for those like me who cannot install alternative android forks on their phone because the phone in question is thoroughly unrootable, I would recommend downloading anyapk on your phone while you still can. In their own words:
anyapk is a lightweight Android application installer that bypasses Google's developer verification requirements by using local ADB (Android Debug Bridge) connections. Smoothly install any APK file on your device without restrictions, gatekeepers, or corporate approval.
If you're reading this after Google's lockdown date and are unable to install anyapk the regular way, there is a method outlined on the github linked above which tells you how to install anyapk on your phone by plugging it into a computer with ADB installed on it. Once you have anyapk on your phone, you will not have to do that ever again (unless you delete anyapk off your phone)
[Description for the second image: a post from jrepin that reads:
"Sideloading" is the rentseeker word for "being able to run software of your choosing on a computing device you purchased". There is no reasonable case for an operating system developer having a say over what programs you run on your hardware.
--Eugen Rochko of Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/115093185284473606]
would you guys be interested in a jealousxjealous thewiz!michael and reader? like, michael invites reader (his bestie) to come to ny with him, but marlon is going too. and when mike spends way too much time with diana, reader stars spending more time confiding in marlon. until reader decides to just. go back to california, bc mike is not actually giving her any attention and she feels so hurt bc of this... and then i still have to determine the ending, but um. happy ending for sure.
would you guys be interested in a jealousxjealous thewiz!michael and reader? like, michael invites reader (his bestie) to come to ny with him, but marlon is going too. and when mike spends way too much time with diana, reader stars spending more time confiding in marlon. until reader decides to just. go back to california, bc mike is not actually giving her any attention and she feels so hurt bc of this... and then i still have to determine the ending, but um. happy ending for sure.
ao3 is not changing anything by the way! some people just want them to change for some reason. my guess is that these people just don't understand how the site works and refuse to actually learn how it works, so they blame the site because it's easier for them that way.
I don't talk about this a lot because it's not up for debate (& this is mostly a metal blog), but I'm a lifelong Michael Jackson fan. I traveled extensively, had incredible experiences with people from all over the globe & was in the goddamn trenches when the world was especially ugly to him.
I was lucky enough to be in his orbit numerous times & was there in the aftermath of his passing. Michael was special. He had an aura of confidence & calmness, but there was a profound sadness about him. Everyone always wanted something from him.
There is a moment in the new movie where he says something along the lines of "they're not my fans, they're my family." That was true. He was extraordinarily kind to us, but especially towards the end when he was just so damn tired & isolated. He always asked if *we* were okay, or if we needed anything.....even when his world was falling apart. We always told him that what we needed, was for him to take care of himself.
MJ was stubborn as fuck. This was well known amongst traveling fans. He had a consistently terrible PR team, & was too damn trusting of people. Even though he did seem otherworldly, he was a human at the end of the day (a funny as hell, sarcastic, curious one). He wasn't stupid, but as the most famous person on the planet, he didn't want to hear the word "no." There were many moments when he should have listened to ppl with his best interests in mind & he wouldn't budge. Being set in his ways & an occassional pain in the ass (he was a virgo after all 🤣), was all that he was ever truly guilty of.
I'm not a fan who is willing to absolve him of every bad decision, because he wasn't infalliable. He was in a prison of his own making to a certain extent. There were times when many of us wished he'd stop trying to over explain himself to people who were never going to listen. And moments where all we could think was "Michael, shut the fuck UP." He was complex & deeply misunderstood, but not a monster.
He's been dead almost 20 years & without fail, each time he starts to win, grifters (who are seemingly always in the middle of a financial crisis - funny how that is), drag themselves out to yell from the mountain tops. It never fails. It's always when the money is at peak flow 😑
I do wish the estate would do more to combat the nonsense narratives & protect his legacy, but here we are. We're better than where we've been in a minute, but I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. 🤷♀️
The movie has been a welcome redirect, but there are so many more things the estate *should* be doing. I just pray Michael: Part 2 is handled with extra special care.
And while the last few weeks have been incredible seeing him celebrated by everyone far & wide, I'm always suspicious of people's true intentions. You're welcome to come on board but...buckle up. Because they will never let him rest.
Unfollow me if this post makes you feel a certain way. It's not up for debate on this blog. I'm not entertaining opinions from the ether because I was there. I wouldn't trade those memories & moments for anything. I was part of the peak madness, the magic, the joy & the ugliness. All of it. There will never be another person like him. Ever. And I miss him terribly ❤️
It's 2026 & my MJ brain is loud again & I'm gonna stay here a while. If you're a moonwalker (esp one from way back), my DMs are always open & I'd love to give you a follow ❤️
pairing: childhood friend f!reader x michael jackson
summary: michael had always shared everything with his brothers. he had done it willingly, been the kid brother who took the jabs and ruffles of the hair even as he grew to their stature and decried that he was no longer a kid. but the one thing he’d never share? her, and only her.
disclaimer: this is purely a work of fiction and any individuals depicted aren’t reflective of reality. any representations made that resemble actual reality aren’t intentional.
───────────────────
1982 — ENCINO, CA
BENEATH THE SMOLDER OF THE CALIFORNIAN SUN, Hayvenhurst hummed with its typical youthful melody; choruses of laughter intermixed with the mewls and beckoning’s of its various wildlife occupants. The center of it all was the pool, its cerulean water reflecting both the sun and the jokes of siblings whose ages may suggest that such wisecracks are rather immature.
A childhood spent amongst the Jackson siblings — namely the older boys — taught Y/N that it was simply how they were and always would be. Perched at the pool’s edge in a ruffled swim piece that admired her figure, she paid no mind to their flirtatious endeavors that spanned across the pool’s length. The most boisterous of the remarks came from the usual suspect of Jermaine, and she merely shook her head as she dipped her foot into the rather warm water — a gesture that displayed her disinterest for the older Jackson boy.
