into the toaster.
The toast was quite literally jet black.
Not lightly browned, or slightly singed like some folks liked. Black. Like coal. There was a faint wisp of smoke coming off it.
You pressed your hand to your mouth.
"Michael."
"I genuinely thought I had this in me!"
"It is on fire."
"It is not on fire."
"It was on fire, look at it."
He was laughing now, leaning on the counter with his hand over his eyes. It was coming from somewhere deep.
You had not heard him laugh like this before. You had heard the small relieved laugh in passing, and the soft, slightly cracked laugh on the phone. You had noticed around a month in that he faked so many aspects of himself, to fit in, to be like everyone else. You loved that now after your admissions to each other, and the unraveling of your feelings for each other – he was ready to bare the truth to you.
He reached for you and pulled you into him by your waist. You leaned your face on his chest, you were much shorter, so you could hear the beat of his heart from this angle. He was warm, and smelled a little like expensive aftershave and rain.
He kissed the top of your head.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm going to do better. I'm going to make you better food than this."
"You have a lifetime to redeem yourself, Michael."
He went very still.
You realised what you had said about half a second after you had said it.
You looked up at him.
He was looking down at you. His eyes were enormous.
"A lifetime," he said. Quietly.
"That came out before I —"
"No," he said. "No. Don't take it back. Don't take that one back."
You looked at him for a long minute.
"Okay," you said. "I won't."
He cupped your face with both hands. He kissed you, very gently, on the forehead. Then on the bridge of your nose. Then on your mouth.
You stood in your kitchen in your bare feet, in his shirt with his arms around you and the burnt toast still smoking faintly on the counter beside you, and you thought, this is the rest of my life. This is what the rest of my life looks like. This man, with his questionable cooking skills and boyish charm.
Later in the day, after hanging around the apartment, dancing to the radio and cleaning up the mess left in the wake of heated intimacy, you finally managed to witness him cook. Well, sort of.
The slice of bread had survived Michael's wrath.
He buttered it, put jam on it and then lovingly cut it into triangles, which charmed you completely.
He set the plate down in front of you with the kind of ceremony usually reserved for a state dinner.
"My masterpiece," he said.
"Michael."
"Eat it before it gets cold."
You shovelled the toast down, realising you had not eaten since lunch the day prior.
It was lukewarm, basically like heated up bread, soft in the middle. There was entirely too much jam on it, and it was the best piece of toast you had ever eaten in your life.
₊˚°⊹˚
He had to go.
Not back to LA; not yet. To his hotel, where his people were, where Wayne, his assistant was no doubt already trying to work out where his boss had spent the night.
He stood in your doorway in his ruined suit from last night with the buttons missing on the shirt you had just been wearing, and his hair still wild and he looked, somehow, more like Michael Jackson now than he had at any point during the previous twelve hours.
The world was already pulling him back. You could see it in the way he was bracing himself to walk out into it.
You straightened his collar.
"When do you have to leave the city?"
"Friday."
"Will you let me see you tonight? After your show?"
"Of course."
"And tomorrow?"
"And tomorrow."
"And the night after that? And then whenever we possibly can?"
You smiled at him. "Yes, Michael."
He kissed you, hard. He kissed you like he was trying to memorise it, the rhythm and the feeling of it.
He was feverish; a man who had spent the entire morning being given beautiful experiences he had not believed he was allowed to want and was still in disbelief about every single one of them.
He had the domestic bliss he'd always hoped for, from a lover. Finally able to have what most people took for granted on a daily basis. The space to not be the version of himself that was strung along in narrative by the press.
He pulled back.
"I'll call Frank," he said. "I'll have him pick you up at the stage door tonight."
"Okay."
"And Y/N —"
"Yes."
His eyes were so warm, his smile creating squishible cheeks and smile lines.
"Thank you for giving me a second chance," he said.
"I am glad I answered the door."
He kissed your forehead one more time. Then, he went off into the bustling city.
You closed the door behind him and stood with your back against it for a long time.
Your mind was racing a million miles an hour – so much had whizzed right past you.
It was a feeling; an instinctual gut reaction, that this was going to work out and be so worth the agony and all the questioning and the missed opportunities.
The situation before felt like you were both constantly facing each other across a busy road, not able to cross over because there was whizzing traffic; the threat of moving closer was too much.
You knew deep down that you were no longer going to feel alone like you had previously, not with Michael.
You went back to bed for an hour. You curled up on his side of the mattress, where the sheet still smelled faintly of him, and you slept properly for the first time in months, no more residual adrenaline to stop it.
₊˚°⊹˚
Three weeks went past in a blur.
He came to your show on the Wednesday after the morning of the burnt toast. And the Thursday. He flew back to LA on the Friday morning and called you that night, and then he was back in New York the following weekend, and the weekend after that, and at some point in the middle of the second week you stopped counting the flights and just started expecting his presence.
He stayed at your apartment. Not at the hotel anymore. The hotel had become a problem; your address was easier to keep quiet than a known suite at the Pierre — so Wayne quietly cancelled the booking and Michael's overnight bag took up residence in the corner of your bedroom. You found his toothbrush in the cup beside yours one morning and stood staring at it for a full minute. A crazy concept to have moved in with the most prolific person you'd met in your life.
He bought you a coffee machine. A proper one, the kind that ground the beans, because he had decided very seriously that the coffee press was not enough for you, when you worked such irregular hours. He didn't even like coffee.
He installed it himself, on the counter, looking very pleased with himself about the whole project. You came home from a Saturday matinee to find him reading the manual on your kitchen floor in his cute white socks and a Disney World sweater. His hair soft and unstyled.
You did not tell anyone about your relationship thus far. Sandra knew, obviously — Sandra had known the afternoon after you'd slept together for the first time, because Sandra had a good eye and knew when you were hiding something.
You and Michael had agreed that, mutually, nothing about the relationship was going public until you were both ready. Which was fine. It was preferable. You had a Tony nomination to do press for. He had an album to finish off. There was no part of either of you that wanted to poke the bear, but it had to be done at some point.
You wanted it off of your chest, so you could just start living your life. You felt anxiety at the press knowing you were “hiding” it, knowing that they would then make up some sort of elaborate story as to why that was the case.
The Tonys were the first time he was going to be seen in public with you and it made you feel sick with nerves. Mostly for him, as people had been so cruel to him throughout his life for no apparent reason.
It made you sad to read the tabloids on a daily basis extort his name and person for money. It was like vultures sweeping down and ripping more and more from a dead animal.
Michal always said he’d fine love in his heart to forgive them one day, but you could not find that grace deep down.
Your life had been sheltered for the most part — your parents had normal 9-5 jobs in the city, as you grew up there. You were the anomaly of the family, but it was nothing like the fishbowl Michael endured.
You wanted him to be able to feel validation from whatever the press were going to run the next day after the announcement.
You wanted them to see you weren’t just another girl he was closely associated.