He, ever relentless, persisted:
“I wouldn’t have to beckon on over to you if you just came on over here!”
His hand made a squelched sound as it met the concrete alongside him, grin bright and rivaling that of the sun’s brilliance.
Y/N spared a glance over the rim of her sunglasses that threatened to slide off her sunblock-slicked nose. Gauging her look, he tilted his head at her, casting a casual wave over at the person that was anchoring her oh so far away.
“He ain’t no fun! He’s too busy off in that head of his,” Jermaine remarked. He leaned back on the ball of his elbows, assessing his younger brother almost critically, “Worrying about God giving Prince all his ideas and what not….head in the clouds and not where it obviously should be…with the pretty girl next to him.”
At that concluding innuendo, an accompanying wink was cast towards Y/N, “Ain’t that right, sunshine?”
The young woman rolled her eyes at the use of her girlhood nickname. A nickname that Michael had only ever used. She then shifted from the casual slouch she had dipped into and leaned into a more straightened posture as if in a defensive stance against his gaze.
Since youth, she had tolerated Jermaine’s antics far more than the one blood-related to him. To her, it was the classic iteration of an older brother giving his kid brother a difficult time — even if that kid brother was a global star.
Said star — and partial recipient of the jab — flicked his gaze from where he floated in the water, the ringed float stilling with a halt of his swaying fingers. Despite the dark shades that settled over his eyes, it was clear as the blue sky that reflected in them that Michael was glaring at his older brother. If anyone knew how to nestle their way into his nerves and set them ablaze, it was Jermaine.
Michael’s eyebrows tilted into a furrow, evidently peeved. It wasn’t also hard to miss how the hand that relaxed off the curve of the float flexed into a clenched stance, knuckles flaring white. Or how his gaze wandered to her almost protectively.
Y/N clocked each twitch of irritation; it may have been microscopic and fleeting to the casual glance but this was her best friend, someone that was knit into her conscious. Woven to a depth far beyond that of friendship, and tugged with a faint longing at the uncharacteristic, protective look that crossed his face. Her fingers that were hooked over the pool’s edge tensed briefly and absentmindedly.
She cleared her throat as if to dull that pulse of longing, fixing Jermaine with a pointed smile, “You just like hearing yourself talk.”
Jermaine shrugged, “Not like I’m saying anything out of line here. Michael knows I’m just yanking his chain. Don’t ’ya, Mikey?”
Michael, who floated stiffly just at the edge of her toes, sucked in his bottom lip as if to hold his tongue. But the flushed red anger on his face betrayed just what the nature of any words may be.
Nevertheless, rather than relent to that beckoning challenge laced in his words, he merely swayed himself over to the pool’s side. In a fluid movement, he relinquished the float from beneath himself and maneuvered out of the water with a hoist. Alongside her, he moved with a quiet determination to flee this space as quick as he could manage in his saturated state.
She craned her head up to him, compelling her eyes to skirt past the way that water droplets dripped down from his saturated curls and into his eyelashes, making his brown eyes appear even more opulent.
“Don’t let him get to you, Mike,” she tried, lifting a hand to remove her sunglasses now that his stature was mostly obscuring the sun’s glow.
He deliberately avoided her gaze, plucking his towel from the nearby chair and murmuring, “I got my demos to work on.”
Y/N started to ease her feet from the pool, “I can come with—”
Striped towel now draped about his shoulders and his fingers toying with the frayed edges almost in agitation, he was quick to decline her pursuit of him.
“No,” the sharpness anchored in his typically airy tone had her pausing mid-reach for her own towel. Noting the pause, he was prompt to remedy the moment with a forced smile and gentle tone the world knew him by, “You stay on out here - have fun. I’ll just be inside.”
Their eyes leveled and she found the boy that was all too acquainted with burrowing into himself when his thoughts became too loud. It had haunted him since boyhood and seemed destined to even as fame crowded into every inch of normalcy in his life. She often wondered just what anchored him most days, spared him from drifting away into that wonderful mind of his.
She cast a sidelong glance to the remaining Jackson siblings across the pool, uncertain. Clearly Michael was upset and the last thing she wanted to be compelled back into was whatever game Jermaine was afoot with.
“You can come on over with us, Y/N!” Latoya called from the lounge chairs where Janet and her had sprawled out Vogue’s newest edition. The glossy pages gleamed in her lap as she gestured fervently for the girl to come join them.
Y/N’s gaze returned back to Michael, aware that his eyes had never left her.
They beheld her not with their usual swell of softness, but with a glint of something resembling greediness. It wouldn’t warrant a genius to assume that its presence had everything to do with Jermaine. As if his flippant, flirtatious commentary had crossed a tacit boundary for Michael. And by the covetousness that he looked at her now with, she had to wonder if she was at that boundary’s center.
She then forced herself to smile ever faintly, as if to dispel away the buzz that kindled her nerves at that wonder. Her fingers tinkered with the polka-dotted fabric of her towel that she had hastily grabbed, something tangible to fidget with as she asked him, “But we’re still good for movie night?”
He only nodded meekly, already on his heel to traipse into the house. And, ever naturally, she watched him.
—
THE MELODY OF THE opening credits for Singing in the Rain bounded through the dimly colored family room as she came on in from the kitchen with their popcorn bowl. The warmth of the snack softened into a comfortable presence against her hand as she traipsed towards the couch, where Michael sat quietly.
She hummed naturally to the dulcet din that buzzed from the television’s speakers, instinct anticipating that Michael’s far more trained hum would join her as it always tended to. Yet, it was only her and the dissipating melody of the credits that entertained the dim room.
Her dissonant humming faded, her eyes fully gauging him now that she had rounded the couch.