Not as a friend. As his, loving and genuinely adoring date. You’d show them by just being in his presence how much you cared for him. and secretly you hoped that they’d just back off, understanding how that there is limited stories they could run now about Michael fathering 15 different children to 15 different mothers; or that he was gay, or even that he was an asexual aliens. It was foul what they did do him.
You'd had the conversation about it on a Tuesday, lying in bed at six in the morning before he had to leave for his car to the airport. He had said
“I want to come with you. I want to be there with you. I don't care what the papers do”
You had said “are you sure about this?”
He had said “I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”
So Michael's team briefed yours, and the publicists on either team briefed each other. It was all a bit overwhelming, all just to get fitted for outfits that sort of matched.
Michael hired a designer you had never even heard of, to pick out your looks. You'd been in the limelight, in the acting world for quite a few years, but had never had the opportunity to delve into high fashion.
You did three fittings. You went with the baby blue one in the end. Floor length, slim, structured at the shoulders. Michael's stylist had brought it as a backup to the first that the designer had chosen that you were not entirely sold on, and knowing your feelings on it; then quietly moved it to the front of the rail.
The morning of the Tony's had you viciously anxious. You had about 3 espresso's using the new coffee machine, and once again found yourself staring at the kitchen wall. You were trying to make sense of your brain wrestling with the thought that you might not win this award, and it could be utterly devastating considering how much blood, sweat and tears went into Blanche daily.
Michael had been at the studio early morning, to lay down vocals on a new song he was very excited about. He couldn't sleep the whole previous night, as he said he'd lose the beat if he didn't get it on tape, you didn't have a tape recorder laying around, so he flew out the door toward the nearest studio his assistant could find that would let him in for a session.
He came back after it in a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses, the way he travelled when he didn't want to be photographed, and he kissed you in the hallway in your apartment on the way to the shower and told you he was sorry he left you so abruptly
"You're nervous, Y/N."
"I'm so nervous."
"Never seen you like this. Just pretend everyone is naked, like I do."
"Michael. You perform in stadiums. That's literally thousands and thousands of naked people, and honestly quite disturbing."
"MM yeah, maybe not the greatest thing to say aloud. This is —" he gestured vaguely at the air around the two of you "this feels so good. To support each other. I am going to be there to hold your hand and dissipate the nerves."
You just smiled shyly, thinking yeah, this is so very real now.
You spent the morning together. You ate eggs that he made after he showered — he had graduated from toast — and you switched from coffee to fresh orange juice, and you ran through the order of the night with him at the table. The carpet. The seating. The category. The afterparty. He listened to all of it with the slightly a slightly nervous attention. He wanted to do everything right for you.
At one in the afternoon, Wayne came with the clothes, the stylist by his side.
You spent the next four hours getting ready.
₊˚°⊹˚
Sandra came over at three. Hair and makeup were in your living room by four. By five you were in the dress and your hair was up and your makeup was done and you were standing in front of the long mirror in your bedroom looking at a version of yourself you almost didn't recognise.
Sandra came to stand behind you. She put her hands on your shoulders.
"Baby."
"Mm."
"You're going to win."
"Sandra, don't jinx it"
"I'm saying it, because I can see it."
"Ughh." You covered your face with your hands in anxious agony.
"I'm not going to jinx anything. You're going to win and you're going to walk up there in that dress and you're going to thank me by name of course." She squeezed your shoulders, jokingly, looking at you through the mirror at the vanity.
"And then you're going to come down off that stage and find your boy and you're going to kiss him on national television."
"I am not kissing him on national television, he might freak out"
"I have a good read on Michael, and I think he'd welcome it."
"Sandra."
She grinned at you in the mirror. "I'm just saying."
You laughed. You couldn't help it. You felt your nerves crack open slightly under the weight of her looking at you like that.
She straightened the strap on your dress. She picked an invisible piece of fluff off your shoulder. She kissed the back of your hair very gently and then she left to get herself ready, and you stood alone in the bedroom for a moment, looking at the woman in the mirror.
You had spent eighteen months becoming Blanche. You knew in your bones that the performance and the wider team around it, deserved the win of this award.
₊˚°⊹˚
Frank pulled up at the kerb of Radio City at six twenty.
You could hear the carpet before you could see it. The roar of the crowd. The bursts of sound when a famous name was announced down the line. The high whine of camera flashes somewhere further up the street.
Michael looked over at you, fondly.
"Ready?"
"As I will ever be. Are you?" You asked, you whole body vibrating with nerves.
"No. I always get nervous at these things, even if I have been doing it for 20 odd years,"
"Let's go anyway." He said with finality.
He squeezed your hand. He let it go. He got out of the car first.
The crowd at the far end of the carpet noticed him before the photographers did. A wave of sound moved down the line as people clocked who had just stepped onto the kerb — a low rolling oh that broke into a proper roar by the time the photographers caught up and the flashes started.
He did not look at the cameras.
He turned. He held his hand out for you.
You took it.
You stepped out of the car in the baby blue dress with your hand in his, and the entire press line completely lost their minds.
The flashes were physical. You felt them in your chest. You smiled — the trained smile, the one you had been practising in fittings — and you let him guide you into the position the publicist had marked for you, and you stood with him at the start of the carpet and let them take their first photograph.
Then he leaned in slightly, very close, his lips almost at your ear, and said — you are doing so well, my love.
You felt every muscle in your shoulders drop an inch.
You walked the carpet with shaking, aching legs.
He kept hold of your hand the entire way. He did not let go. Even thought the press were shouting at him 'Michael turn to us, look over here', even when the designer's lead talent escort tried to gently separate you for the solo shots the team had requested — you shook your head at her, smiling, and she got the message in about half a second and waved the photographers off, and the two of you walked the rest of the carpet with your hands locked together.
A reporter shouted from the line — how long have you two been together?
You felt Michael glance at you. You answered for him.
"None of your business." You laughed nervously, your eyes trying to adjust to how bright it had been.
The reporter laughed. Several reporters laughed. Michael leaned in slightly, under the noise, his mouth right at your ear again, and said — that's my girl.
Goosebumps raised on your skin, his voice had been sultry.
You did not know your face was capable of going as warm as it went in that second.
Another reporter, further down the line — Michael, can we get a comment from you?
He turned. He didn't let go of your hand. He gave a toothy smile genuinely seeming happy and content.
"She's extraordinary," he said. "She was extraordinary the first night I saw her on stage and she has been extraordinary every day since. I'm just glad I get to walk in with her tonight."
The press line went silent for a half second. You felt it. The collective intake of breath at his brutally honest statement.
Then the flashes started up twice as fast.
He squeezed your hand 3 times and started leading you to the entrance.
₊˚°⊹˚
The ceremony went past in a blur.
You sat with Michael's hand on your thigh under the table for the first five categories. The weight of it was the only thing keeping you grounded on earth and breathing.
When your category came up, you stopped being able to hear properly.
The whole room went slightly underwater. You watched the presenter walk out and you watched her open the envelope and you felt Michael's hand tighten around yours and you knew, in the half second before she said it, that you were not going to remember this moment afterward except in pieces.
She said your name.
The room exploded.
You turned to Michael first He was beaming, so earnestly proud of you, his eyes a little wet. He'd truly believed in your performance and you were so grateful it brought you together.
He nodded at you, frantically, and pushed you very gently toward the aisle.
"Go, baby. Go."
You don't remember the walk.
You remember the lights, though and squinting to make your way through the sea of tables to try to get to the stage.
You remember the weight of the trophy once they put it in your hand.
the presenter kissing your cheek and whispering I am so proud of you like she had been waiting all night to say it.
You stepped up to the microphone.
You looked out into the dark room, a lump in your throat and finally thought, despite all of your insane insecurity; tears shed after shows, the nightmares you would wake from that were centered around fumbling lines and misrepresenting a dear to all character, your lack of sleep, your borderline unhealthy relationship to food, it was all just worth it. All in that one moment your name had been uttered.
You had written a speech three different times. You had folded the most recent version into the small clutch at your table, but in the midst of the frenzy. You did not, in this moment, remember a single word of it and maybe talking more from the heart was better, anyway.
You thanked Greg. You thanked the production. You thanked your director, who you could just make out in the third row, and who had taught you that Blanche was not a tragedy but a woman of multitudes, a groundbreaking look into mental health and playing it had been a great honour. You thanked Daniel by name, properly, generously, for however many weeks of carrying you across a stage, or screaming and shouting at you with the kind of trust most actors never got to have with a scene partner. You watched him stand up in the audience and put his hand over his heart.
You thanked Sandra. You thanked her by name like you had promised her you would. You said she had been the woman behind every single show of yours for the last six years and that no version of you on any stage in any city existed without her. Your hair would simply not survive without her and neither would your heart.
The camera cut to her in the audience. She was already weeping into her napkin.
And then you paused.
You looked into the dark.
You looked toward where you knew he was sitting.
"And to a special man, who knows exactly who he is" you said. "Who has fueled my passion tenfold. Thank you. I turned a corner with my character 'Blanche' when I met you. I was a more, fully realised version of myself the moment you appeared. I love you."
The audience had been so still, hanging onto every single word you articulated, just like in the play. You could hear, somewhere in the dark, a woman saying oh very softly into her hand.
The camera cut to him, it seemed everyone had followed your eyeline.
You did not see it at the time. He had both hands over his mouth, hiding his gorgeous smile, like he did when he was nervous. Tears brimming in his eyes at the thought of being loved on this scale.
You stepped back from the microphone.
You held the trophy up.
The audience rose to cheer you on.
₊˚°⊹˚
Backstage was chaos.
Press. Photographers. Producers. A woman with a clipboard and headset trying to walk you to the official photography room. Sandra somewhere behind you, still buzzing, holding your clutch like a small animal she was responsible for.
You just wanted Michael.
The clipboard woman walked you through the photo line. She walked you through each of your marks, the press shot you on backdrops with the trophy heavy in your small hands.
After, she walked you toward the press room and you scanned every corridor as you went, because you wanted him, you wanted him, you wanted to see his face.
You came around a corner and he was there.
He was standing in a quiet area between the press room and the green room. Bill at the far end lingering, clearly concerned that Michael would be swarmed at some point. The clipboard woman, to her credit, took one look at his face and quietly disappeared.
He pushed off the wall and you ran to him, to completely surrender.
He caught you. He picked you up off the floor, both his arms under yours, and he spun you once and set you down and pressed his forehead against yours and he was shaking.
"I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. I am so proud of you, baby —"
You couldn't speak.
He pulled back to look at you. His eyes were red. His mouth was open slightly.
"You said it."
"I said it."
"On national television," He said, "what a way to tell the world."
He laughed — a surprised, completely unhinged laugh — and then he kissed you. There, in the corridor backstage at Radio City, with the trophy still in your hand and the press room thirty feet away and the entirety of the Broadway industry about to come looking for you.
He kissed you, strong hands on either side of your cheeks. Strong, true and so honest.
When he pulled back, his thumb brushed the tear that had finally escaped onto all your makeup artist's hard work.
"I love you too," he said. "I know I don't say it too often due to my nerves. But, I think I have since I saw the curtain come up on that third performance of Streetcar."
₊˚°⊹˚
Streetcar closed in the September. You did not extend.
You signed on for a new play in October — a small, hard, brilliant thing at the Public, written by a woman you had admired since drama school. Rehearsals started in November. You found yourself, for the first time in your career, in a production where the press junket was kind to you. nobody asked you about what you were eating, or who you were dating, or your work out routine to stay skinny. It was a relief like no other to focus on the art, and only the art
He went back on tour in January.
Europe. South America. Then Asia. You knew the schedule by heart because Wayne had given you a printed copy and because Michael had pinned it to the inside of your kitchen cabinet so you could see it every time you went to get sugar for a coffee, which was a lot, admittedly.
You spoke every day. You spoke twice a day on the good days. He flew you out to Berlin for a long weekend in February for a date night at a premiere of an indie movie he’d been invited to and to Paris for two nights in March to just celebrate your relationship. How in love you were. Michael liked very much to be out of the limelight when he could, to keep some semblance of normalcy in his private life, but sometimes he would just become Michael Jackson in order to get something for you. And in the Paris situation - he was able to shut down the entire Eiffel Tower for you during the day, so you both could have a picnic at the top of it. Picnics were his favorite.
There were so many moments that you started to see the want to be a pop star diminish and unfurl. Like it just wasn’t worth it to him anymore. The arguments in the press with his siblings, the accusations, the settlements for large sums of money. It continued to greedily steel from his life force. You stuck around regardless, fighting every battle you could for him.
You stood in the wings of his stadium shows in a small private viewing area and watched him become the other version of himself time after time, despite illness or fatigue and you understood, properly, for the first time, what he had been protecting you from for so long.
He was tired. Oh so tired. A life of trauma and extreme wear on the body was showing. Maybe not to fans but…
You could see it. He hid it well — he hid most things well — but you had been watching him for nearly a year now and you knew his face better than anyone alive except his mother, and you knew, in a matter of months, that he was going to be running on fumes, and not enjoying it as he couldn’t be “perfect” anymore.
You told him to take a break.
He told you he was fine and that he needed to change the world.
You told him to take a break anyway.
₊˚°⊹˚
The London leg of the Dangerous tour started in July '93.
It was the eightweek leg. Two stadium shows at Wembley, then a break, then a press cycle for the album, then more shows. You'd ironically seen photos of him sold to the New York times, on the stands in the streets as you walked to the theatre you worked at daily; he looked very slim, his skin very pale and he just looked unbelievably over it.
He had been in London for ten days before it happened.
The call came at five past 3 in the morning, your time.
You picked up on the second ring. You had trained yourself – out of panic mostly – to not let the phone ring out, because when it rung, it was usually him.
"Baby."