His lean legs stretched to the ottoman, hands dancing between haphazard fidgets and tense slides down the top of his thighs. His eyes focused deliberately on the screen as she eased down alongside him. She was prompt to clock the stiffness that erupted in his restless stance at her close presence, and how he tried ever harder to avoid eye contact. Evidently the pool incident hadn’t faded from being a sore spot in his mind.
She sucked her teeth; he could be so childish at times.
Y/N sturdied the popcorn bowl on the cushion that separated them, almost as if testing if he would forsake his boyish sulk. At a sidelong angle, she eyed him with an attempt at discretion and a charge of mounting annoyance. She stifled the softening that came to the edge of her frustration upon seeing just how flushed and frenzied the poor boy was.
He avoided her conveniently behind the drape of a couple of his dark curls, which caught the golden hue of the lamp behind them, casting him as soft and vulnerable as she had always known him.
But, in that moment, he was something seldom. Distant. Off wandering in his head to the tune of Jermaine’s jabs and perhaps to whatever implicit, burgeoning feelings they had danced around since adolescence.
Y/N had noted its bloom one day when they were on the eve of twelve. They had essentially dragged Bill to the toy shop that dotted one of Encino’s numerous bustling streets. It had - and still was - one of the places Michael would bound off to when everything, namely with his father, got to be suffocating.
That day it did feel like a pause in the chaos of reality.
The jingle of the silver bells above the door greeted them in a familiar chime as Bill propped it open for Michael and her to enter, and for him to bring up the rear in his usual manner. It was her last day in Encino before her family had to return to Gary, where the town felt all too bare without Michael living two houses down.
The dismay of the return to lackluster town had woven into her shoulders, evident by the subtle droop in her posture. It weaved about in her expression, contrasting defiantly with their brilliantly colored surroundings as she wandered after Michael towards the stuffed animal collection.
His traipse towards the aisle was in a deliberate and honed haste, and his taller stature gave him an advantage over that of her rather meager height. She subtly huffed to herself as her foot clipped a discarded toy on the ground, pitching her pace enough for Michael to have bound around the corner and from her sight.
“Whoa, there, kid,” Bill, ever heedful, abated her wobble with a hand to her arm. She compelled a small, appreciative smile amidst the broody shadow on her face.
And, in as fast as he had vanished, Michael came back capering around the aisle’s entrance. His hands were drawn behind his back, eyes alight with a giddiness that had long since made its home in his being. Asking him to behave as anything else was like trying to tell a fire not to burn.
Beholding it at that moment only soured the ache nestled in her heart.
“I ain’t letting you leave Encino with that frown on your face,” he mused with a smile, dimples and all. At that, he maneuvered his arms from their bearing behind his back. A stuffed giraffe was postured in his hands, and he held it out for her own to grasp onto it, “I know they were your favorite at the zoo. You take it back with you to Gary to make you smile when I can’t.”
Her hand accepted the plush, cheeks flushing with a peek of champagne pink. The rosiness was beyond just a bashful response to a mindful gesture. It bloomed with something deeper and beyond the emotional intelligence of an adolescent.
“I haven’t ever seen you be this thoughtful with your brothers,” she eventually teased softly, thumb coasting the outline of the giraffe’s ear.
He sheepishly smiled with a light shrug, “They ain’t as deserving. Only you are.”
That very giraffe, whose bonny coat of spots had dulled over the last decade, still sat perched on her bed in the apartment she now had in Encino.
The peculiar giddiness that had whispered into her conscious that day, had become a shout with an intensity that felt like those emotions were all their own person, afoot in the shadows until beckoned forward by admission of its existence.
And no time better than the present. 
In a fluid motion and with precision, she set aside the popcorn bowl to the coffee table and plucked the television remote from where it was propped against Michael’s leg. Gene Kelly’s crooning voice was hushed a moment later as the television went black.
“Hey! I was watching that!” Michael was quick to make an attempt at the remote in her grasp.
Swiftly, she evaded his reach and bounded off the cushion with her hand darting behind her back, settling a few stubborn paces across the room.
Michael was at her within a blink, and she careened rather clumsily away from him, their height difference still scorning her all these years later. In a moment, his arms had enclosed her torso, eliciting a rattle of a squeal from her.
“Gimme the remote, Y/N,” he whispered against the bow of her ear, kindling a small wildfire at that nape of skin.
She huffed as if to humble the fluster that cascaded over her by their closer proximity, “No, and let me go so I can go find someone who isn’t using the movie to give me the silent treatment. Maybe I’ll even see if Jermaine will.” The mention of the older Jackson boy was willful on her part — a test.
The hold that was oriented around her squeezed a hair tighter at Jermaine’s name. Though meant to be subtle, his response was a boisterous expression of jealousy — green-eyed, ugly, and festering for far longer than just today.
Gradually, Y/N angled herself around in his arms, and the bashful blush that tinged his skin betrayed any forthcoming defense against her realization.
“Gotcha,” she whispered, emphasizing her murmur of epiphany with a slight tap of the remote’s edge at his chest.
His eyes drifted down to hers immediately.
“What are you on about?”
A soft smirk perched comfortably on her lips, “Why you were all moody after the thing with Jermaine earlier.”
Michael’s jaw tightened slightly.
“I wasn’t being moody,” his voice was soft yet firm — defensive. “I was tired, is all.”
He then took a small step back from her, his hold and all falling away. A flush of cold replaced where the comfort of his arms had been, and she almost instinctively crossed her arms tight over herself in their sudden absence.
“Michael, you looked damn near ready to beat your brother,” she remarked softly, gaze mindful of how his hands then strung together in a nervous quirk, “All because of some silly, immature comments that he entertains only himself with.”