His voice was wrong.
You sat up in bed.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm sorry."
"What's wrong, Michael."
"I'm sorry I'm calling you. I promised to myself I wouldn't let you see me falter, so you'd think I was strong for the both of us. I —"
He was crying.
He was crying a lot. You could hear it through the line, the unsteady catch of his breath, the small choked sound at the end of every word.
You turned the lamp on. You put your feet on the floor.
"Hey. Hey. Baby. I'm here. Just talk to me."
"I haven't slept."
"For how long, my love."
"I don't know. Four nights. Maybe five. I keep — I keep getting into the bed and I lie there and the second I close my eyes my brain just starts. It just starts and it doesn't stop. I can't get it to stop."
"What's it doing? Tell me what it's doing."
He took a ragged breath.
"The British papers have been awful. The whole week. There's a piece in one of them today about — about my face. Again. About the way I look. They've put it on the front. There's a doctor they've interviewed. He's never met me. He's never been in a room with me. He's making things up about me and they printed it like it's news."
You closed your eyes.
"Oh, baby."
"I shouldn't have read it. I know I shouldn't have. Bill told me not to. Wayne told me not to. They keep the papers out of my room every morning but somebody left it in the green room before the radio thing and I just — I saw it. I picked it up. I read the whole thing."
"Michael —"
"They do this every couple of years. I know. I know they do. I know it's a cycle. I know to expect it. It's just — this week it has been every single day. There's been something every single day. And I cannot — I cannot get my brain to stop reading it back to me when I try to sleep. It just plays. Over and over. Like a record."
You stood up.
You walked to the window in your bare feet. You pulled the curtain back. Manhattan was asleep beneath you. The lights of the Empire State Building were off for the night. The sky over the river was the early kind of dark that was already thinking about morning.
"How long since you slept properly?" you asked. Voice barely above a whisper.
"Properly?"
"Properly, Michael."
A long pause.
"I don't know. A while."
"Before the tour?"
"Maybe."
"Baby."
"I know."
"You have been running on nothing for four months."
"I know. I know I have."
You pressed your forehead against the cold glass of the window.
"What does your body feel like right now?" you asked.
A small, surprised laugh through the tears.
"Why."
"Because I want to know. Tell me."
"My hands keep going numb. The last show, the third song, I couldn't feel my hands properly for about a minute and a half. I played the rest of the show worrying I was going to drop the mic. My — my chest feels strange. It has done for a few days. Not bad. Just — present. Like I can feel my heart all the time. I cannot get warm. The hotel is warm. The bath is warm. I cannot get warm."
"Michael."
"I know."
"You need a doctor."
"I have a doctor."
"You need to call him."
"I'll see how I feel tomorrow morning."
"Now."
"Y/N —"
"Tonight, or this morning, or whatever fucking time it is there Michael. Whatever time it is there. Call him. Wake him up. I don't care."
"Y/N. I cannot — I cannot do that to him, he may be with other clie—"
"Then I will call him."
There was a small silence.
"You don't have his number," he said.
"Wayne has his number. Wayne will give it to me."
"Y/N."
"Michael."
He was quiet for a long moment.
"I love you," he said. Quiet. Wrecked.
"I love you too. Now stay on the phone with me while I figure this out."
So he stayed on the phone.
You did not call the doctor. You called Wayne. Wayne called the doctor. The doctor was at the Dorchester within forty minutes — a man Michael had known for years, who was used to being called in the small hours. He asked all the right questions and gave Michael something mild to help him sleep and told him, very firmly, that the next two days were going to be rest, full stop, no negotiation.
You stayed on the phone for the whole thing.
"Are you still there?" he asked quietly.
"I'm still here."
"Of course I am."
"I'm sorry I'm a mess."
"Stop apologising."
"I —"
"Michael. Stop."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Tell me something normal," he said. "Tell me about today. Tell me about anything that isn't this."
So you did.
You sat on the floor by the window with the phone in your hand as you'd yanked it off of the nightstand and were tangled in the wires trying to take it around the room with you. you talked to him about nothing in particular.
You told him about the second act of the play you were working on, one of the scenes was physically demanding.
You told him about the woman in the bakery downstairs who had started giving you extra helpings of the sourdough bread for free, because she knew you liked it. You told him about a dream you had three nights ago about a house with a yellow door that you couldn't remember the rest of, just the door, which had bothered you for two days because you thought you recognised it from somewhere but couldn't for the life of you figure out where from.
You heard his breathing change.
You kept talking, quieter, because you knew he was right at the edge of sleep and you did not want to startle him out of it. You told him about a song you had heard on the radio that had reminded you of him. You told him you had passed a bookshop in the Village yesterday and seen a book in the window he would have liked about claymation film techniques. You told him you loved him.
He made a small sound. Almost a word.
You waited.
His breathing slowed properly.
You listened to him sleep on the phone for almost twenty minutes before you allowed yourself to hang up.
You did not go back to bed.
You stayed where you were on the floor by the window. You let the light come up over the river. You watched the sky turn from dark blue to grey to the soft pink of an early summer morning in Manhattan, and somewhere in there, you made the decision.
You called Wayne again at 5am.
"Wayne."
"Miss."
"I need a flight to London. As soon as possible. Today."
There was a beat.
"What time, miss?"
"Whenever you can get me on something. Heathrow. First class, economy, the airline doesn't matter."
"Understood, Miss. And to speak plainly, he really needs you."
You couldn't even muster a response to that as it broke your heart.
"And Wayne – ."
"Yes, Miss."
"Don't tell him. Please. Don't tell anyone in his camp other than Bill. I want to surprise him."
"Understood, Miss."
"Thank you."
You hung up. You sat on the floor for another minute. You looked at the sky over the river.
Then you got up. You went to the closet. You started to pack.
₊˚°⊹˚
You landed at Heathrow at twenty past ten in the evening, London time.
You had slept on the plane in short pockets. You had spent most of the flight reading but you weren't really absorbing, you probably read the same paragraph of a novel over and over.
You gave up halfway and instead just stared out at the dark Atlantic for the rest of the flight, thinking of him. Thinking of how mad the director of your play was going to be when he realised that you were going to be out and that the star of his show was replaced by an understudy for however long it took to get Michael better.
A driver was waiting at the gate. Wayne had arranged it without Michael knowing. The driver took your bag. He drove you into the city. The Dorchester was on Park Lane and the trees in Hyde Park were full and dark against the streetlights as you came up Knightsbridge in the back of the car.
The doorman knew who you were. He had clearly been briefed. He nodded at you and waved you through without making a fuss, and the night manager met you in the lobby and walked you to the lift personally, and you went up to the top floor of the Dorchester at half past eleven at night with a small bag in your hand and your heart in your throat.
The lift opened.
The Harlequin Suite was at the end of the corridor.
You walked toward the door.
You knocked.
There was a pause. A long one. You could hear footsteps inside.
The door opened.
Michael was in pyjama bottoms and an old white tshirt. His hair was loose. His face was pale, blotchy and tired. His brown eyes were puffy and he was holding a book in one hand, his finger marking the page, and when he saw you standing in the corridor at the door of his hotel suite, his face contorted into joy, whatever of it he had left.
He did not speak. He could not.
You set your bag down on the carpet.
He pulled you into him by the front of your coat. He buried his face in your shoulder. He made a sound that was barely a sound at all — a small, broken release of breath, the sound a person made when something they had been holding for too long and their body could not hold it anymore.
He cried into your neck. The book fell out of his hand and onto the carpet behind him.
You let him cry. You stroked the back of his hair, waiting patiently for him to release you.
When he could speak, he pulled back. He looked at you. His eyes were filled to the brim with sorrow. His eyes never lied to you.
He looked at you like he could not believe you were standing there. Like he had not allowed himself to even consider that you might come.
"How are you here?"
"Frank booked the flight at like six this morning, my time."
"Y/N —"
"You needed me here."
"You crossed an ocean – what about your play?"
"I would cross a hundred of them, Michael if it meant I could make sure you were okay."
He just looked at you. You reached up. You put your hand on the side of his face. You held it there.
"I'm here," you said. "I am here. We are going to figure this out. We are going to figure out how to do this — all of it. The tabloid stuff and the tour. We are going to figure it out together – how to get you into a good mental place. I am not going anywhere. Not now, not ever. I don't care if I need to quit the play – I want you to be okay."
He nodded solemnly.
You pulled him back in. You held him in the doorway of his suite at the Dorchester until he stopped shaking.
₊˚°⊹˚
You did not leave the suite for two days.
Wayne quietly moved the album press around. Bill kept people away so that he could rest. The London leg paused for fortyeight hours and nobody in the press caught wind of why, because Frank, Wayne, Bill and Michael's team were good at what they did, and because Michael had spent twenty years building this team that knew him intrinsically. He rarely took time for himself and so when he did, they honoured it completely.
You ordered room service. You watched television with him. You sat on the balcony of the suite and looked out over Hyde Park in the rain and held his hand. You went for a walk together very late at night, around two in the morning, when there was nobody about, and he wore a baseball cap pulled low and you walked the length of Park Lane in silence with your arm through his. You spoke of cartoons, and dreams of his that weren't fully realised yet. You told him you'd been scribbling ideas down for a new play.
He apologised, on and off, for the first few days you were there. You told him to stop apologising. He apologised for apologising. You hated how broken he looked. How much the external teams pushed him, just complete disregard to his health.
The doctor came back on the third morning. He sat with Michael in the suite for an hour. He spoke to him gently. You couldn't make out a lot of it, but you hoped it would be okay.
He spoke to you afterward. He told you, very plainly, what you already knew — that Michael had been running on empty for a long time, that the sleep was the urgent thing, that the tour management was going to have to be looked at properly to figure out why this kept happening. Why the scheduling was so tight.
It was not normal for a person to travel and exert themselves so much as he did.
The doctor left a prescription and his number written down. He shook your hand at the door and said thank you for being here.
You closed the door and you cried for a few minutes in the bathroom and then you went back out and got into bed beside Michael and watched a film with him until he fell asleep on your shoulder.
By the fifth evening together, he was sleeping properly.
He fell asleep with his head on your stomach on the sofa in the suite, with a movie playing on the television neither of you were watching. You read a book over the top of his head and you ran your fingers through his hair and you felt him breathing slow and steady against your ribs.
You looked at him there.
This was what mine, properly meant. Caring even when things felt like they were never looking up. Even when it affected your life.
You leaned down. You kissed the top of his head, willing all of his pain to diminish.
₊˚°⊹˚
Day six was different.
Michael slept for fourteen hours. You woke at some point in the middle of it and watched him for a long minute, struck by the way grown men only really look like boys again when they are properly asleep — face turned into the pillow, one hand curled loosely against his jaw, the line between his eyebrows finally smooth.
The room was full of the grey light a London morning could offer. It could not decide whether to rain or not, and somewhere in the city a church bell was ringing the hour.
You let him sleep, ordered tea and read for two hours by the window.
When he finally stirred, just past eleven, the first thing he said was —
"I am extremely hungry."
You laughed.
"What do you want?"
"Everything."
"Be specific."
He rolled onto his back and considered the ceiling.
"Pancakes. The tallest pancakes they have. And toast with jam, please"
You picked up the phone on the nightstand and ordered the kind of breakfast that would have fed a small wedding. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, fruit, two pots of coffee in case one of them was wrong, a stack of toast, a small pot of marmalade because he had once mentioned, in passing, that he liked English marmalade and of course, the Jam.
The man on the other end of the line did not flinch.
A waiter arrived twenty minutes later with a trolley so elaborate it had its own subtle suspension system. He set the table by the window with the practised, eyesdown discretion of a man who had served stranger people in this suite than the two of you, and he was gone before you had finished saying thank you.
Michael came out of the bathroom in his red plaid pyjama bottoms and the same old white tshirt, his hair damp at the temples where he had splashed his face. He took one look at the trolley and stopped.
"Y/N."
"Mm."
"This is a lot of food."
"You gave a long list."
"I underestimated the amount, I think."
You watched him approach the trolley the way a person approaches something at a museum. He lifted the silver cover off the pancakes. He looked at them for a long moment.
Then he turned to you with his face completely serious and said —
"This is the best day of my life," his smile was reaching his eyes again.
"My sweet girl, and all these sweet foods"
You spent breakfast on the carpet by the window in the end. He insisted. He said the chairs were too formal for the magnitude of the meal, which made you laugh so hard you choked on your tea you had been nursing that whole time, and you ended up sitting crosslegged on the floor with the plates between you.
Hyde Park beyond the glass and the soft, even patter of London rain just starting against the window.
He cut his pancakes into perfect triangles, which you found a little neurotic but very endearing.
He poured maple syrup with the slow ceremony of a priest performing communion.
You watched him from across the makeshift picnic and felt something burn in your stomach. He was letting himself be a bit more free again – released from the prison of his mind. The prison of his job.
He looked up halfway through munching on the toast.
"You are staring at me."
"You are very entertaining to watch. You look at everything with such wonder"
He raised an eyebrow.
The rain picked up against the window in a soft, even rush, and for a moment neither of you spoke, it felt like a small holiday from the rest of complicated adult life.
₊˚°⊹˚
By the afternoon, the rain had settled in properly.
Michael was lying on the sofa with his head in your lap. He had a paperback open against his chest that he had not turned a page of in twenty minutes. You were reading too, one hand absently working through his hair, the soft thick of it sliding through your fingers in the same slow rhythm you had been doing it for nearly an hour. He had not noticed. You were not sure he was awake.
The television was on but muted. A music programme was playing — old footage of various artists from various decades, the kind of nostalgic midafternoon slot that British television loved.
You glanced up at the screen and immediately stopped reading.
Thriller.
The opening shot. The famous tracking shot. The video had just begun.