Michael took a few steps even further back, shaking his head and looking away from her, clearly stifling frustration.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” his voice cracked despite himself, pacing himself back until he met the couch. She stared at him silently as he sat stiffly upon the plush of the cushion, eyes fixated to the fidgety heap that was his hands in his lap.
She felt nearly as if she was seeing that young boy she had met all those years ago in Gary. Miles away from being the biggest star in the world and just existing with her in the little bubble that was that Indiana town. To recognize it now was to see a vulnerability that cracked through the irritation on his soft features. A blemish he couldn’t conceal.
“You make it awfully hard to,” a flicker of her own exasperation came alight, crossing her arms tighter.
“Since I was a kid, I did everything for them and with them,” he then pointedly said, not quite yelling, “My brothers — we shared everything. I never minded because I knew I had one thing they didn’t.”
Michael glanced to her now, vulnerable in a way she knew he despises himself for.
“Only you were ever that one thing I never had to share with them.”
Y/N couldn’t suppress the lapse in her exasperation at that.
“And you know what scares me?” he asked barely above the effort of a whisper, “That one day you won’t be because you got the sense that everything Jermaine said was right…and that your life is better off with someone like him around.”
He then kneaded tiredly at his eyes, breathing through his nose as if those words alleviated an ache that had been festering for too long.
Absentmindedly, she wandered a step closer to him, “Mike…”
“I am caught up too much in my head and I drag you along. Work…fans, paparazzi, and this tour now - I just drag you through it and you deserve more than that,” he feverishly admitted before all but hiding his face in his hands.
Y/N walked toward him until the smell of his aftershave lingered around her in a familiar comfort.
“Michael,” she whispered, bowing subtly down as to hover her hands just above his wrists. “Don’t go shutting me out like this.”
Her fingertips now skimmed his wrists discreetly until she bound her fingers around them loosely as to remove his hands from their flustered cocoon over his face.
The gentle hue of the lamp painted across the side of his face, framing it in a gold that emphasized the somber look in his dark eyes.
“There he is,” she smiled weakly.
His left hand came to rest almost instinctively on her wrist, as if it were an anchor in whatever ocean of turmoil he found himself afloat in.
“Listen to me,” she ducked as to meet his gaze more so, “I don’t ever want you thinking any of that. None of it is a bit the truth.”
She dared a touch closer, sweeping her fingertips against the couple rogue curls that flitted about his eyes. His eyes traced it all almost achingly.
“Especially when it’s coming from Jermaine,” she continued with an amused glint woven into her eyes and matching on her lips in a brief smile.
He chuckled lightly, delicate and genuine. Her smile grew fonder as she shifted her hands to perch on his lean shoulders.
“That beautiful mind of yours sometimes works against you,” she whispered then, fingers skimming at the dainty ringlets at the nape of his neck. His reaction was immediate; eyes fluttering, breath nearly stilling. “Getting you jealous over your own brother and thinking he’s anything near what I want.”
A mischievous glimmer had nestled in his gaze when it returned to her in the dappled light, “And what do you want, sunshine?”
The nickname was spoken in a breathy tease.
She leaned down, sparing only a breath’s worth between them, “I’m thinking you already know.”
And, with the likes of their movie and Jermaine forgotten, he kissed her.
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
Summary: you are a record store owner in 1980s new york and michael jackson, your childhood friend who disappeared into unimaginable fame suddenly walks back into your shop looking for vinyl. unfortunately the mutual pining, emotional repression, and sexual tension are all still very much alive. The night you share might even be the story behind 'Just Good Friends' Michael released on his record 'Bad' in '87.
Tags: 18+, smut, thriller era michael, reunion fic, childhood crushes, mutual pining, soft shy michael, sub!michael (sort of), filthy little whisper voice, whimpering, oral sex, praise kink vibes, music nerd michael, vinyl collector michael, emotional yearning, awkward tenderness, michael discovering he’s actually kinda needy, record store romance, bill bray hearing WAY too much from the other room
Word Count: 5286
Author’s Note: ty for all the love on my other fics, i rlly appreciate y’all. P.S its established michael has quick wit and can beatbox really well... I'd say he's a certified FRESH eater too ;)
also ngl these keep getting longer and longer lmao im so in the zone
playlist for this fic here
If you'd like more, send me an ask ;)
18+ content below, minors DNI
In the heart of New York City, nestled between a bustling deli and an antique shop, lay ‘Groove Central’, a quaint record store that had probably seen better days. The once vibrant orange paint now peeled, and the neon sign flickered intermittently in the mid-summer night, casting an eerie glow on the wet sidewalk. Yet, the place held an undeniable charm, a remnant of the disco era that refused to fade away.
The call came in at half past two on a Wednesday.
You were behind the counter logging a new arrival, a near-mint copy of Grover Washington Jr.'s Mister Magic that had come in with an estate collection that morning — when the phone rang. You picked up without looking away from the sleeve.
"Groove Central."
"Hi, yes." Clipped, professional, clearly someone's assistant. "I'm calling on behalf of a client who's looking for a specific record. An original pressing of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, 1971.. I've been calling around independent stores in the city. Your name came up."
You set the Grover Washington LP down. "Yeah I am sure we have it. First pressing, I think."
A beat of genuine relief on the other end. "Perfect. My client would like to come in personally to collect it this evening, if that's possible. Around seven? He'd also like to browse your wider collection."
"We close at eight."
"That's plenty of time for him. He will need to entirety of the shop to himself. We can provide a payment after for an uninterrupted shopping experience. We will call back tomorrow to start the invoice process. Thank you so much."
You were a bit stunned by the payment element. Brain now racing thinking, who could it possibly be?
"Can I get a name for the reservation?"
"He'll be there at seven." A pause. "Thank you again."
The line went dead.
You looked at the phone for a moment, mildly curious, then went back to your stock.
⋆⁺₊⋆
You were entirely unprepared for seven o'clock.
You'd sent your assistant home at six, turned the overheads off, put There's a Riot Goin' On on the turntable. The amber lamps made the store look the way it always looked in the evenings — warm and unhurried, a room that was decidedly not as busy as the streets outside its windows.
You were behind the counter with a lukewarm cup of tea and a stack of records still to log when the bell above the door went.
A large man stepped in first. He scanned the room once, efficiently, then moved to one side. Your eyes widened, you’d have recognised his little bucket hat anywhere, it was Bill Bray, and that could only mean who you were thinking about absentmindedly earlier… was here in the flesh.
And then he walked off the street. Hat tipped down over his face, with a leather jacket on.
⋆⁺₊⋆
Your father had opened Groove Central in 1976, the year he'd put down his bass for the last time.
He'd played with everybody — session work mostly, the kind that didn't put your name on the sleeve but kept the family going and meant you as a kid, got to stand in rooms where extraordinary things happened.
By the mid seventies he was a first-call bassist in New York, the kind of musician other musicians asked for by name. Then his back went, and the touring stopped, and he took everything he knew about music and put it into four hundred square feet on West 10th Street.
You'd grown up between New York and Los Angeles. Your mother's side of the family was in California, and for three years in your early teens your father had relocated you both to LA while he did session work out there, which was how you'd ended up at the MontClair Prep school.
The school for kids whose lives were already, in one way or another, a part of the industry.
You'd been 14. Quiet, bookish, more comfortable with your father's record collection than with most people your age. You'd sat next to a boy in music theory who was a year older than you and so genuinely, unpretentiously fascinated by everything the teacher said that you'd started paying more attention to him just to keep up with his questions.
Michael Joseph Jackson had been 15 and already, technically, the most famous teenager on the planet. He was part of the infamous Jackson 5 band. You had the privilege of knowing the entire Jackson clan personally.
He hadn’t acted like the most famous teenager in America. That was what had undone you, slowly, over years rather than moments. He listened carefully. Asked many thoughtful questions. He seemed more interested in hearing your opinions on the chord structure of a Stevie Wonder song than in impressing you. He remembered the books you mentioned in passing, asked after your family, wanted to know stories about your father’s session work and whether he’d ever played with Quincy Jones — years before Michael himself would work with Quincy on The Wiz. Being looked at that closely by someone so extraordinary had felt electric.
He'd been all limbs, gangly and bright, with careful enthusiasm and a shyness so genuine it had felt like something you’d never quite seen before in a boy his age.
You'd had feelings for him that you'd been sensible enough never to act on and had mostly, over the years, successfully buried.
You’d occasionally get a pang of jealous longing when you saw his videos roll on MTV. That distinct shyness gone, replaced by an absolute music machine. He was still very slim, and by god, the best dancer you had seen in a long while. To make matters worse - he was devastatingly attractive. The kind of beauty you’d see in old hollywood films, doe eyes, beautiful white teeth and a dashing smile. He never quite understood how disarming he was.
You were twenty three now. The store was yours. Your father was gone, four years past, and Groove Central was the best thing he'd left you.
You had not seen Michael Jackson since the summer you were seventeen and you'd both gone your separate ways after separately celebrating graduations — him into the stratosphere, you to NYU and then here, back to your father's store and your family record collection and the slower, more considered side of music that had always been your real home.
He was not who you once knew. He was older and more private and considerably more destabilising. You remembered his handwriting in the margins of shared sheet music and the sound of his laugh when his brothers did something funny, laying with him at his parents' pool in the summer in Encino.
⋆⁺₊⋆
He was looking at the record displays. He hadn't seen you yet.
You had approximately four seconds to act natural and not like a fangirl. He’d hate that.
You used those mere seconds to set your cup down very quietly, straighten up, and arrange your face into something that gave absolutely nothing away.
He turned.
The recognition moved across his face slowly; not the performed kind, not the public kind. The real kind. It was a private, knowing smile.
"Y/N."
His voice was lower than you remembered. Considerably different but still had that really airy quality. You thought his manner and voice was what totally set him apart from others. The rest of him was… well… you were not going to think about the rest of him right now, you were going to be a professional.
"Michael." You came out from behind the counter at a pace you were proud of. Measured. Easy. "I didn't know it was you. Your assistant didn't leave a name."
"I know." He was looking at you with an attention that felt very familiar and not at all the same as it used to. "I wasn't sure you'd still be in the city. You took over the store?"
"My father passed four years ago." You watched the softness move through his expression, unperformed and immediate. "He left it to me. I'd just graduated from NYU."
"I'm sorry about your father." Simply said, and meant. "He was one of the best."
He stuck out his hand, which struck you as overly formal but, perhaps he was used to this greeting now, constantly meeting new people. You shook it firmly and let your hand swing back to your side. He looked over you briefly, top to bottom. You in your bell bottoms, your denim waistcoat, the pale green bandana tied around your neck.
"He really was." You let yourself look at him for just a moment; actually look, cataloguing the distance between eighteen and now, the way the shyness was still there but underneath it something had settled within him. His hair was tied back in a hair tie, all curls and no Afro. He was slender but seemed firm. You swallowed spit nervously.
"You're looking for something specific. Your assistant mentioned Marvin Gaye?"
"What's Going On." He said it with a breathy laugh following it... "Y’’know… an Original pressing. It's for my mother's birthday next week."
"Sure, I have it. Follow me.."
You led him to the soul section. Pulled the record from its slot — third from the left, you always knew exactly where everything was, and held it out.
He took it with both hands, looking at it fondly.
You watched him turn it over. Read the label. Run his thumb along the sleeve's edge. He was awfully sentimental about records, and you supposed you were the same.
His hands were just as you remembered — long-fingered, deliberate — and you looked away from them and back at his face, which was not significantly safer. You cleared your throat and willed the blush to diminish from your cheeks.