You looked down at Michael.
He had felt you go still. His eyes opened.
"What."
You nodded at the television.
He turned his head. He saw what was on the screen. His face contorted and he pulled away.
"Oh no."
"Oh yes."
"No. Y/N. We are not doing this." He grabbed the remote off of the glass side table and switched the TV off.
"I am proud of it, but my god is it awkward to see yourself act on the screen" He said.
"Tell me about it" You rolled your eyes playfully.
He turned around and looked at you incredulously.
"Are you getting feisty with me?"
He started trying to tickle your sides. You laughed and pushed him away but he, even with his small frame, was still much stronger than you.
He then dove in for a sneaky kiss.
The kiss started as a punctuation mark — a firm, grounding press of his mouth against yours, something to stop the laughter, to halt the teasing.
But it didn't end there. It deepened, softened, became a question instead of a statement. Can we do this?
His lips parted against yours, and you felt the warm, slow slide of his tongue seeking entrance.
You granted it with a soft sigh, your hands coming up to cradle his face, your thumbs stroking the high, sharp planes of his cheekbones.
He tasted of maple syrup and orange juice and the faint, clean mint of toothpaste from earlier.
The scent of him — sandalwood soap, the warm, dry smell of his skin, laundry detergent and the lingering sweetness of marmalade on his breath — wrapped around you, pulling you deeper into the moment.
The rain was a steady, hushed rhythm against the window now, sealing you both inside this quiet, private world. A world you never seen often.
He shifted, turning more fully toward you on the sofa, one knee coming up to bracket your hip.
The paperback was forgotten, slipping from his chest to the floor with a soft thump. His hands left your sides, one sliding up your back to tangle in your hair, the other coming to rest at the base of your throat, his thumb stroking the frantic pulse there.
"You're really here," he murmured against your lips, “real.” the words a warm puff of air. It wasn't a question. It was a wonder.
"I am now feeling fully awake, to realise it." He said, wonder struck.
"I'm really here," you whispered back, and you felt the shudder that went through him, a fullbody tremor of relief.
He kissed you again, slower this time, explorative. His tongue traced the seam of your lips, then delved inside, mapping your mouth, the line of your teeth, with a lazy, thorough curiosity that made your toes curl against the sofa cushions.
This wasn't the frantic, desperate clinging from the doorway. This was something else. Something reclamatory. He was rediscovering you, and in doing so, perhaps, rediscovering a part of himself that had been buried under fatigue and headlines.
His hand left your throat and drifted down, skating over the soft wool of your sweater. His fingers found the hem and slipped beneath, his palm flattening against the bare skin of your stomach.
You gasped into his mouth at the contact, feeling a little touch starved — his hands were always surprisingly warm, a contrast to his often cool exterior. He made a low, approving sound in his chest, the vibration of it against your own.
"This okay?" he breathed, pulling back just enough to look into your eyes. His were dark, pupils blown wide, the hazel almost swallowed by black. The puffy tiredness was still there, but it was overshadowed now by a kind of hungry focus that was entirely for you.
"More than okay," you managed, your voice rough.
He nodded once, a small, decisive movement, and then his mouth was on yours again, hotter, hungrier. His hand under your sweater roamed upward, palming the curve of your breast through the lace of your bra. He rolled your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, like he learned you like; pressure but still tender, and you moved into the touch, a sharp, sweet bolt of pleasure lancing through you.
You tugged at the hem of his old white tshirt. He broke the kiss long enough to pull it over his head in one swift, graceful motion, tossing it aside. The sight of him still caught your breath sometimes. He was lean, all elegant lines and taut muscle, the pale skin dusted with a faint sprinkle of dark hair across his chest and of course, patches of much darker skin. The v line down into his pants was just as distracting as the coily, dark happy trail. You throbbed with want.
A dark patch on his collarbone, another on his ribs — mapped a history of his life you knew only in fragments. You leaned forward and pressed your lips to the one on his collarbone, feeling him suck in a sharp breath. You thought he was an otherworldly beautiful.
“Michael, you genuinely are gorgeous,” you whispered against his skin. He threw his head back, probably euphoric at hearing that sentiment, “my angel face” you finished, basically whispering at his throat.
Your own sweater followed his shirt, then your bra.
The cool air of the suite pebbled your skin, but his gaze was hotter than any fire. He looked at you with that same museumintensity he'd given everything in his life he loved, but now it was layered with a possessiveness that made your core clench.
"Beautiful," he whispered, the word reverent. He leaned in and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking gently, his tongue flicking over the peak. You moaned outloud into the quiet air, your fingers digging into his shoulders. He switched to the other, lavishing it with the same devoted attention, one hand coming up to knead and tease the wet, abandoned breast.
The friction of his plaid pajama bottoms against your thighs was maddening. You reached for the drawstring, your fingers fumbling. He helped you, lifting his hips so you could push them down, along with his briefs. He sprang free, very hard, the tip glistening from pent up want.
You wrapped your hand around him, stroking slowly from root to tip, feeling the velvety skin slide over the iron hardness beneath. He dropped his forehead to your shoulder with a choked groan.
"Baby… wait, wait," he panted. "Not here. Not the first time in days. I want… the bed. I want to take my time with you."
You nodded, breathless. He stood, pulling you up with him, and then, in a move that made you squeal, he bent and scooped you up into his arms. He was stronger than he looked, dancer's strength and totally unassuming.
He carried you through the suite, past the remains of the grand breakfast, into the dim, raingrey light of the bedroom.
He laid you down on the massive bed with a tenderness that belied the urgency thrumming between you.
He followed you down, covering your body with his, and the feel of him — all warm, bare skin and hard angles settling against your softness — was a homecoming. He kissed you deeply, his weight a perfect, welcome pressure.
He began to move down your body, his mouth leaving a trail of fire. He kissed the hollow of your throat, the space between your breasts, the quivering plane of your stomach.
He hooked his fingers in the waistband of your leggings and panties and drew them down your legs ever so slowly, his eyes never leaving yours. When you were bare, he knelt between your thighs, just looking for a long, heated moment.
"So ethereal," he murmured, his voice thick. "All for me."
And then he lowered his head.
His mouth on your cunt was a revelation every single time. He was an artist here, too — meticulous, attentive, devastatingly skilled.
He had learned you over the year time had to together: listening out for what made you whine most and what had you bubbling over quickly. He was a quick study.
He started slow, broad, wet strokes of his tongue through your folds, gathering your wetness.
He licked into you, deep, and you bucked, a nonsensical mumble of pleasure coming from your throat. He held your hips down with surprising firmness, his moan of pleasure vibrating against your most sensitive skin. He genuinely enjoyed making you feel good.
"Mmm, you taste so good, sweet girl," he growled, the filthy words at odds with the angelic focus of his actions. "Always so sweet for me."