"Tamla original," you said. "First pressing. Some edge wear on the sleeve, vinyl is clean. VG plus, I’d say."
"It's perfect." He looked up. "She used to play this record on Sunday mornings. Every Sunday, without fail. The whole album, start to finish, while she made breakfast." A pause. "I've been trying to find the original for a while to gift to her. She lost it in the move to LA way back when."
"Your mother has good taste."
"She has the best taste." He said it simply. "Everything good about my taste in music came from her."
You marvelled at him again.
The most famous person you had ever personally known, standing in your father's store, talking about something so intimate. The gap between who the world thought he was and who was actually standing in front of you was, as it had always been, vertiginous.
"well," you said, turning back toward the counter. “I can get this packaged up safely,” He grabbed onto your arm gently and swung you back around to face him.
"If it’s alright I’d love to have a look around, I rarely ever get time to browse the stands, see what is going on outside the pop sphere."
He was already drifting toward the funk section, hands loosely behind his back, reading spines with that focused private attention. Bill his bodyguard, whom you’d known from childhood, settled near the door, watching the street, and passersby. Bill gave you a small smile, and you returned it gladly. The store went quiet around the three of you, the crackle of the record playing evident.
You trailed back to the counter and watched him. He intermittently looked up at you, a far off look on his face. You wondered what he was thinking about. Did he remember the graceful and intimate touches you had whilst hanging out at Hayvenhurst, playing in the backyard, or at the pool with his brothers?
You were just friends, you knew that - but you often wondered if Michael had the emotional intelligence to know you were completely batshit in love with him. Well in love the way a teenager could love.
You didn’t know him anymore. Didn’t know if he was with someone. There was always a new story in the tabloids about the type of girls he liked to date.
He moved through the store the way your father used to move through record fairs; slowly, deliberately, occasionally pulling something out and holding it at a slight angle to peek at the inner sleeve. He occasionally shouted over to Bill with comments about artists he hadn’t heard in a while, and he picked up the albums and held them under his arm.
You'd spent some years trying to forget quite a lot of things about him that were charming, with uneven success. He was so kind and gentle with everyone in his life; he didn’t act famous. He seemed to have a sweet relationship with Bill. You bit your lip to keep yourself from smiling broadly at the thought of that. You remembered his father being mean, and you were secretly glad that he wasn’t around that for the most part anymore.
He appeared at the counter twenty minutes later with a stack of seven — Sly Stone, Bobby Womack, a rare Syreeta that had been new in that week; you’d found it at a famous person’s apartment clean out, and an original Chic twelve inch alongside three others.
You went through them without comment, noting each one.
"The Syreeta," he said, watching you. "How long have you had that?"
"Since last week." You turned it over. "Most people don't know who she is, but I found it at some old broadway actor’s apartment uptown. It was an estate sale. I saved it from the trash."
"She sang backup on Where I'm Coming From," he said immediately. "Stevie produced her first two albums. She's extraordinary and nobody talks about her enough."
You looked up at him.
He was watching you with that same expression, simply, genuinely wanting to know what you thought. It was so unchanged from school that it made something in your chest tighten.
"My father felt exactly the same way about her, hence why I felt compelled to pick it up" you said.
"He taught you well." He chuckled, fiddling in his pocket to get out his wallet.
"He tried." You began writing up the total. "He would have kept you here for two hours talking about this stack alone and been completely unbothered about whether that was an imposition."
"It wouldn't have been." He leaned slightly on the counter. "I would have stayed."
"I know," you said. "You always would. The debrief after movies on a friday night at mine always went on for way too long."
He laughed again at that, a breathy one. He remembered fondly, clearly.
The silence that followed was comfortable, you had history — it was a full silence rather than empty. Familiar in a way that made the years between meetings feel slightly less like distance.
"Come with me, I can play you the Marvin Gaye record to let you hear that it's in good condition" you walked around the counter, heading toward the back door.
“You can also have a look through some of my personal collection, see if there is anything you want”
Michael flashed a pretty smile at you, one that reached his eyes and followed you through the back.
The back room was the part of the store that was entirely yours.
Your father had used it as an office. You'd ripped the desk out within the first month and made it into what it actually wanted to be; a listening space. Lower ceilinged than the shop floor, warmer, every wall lined with overflow stock and records you kept for yourself and had no intention of selling. The sofa your father had bought with the building was the colour of burnt amber, a worn down leather couch, but you loved it because it was softer than any modern stiff thing.
There was a fancy red-shaded lamp in the corner, giving the room a soft light. And in total ‘you’ fashion, a disco ball hanging from the ceiling on a chain, small and slightly lopsided, turning in the draft from the vent with a lazy indifference to whether anyone was watching.
One of your other staff had burned patchouli incense in the room earlier in the week. It still lived in the air, low and sweet.
You put the record on the turntable. The one he chose sweetly for his mother’s birthday was one that existed in a small overlap between his lives, the old and the new, because you’d believed Michael had lived so much in his limited years. It felt like the right gift.
You let him walk around for a while, picking up and looking at the extensive collection you had. He’d occasionally make a noise of approval, or turn around and look at you with sheer shock on his face, as if to say ‘how the hell did you get this?’
Eventually, after shuffling around and going back and forth in casual conversation, he flopped onto the sofa.
The amber light in the back of the record shop seemed to pool around you and Michael, leaving the rest of the world—the bins of albums, the dusty counter, the street outside—in a soft, forgotten blur.
The old leather couch sighed as Michael shifted, the record sleeve of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave” resting on his knee. He’d been quiet for a long time, just breathing in the quiet.
“You remember,” he said, not a question. His voice was that familiar, breathy whisper, but it had a new weight to it. “My house. After school. We’d always hang?”