He zeroed in on your clit, circling it with the very tip of his tongue, fast, then slow, then fast again, reading your body's responses like sheet music. His fingers joined the symphony, one, then two, sliding into your tight, dripping heat with ease, curling upward to stroke that perfect, hidden spot inside you.
"Michael— right there, please—" you babbled, your hands fisting in the duvet.
He hummed against you, the vibration pushing you higher, higher. His fingers pumped in a steady, relentless rhythm, his mouth never leaving your clit. The world narrowed to the fourposter bed, the sound of the rain, and the exquisite pressure building tighter and tighter in your belly.
You were chanting his name now, a broken litany, your hips rolling against his face, seeking more, more, more. Grabbing his soft curls with your hand, guiding, frantic.
He slid a third finger into you, stretching you beautifully, and sucked your clit hard between his lips.
You came with a shattered yelp, your back bowing off the bed, your vision whiting out at the edges.
Pleasure soared through you, wave after wave of it, your inner muscles clenching rhythmically around his dexterous fingers.
He crawled back up your body, his face glistening with your wetness, and kissed you, letting you taste yourself on his tongue, and you moaned into the kiss, the sensation deeply, primally erotic.
"I need you," he gasped against your mouth, his cock, rockhard and leaking, nudging against your soaked entrance. "Please, Y/N. I need to be inside you."
"Yes," you breathed, wrapping your legs around his hips. "Now, Michael. Please."
He positioned himself, the head of his cock pressing against you. He looked into your eyes, his own blazing with a mix of love, lust, and a vulnerability that made your heart ache. He rubbed the tip up and down your core, exciting you even more. The sensation was so heightened from your unwinding before.
He then pushed forward, slowly, inexorably, filling you inch by glorious inch.
"Fuhhhck," he hissed, his entire body trembling with the effort of going slow. "So tight. So perfect. God, I missed this. I missed you, my girl"
When he was fully sheathed, he paused, buried to the hilt, letting you both adjust to the overwhelming feeling of fullness, of reconnection.
You could feel every heartbeat pulsing through him, deep inside you. You lifted your hips, a subtle, begging movement. His eyes were hazy looking, blown out and high on you.
He got the message.
He began to move, pulling out almost all the way before sliding back in with a deep, rolling thrust that punched the air from your lungs. He set a slow, deep, grinding rhythm, each stroke dragging against every nerve ending inside you. It wasn't frantic. It was profound. Each penetration felt like a vow, each withdrawal a promise to return.
"Look at me," he whispered, his voice ragged. You forced your eyes open, meeting his intense gaze. "See me in this moment. Only you see me like this."
Tears pricked at your eyes. You reached up, tracing the line of his jaw, his lips. "I see you, baby. I always see you."
He kissed you, swallowing your words, and his pace began to quicken, the slow grind giving way to more urgent snaps of his hips. The angle changed, and he hit a spot that made you see stars, over and over again. The wet, filthy sound of your bodies joining filled the room, a counterrhythm to the rain.
"You feel so good," he panted, his breath hot against your ear. "My sweet girl. Taking my cock so well. Gonna make you come again. Gonna feel you. Gonna make you shout my name so everyone can hear who makes you feel this good”
His dirty talk, so at odds with his public persona, never failed to unravel you. He only got this filthy when he was near his finish.
You felt the second orgasm building, deeper, slower, a rising tide rather than a crashing wave. He felt it too. He slipped a hand between your bodies, his thumb finding your swollen clit and rubbing tight, rapid circles.
"That's it," he coaxed, his thrusts becoming harder, less controlled. "Come for me, baby. Let go. I've got you. I'm looking after you now"
You shattered. This climax was different — less scream, more sob. A deep, fullbody unclenching that washed through you in warm, pulsing waves, pulling a guttural cry from your throat.
Your cunt clamped down on him, rhythmic and intense, and that was all it took.
With a broken shout of your name, he followed you over the edge. His hips stuttered, his body locking as he buried himself as deep as he could go, pulsing hotly inside you.
"Y/N— ah—!" He came in long, hot spurts, his release filling you, his whole body shuddering through the aftershocks.
He collapsed on top of you, his weight a blissful anchor, his face buried in your neck. You could feel his heart hammering against your chest, a frantic echo of your own. You held him, your hands stroking the sweatslick skin of his back, listening to his ragged breaths slowly even out.
The rain continued its gentle patter. A distant siren wailed somewhere in Mayfair and faded.
After a long while, he shifted, sliding out of you which made you both shiver with the intimacy.
He rolled to the side, pulling you with him, tucking you against his chest, your back to his front. He wrapped his arms around you, his legs tangling with yours, and kissed the top of your shoulder.
"I love you," he said, his voice sleepslurred and utterly satiated.
"I love you more," you whispered.
He made a soft, dismissive sound. "Impossible."
You lay there in the grey afternoon light, wrapped in each other and the quiet, the smell of sex and rain and his skin filling the air.
The world and its tabloids and its stages felt a million miles away. Here, in this bed, there was only this; the steady beat of his heart against your back, the warmth of his body curled around yours, and the profound, quiet certainty that, for now at least, he was safe. He was at home home. And so were you. You found it in each other, you realised.
₊˚°⊹˚
Two whole decades passed.
You got married, in the end, when you were forty one and Michael was forty two. A Thursday in October at Neverland, a very very small gathering.
You both, despite your lavish lifestyles, didn't enjoy such a fuss being made, and valued privacy more than anything. No ammunition to give to the press.
He had bought Neverland three years before that.
Not for himself. Not really. A two thousand acre estate in the Santa Ynez Valley, two and a half hours north of LA, with rolling oak hills and a lake and a stand of trees so old they predated California's statehood; and he had told you about it on a phone call at two in the morning from Tokyo. He said he wanted somewhere quiet and freeing. He said he wanted a piece of the world that was only his.
The other reason came out slower. In small admissions at different times, that he had not planned to make to you about his childhood.
He told you, one night in the brownstone you owned together in NYC, with his head on your stomach on the sofa, that he wanted a place where children could come and feel safe. Feel safer than he did as a kid, as he was constantly thrown into adult situations, and was robbed of the magic of playing make believe.
He planned to bring children who were sick. Children from hospitals. Children from all different circumstances. Children who had never seen a horse or sat on a Ferris wheel or eaten sweeties that had not been bought from a vending machine.
He wanted to build the kind of place he had never been allowed to have — a place that was just for being a child, with no schedule and no audience and no work attached to it. He wanted to give them what he had never got.
He said it with his eyes closed. He said it like a confession and something he could clearly see in his mind.
He started building within the year. A small fairground. A theatre. Then, a garden with a railway line that ran through it and a station.
He hired a head of operations and a small staff and started bringing groups of children up every other weekend, with their families and their nurses, and the press did not know about it for a long time because neither of you wanted them to ruin the perfect.
The first time he brought you up to see the property, you got to see him fully release the stress in his shoulders and frolic gracefully around in the grass. You felt so compelled to do the same, because you totally shared his vision.