You nodded, your own voice feeling rusted from disuse. “Your room. That ugly shag carpet you had spilled SO much ketchup on.” You laughed, as Michael covered his face with his big hands.
“I tolerated that filthy carpet so we could listen to the new J5 Demos” you said, after letting him squirm for a moment. “I loved hearing the rough arrangements, and… your vocal”
“Yeah.” He looked down at his hands, turning them over as if inspecting them.
“And gods - my brothers… they’d be outside the door. Jermaine, mostly. They knew how much I liked having you as a friend. I barely had any.” He said.
“He’d grab me in the hallway after I’d let you leave out of the front door,” Michael’s throat worked as he swallowed. “He’d say things. Put his arm around my neck, real tight, and he’d lean in and say, ‘Mikey, that little friend of yours is gonna be trouble. She’s got a walk that says she knows things.’ Or Tito would whistle under his breath when you’d bend over to pick up your books and he’d go, ‘Damn, Mike. Educate me.’”
He finally looked at you, his eyes huge and dark in the dim light. “They were teasing me. I knew that. But I… I didn’t get the point of the tease. I didn’t understand the… the heat behind the words. I’d just get flustered. My ears would get hot. I’d change the subject to the new bassline on a track.” He gave a small, self-deprecating shake of his head.
“I always would stick up for you, as I thought they were being mean. Little did I know, they were just being filthy.” He remarked, rubbing his hands up and down his jeans - they seemed sweaty. Was he nervous?
You found your voice, soft. “You were a good friend, Michael.”
“I was so lost in my childhood,” he whispered back, his gaze intense. “A ghost in my own life. I didn’t understand anything around me, I was so stunted.”
“Its all coming back” He said, as he picked up the renowned ‘Heat wave’ song. “Now looking back, I had the biggest crush on you. I totally get what a ‘heat wave’ is now in retrospect.”
You chuckled under your breath, feeling a blush creep up onto your face.
“Michael, you must know I felt the same. I tried hard to keep it under wraps as the whole world thought you were cute and I never thought it would go anywhere. We were so young” You said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Well..at night… in my bed…” He leaned closer, the scent of his cologne—something subtle and expensive—mingling with the smell of old vinyl.
“I clearly wasn’t so naive, because I’d think about you. In my room. The way the sun caught the gold in your hair. The sound of your laugh. And I’d…” He moved from your touch slightly, clearly nervous about his next statement.
“ I’d- I’d touch myself. Under the covers. Quiet as a mouse. So no one could hear me. And I’d dream about… about making you feel what I was feeling. This… this ache. This good ache. I dreamed about making you sigh. Making you… you know.”
He said it with such innocent, painful directness that it stole your breath. “Cum,” you said quietly, the word feeling both crude and sacred in the hushed space.
He flinched, just a tiny, reflexive jerk, then a slow, dawning smile spread across his face. It was shy, but beneath the shyness was a banked fire. “Yeah,” he breathed. “That. I dreamed about that.”
He then did the inevitable, pulled you in by your neck and kissed you. It felt clumsy and a little hard, but the passion was there. He was warm and he smelt sweet and a little like musk. He pulled back to search in your eyes. You stared back, completely stunned, mouth swollen from his kiss.
In a movement that was both hesitant and irrevocable, he slid from the couch to his knees on the worn Persian rug. The sight was breathtakingly intimate. Michael Jackson, in his perfect white socks and tailored trousers, kneeling before you in the shadows of your own shop. He looked up, his expression a vulnerable plea.
“I’m still… that,” he said, his voice trembling slightly. “Lost boy..” He bit his lip, a nervous habit you remembered. “But my mouth… my hands… they ain’t so clueless anymore. I may want to keep other things sacred for marriage, but I don’t know when I will see you again and I want to make you feel good. Let me? Please?” He plead.
“If you feel the same of course.” He paused, his grip tightening on the couch on either sides of your legs. He was nervous. The boy of your childhood dreams, begging to make you feel good, on the floor in front of you.
“Let me do what I dreamed about when I was too scared to even say your name out loud in the dark.”
You reached out, your fingers brushing his cheek and moving his curls from his eyes. “Michael… Bill’s out front. He might hear.”
He turned his face into your touch, nuzzling your palm. His eyes closed for a second, then opened, meeting yours with a startling, animalistic focus that belied his trembling hands. “Let him hear,” he murmured, and the shyness was still there, but it was wrapped around a core of pure, defiant will. “I don’t care. I've been quiet and placid my whole life.”
His fingers, those famous, graceful fingers, went to the button of your jeans. His touch was clumsy with urgency, fumbling until the button popped open. The zipper came down with a slow, deliberate zip that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room.
“Michael, this is crazy. Bill will hear us and wonder what the hell is going on. Does he even know that you know me?” You asked, incredulous, but excitement most definitely growing between your legs.
Michael looked up at you from the floor, a smirk on his face. “He knows all about you, Y/N”
He made himself comfortable on the soft carpet.
“I’m gonna be quiet now,” he whispered, almost to himself. “Gonna let my mouth do the talking.”
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of your jeans and your underwear and tugged them down to your thighs. The cool air was a shock. He stared, his breath catching in a soft, reverent huuhh.
“Pretty,” he breathed, the word full of awe. “Just like I thought. So pretty.” He didn’t use cruder words. He didn’t need to. The worship in his tone was more explicit than any vulgarity.
Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to the inside of your thigh, just a soft, closed-mouth kiss. Then another, higher up. His lips were soft, warm. He was mapping you with kisses, shyly, until his nose brushed against your core and he let out a shaky, overwhelmed moan.
“Oh, wow,” he whispered against your skin, his hot breath making you tremble.
His tongue touched you then. Hardly a frantic lunge, but a tentative, questioning stroke. A slow, flat pass from bottom to top. He did it again. And again. Learning the shape of you, the texture. He made a soft, humming sound of discovery deep in his throat—"Mmm-hmm"—that vibrated exquisitely.