It was the most honest thing Michael had ever done in his life; care for those kids. It came from such a deep gratitude for his fame, fortune and experiences within music – he could provide a wealth of experience to the greatly deserving.
It was also, you realised, over the years that followed, where he had finally become himself. Not the version on the stages and the magazine covers. The other Michael.
The one who walked the gardens in the early evening to check the train was running properly and would babble, cackle and play pranks on his staff.
The one who knew every member of the local community by name and the names of their children.
You'd watch fondly as he, now in his fifties, would sit on the low wall by the carousel with a cup of tea and watch the families come through and not need to be anywhere else in the world.
He had spent his whole childhood working. He had built himself a place to finally discover what it was like to be still. And just be… Michael.
₊˚°⊹˚
Jane was born thirteen months after the wedding.
It was a Tuesday in November. You went into labour at four in the afternoon at Neverland and the staff drove the two of you to the hospital in Santa Barbara, and Michael held your hand in the back of the car the entire way and did not let go of it for the next fourteen hours. He was there for every second of it.
"Breathe Y/N, in and outttttt" he sung the last word, strong vibrato. The nurse was giving him a major side eye.
You grabbed his hand as hard as you could and yelped out, another contraction wracking through your very heavily pregnant body.
"Fuck." You screamed, sweat lashing down your forehead, as you tried your best to breathe, and push, and also not shit yourself in front of the 15 people working in the room right now.
Michael didn't let go, but he proclaimed brightly; "She meant fudge everyone, fudge!"
You rolled your eyes as hard as you could and then gave him a death stare. He didn't seem to care about your reaction, the elation of his baby being born was keeping him on an untouchable plane, he was on cloud 9.
₊˚°⊹˚
He stayed at the head of the bed when the time came and he did not look away once, and when the doctor finally placed her on your chest; small and almost purple, screaming, with a head of dark curly hair that nobody had quite been expecting, he made a sound you had never heard out of him in your life and then just burst into the most happy sobs.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. He could not stand up, his legs so weak from pure, harmonious joy. You'd given him a daughter. A baby you had made lovingly.
He put one hand on her tiny back and cupped one hand on your cheek, catching any tears that spilled over from your eyes.
You both just wailed, of sheer, unfiltered happiness, for about ten minutes, while she screamed and the nurses moved gently around the three of you with the practised care, making sure everything was alright.
He named her, in the end. You let him. He had been carrying the name Jane around in his head since he was a boy, from the world of the infamous novel 'Peter Pan' by JM Barrie. His love of the Disney film was apparent early on in your relationship, and you smiled, reminded of the first time he explained the plot of the movie to you. 'Jane' was Wendy Darling's daughter in the book – and he swore that whenever he had a girl himself, that would be her name.
Oliver came two years later. A boy. Smaller than Jane had been. Quieter, even at birth, he didn't really cry that much. Michael wept again. He carried Oliver back and forth across the hospital room for two hours that night while you slept, just walking and talking to him quietly, and when you woke up at four in the morning he was sitting in the chair by the window with his son asleep against his chest, telling him very softly about the 'magical' trees on the grounds of Neverland.
Audrey was the surprise.
You were forty six. He was forty seven. You had both decided, maturely, that you could not have any more — mostly due to the post natal depression you experienced and had to pull yourself out of each time. He had agreed that it made sense to focus on the two little monsters you already had.
And then, 'pregnant' appeared on a test that you felt randomly compelled to take on a Saturday morning in your bedroom bathroom at the ranch, and you had walked downstairs in your dressing gown and shown it to him at the kitchen table and he had stared at it for ten full seconds before he started laughing and crying at the same time. He picked you up and kissed you so hard, you swore your lips would bruise.
"Jane, applehead, your mommy has a baby in her tummy" he explained proudly, whist kneeling down to cuddle your two other kids.
₊˚°⊹˚
He held her in the hospital with his face wet and said, very quietly — thank god we were wrong about being done.
He was there for every single one of them. Every single birth. Every single first feed. Every single sleepless night for the first three months after each baby came home.
He turned down a tour leg in asia the year Jane was born because he refused to leave her. He turned down a Disney soundtrack offer the year Oliver was born for the same reason.
He told his label, and management team, very politely and very firmly, that for the foreseeable future the children came first, and they could either work around it or drop him, and the label very wisely worked around it. His life’s work had led him to become a father and that was his priority.
₊˚°⊹˚
The brownstone in the Village was your refuge in the city. The ranch became your real home.
The children grew up between the two places, with a private tutor for the years they could not be in a normal school, and then normal school in the local community near the ranch, for the years they could.
They also had ecentric summers at Hayvenhurst with Michael's rather large family. They had so many cousins it got hard to count them all. Grand birthday parties, clowns and magicians that Michael would hire in to make sure his children, nieces and nephews would have exciting formative memories.
They had weekends with their grandparents on both sides and a childhood that you had both worked very hard, very deliberately, to make as ordinary as possible for children whose father was the most famous man alive and the least ordinary person to walk this earth.
You had never felt so alive, as to see Michael get along with his family again, after years of being distant from them. His brothers were fantastic uncles to your little ones and genuinely amazing company to keep. It was all relentless jokes, BBQ parties, mini concerts and A LOT of people. You loved the Jackson's but they were a messy bunch. Figuratively and literally.
Jackie, Michael's eldest brother, had cuddled you on a bright summer early evening, and told you that he was glad you were looking after his little baby, Michael. You had welled up at the thought of his brother finally seeing him happy, after a dark past.
₊˚°⊹˚
You retired from the stage at fifty two. You wrote two plays after that. The second one won the Pulitzer.
Michael, who had quite literally been your number 1 fan —and was still known to sneak into the stalls at performances of your written work, well into his 50s, even if you weren't there — went on to hang the certificate in his office.
He stopped touring at fifty six.
Not by choice exactly. His back had been going for a long time — the kind of slow wear that dancers know all too well. His knees had followed, and then somewhere in the year he turned fifty six there had been a show in Madrid where he had finished the encore and walked off the stage and quietly told Bill he was done.
He came home that week. He sat with you on the back terrace and he held your hand and he said — I want to be at home with them. While they still want me there. I don't want to be the dad who came back in the summer. I want to be the one who's just here.
Jane was twelve. Oliver was ten. Audrey was eight.
He told them himself, at dinner, the night he made the decision. He told them their dad was going to be at home from now on. He told them he was sorry he had been gone so much. He told them he was going to take Audrey to school in the mornings and pick her up in the afternoons and be at every single one of Oliver's tournaments and every single one of Jane's school plays.
Jane had cried.
Audrey, who had been eight at the time, had said — but Daddy, what are you going to do all day?
Michael had laughed. He had picked her up onto his lap. He had said; I'm going to be your dad, Auddie. That's the job.
You knew Michael loved you so, but he loved his kids even more and then sent sparks of unfiltered delight through your veins.
He had been your home for the best part of 30 years, and now he could live peacefully within the one he built to protect himself and his children, without burden and without harm.
fin.
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