“Is that…” he pulled back slightly, his lips glistening, his eyes searching yours in the gloom. “Is that good? Am I doing it… right?”
“Yes,” you gasped, your head falling back against the couch. “God, Michael, yes.”
The affirmation seemed to unlock him. The shy friend you once knew vanished, replaced by a man possessed by a single, driving purpose. He dove back in with a soft, desperate cry, his mouth latching onto you with a hungry suction. His tongue became relentless, licking and circling with a frantic, focused energy that was shockingly adept. It was as if the decades of imagined rehearsals in his mind were finally being performed.
The sounds were wet, intimate, obscenely loud in the small space. The slick shhlip of his tongue, his ragged, open-mouthed pants—ahh… ahhh—the low, continuous groans of pleasure he was making. His hips began to rock against the hard floor where he was laying on his front, in a frantic, grinding rhythm, the rough wool of his trousers scraping the rug. You felt guilt you were letting him lay there untouched.
“You taste so good,” he moaned, the words slurred and hot against your flesh. “So sweet. Like… like honey and lightning.” He sucked gently on your clit, then soothed it with a flat lap. “I used to wonder… what it would be like. Now I know. It’s better. It’s so much better.”
From the front of the shop, a faint, distant sound: the creak of a floorboard and the hum of an incoherent melody playing at the front of the shop. Michael froze for a second, his mouth still pressed to you. You tensed.
“Michael…”
“Shhh,” he murmured, not moving. His voice was a dark, possessive rumble you’d never heard from him before. “Let him listen.” He began to move his tongue again, slower now, more deliberate, as if putting on a show for the unseen audience. “Quite frankly, I’m not leaving you again until I’ve done this.”
He sealed his lips over you and sucked, hard and deep, and a broken cry was torn from your throat, echoing slightly in the cavernous shop.
“Let me help you, Michael” You reached down to try to get the belt on his pants.
“No,” he growled, the vibration traveling straight to your bones. “This is just for you. All for you. That’s it. Let me hear you. Let me hear what I’m doing to you.” His rhythm became punishing, his tongue a firm, insistent point of heat, his suction relentless. His own dry-humping against the floor grew more frantic, a counter-rhythm to the work of his mouth. “This is for us back then,” he chanted between laps, his voice guttural, almost sobbing. “This was what I should have done… my little secret crush, and now you’re all mine… cum for me… please… I need to feel it… I need to know I made you feel good…”
The coil inside you, wound tight by his desperate passion, by the terrifying risk of being heard, by the sheer surreal poetry of it all, snapped. Pleasure detonated, white and silent before the roar filled your ears. You arched off the couch, a strangled gasp the only sound you could manage as the waves crashed through you.
He drank it all in, his eyes on you, despite his mouth on your centre. His mouth soft and accepting now, lapping gently, humming softly— as he savored every pulse and shudder. When the last tremor subsided, he rested his forehead against your thigh, his entire body limp, his own frantic grinding finally stilled. His breathing was ragged, loud in the sudden quiet.
A long moment passed. Then, another soft creak from the front. Bill, moving around - likely wondering what was taking Michael so long.
Slowly, trembling, Michael pushed himself up. He used his sleeve to wipe his mouth, a boyish, awkward gesture. He couldn’t quite meet your eyes as he gently, tenderly, pulled your clothes back into place, his fingers fumbling with the button. His shyness had returned, flooding back in the aftermath, but it was a different shyness. It was satiated. Peaceful.
He climbed back onto the couch and sat close, his shoulder pressed against yours. He took your hand again, lacing his fingers through yours. They were warm, slightly damp.
“I knew it,” he said softly, staring straight ahead at the wall of silent records. A small, private, utterly beautiful smile touched his lips. “I knew it would feel better than what i imagined. Making you feel good.”
You bashfully looked down, a little embarrassed from coming undone for someone who was merely a stranger to you now.
When you looked down at your lap, in the corner of your eye you saw how strained he was against his jeans.
“I feel bad… that you won’t let me relieve you” you nodded to his crotch.
“Oh” he looked down at himself and shifted himself slightly.
"I'll have to find another excuse to come find a limited edition record from you," he said, his voice very quiet, a smirk playing at the edge of it.
You laughed under your breath. There was a sadness in it, the kind that comes from knowing someone has to go back to something enormous and consuming that has very little room for ordinary afternoons.
"Michael." You kept your voice even. "Do you mean it? Can we keep in touch? I was a bit lost when you left for tour back then — and then that was that, you were just… gone. Please don't only come here when you need something."
"No, no." He turned to face you properly, his eyes steady. "I want you back in my life. Genuinely. It would mean a lot — to have someone around who isn't on the payroll, who knew me before all of this." A pause. "I'm trying to find my way back to where I came from. This business has a way of making you forget."
You nodded. Your father had said something very similar once, about the industry and what it cost people.
"Well," you said. "Don't be a stranger."
He stood, fixed his jacket, and his pants, that were… still straining against his crotch, and looked around the back room one last time as if cataloguing it.
"Poor Bill," he said, mostly to himself. "He must be completely bewildered out there."
You walked him to the door. On the way through the shop he paused, ran his hand along a row of spines the way you'd watched him do all evening, and then he was at the threshold, the city loud and bright beyond him, and he was Michael Jackson again in a way he hadn't quite been for the last hour.
He turned. That private smile, one more time.
"Goodbye," he said. "For now."
"For now," you agreed.
The bell above the door rang. He shoved his hat on, brim close to his forehead, and then he was gone.
You stood in the middle of your father's store for a long moment. There's a Riot Goin' On had finished long ago. The record skipping and jumping as it lingered on its smooth centre. The amber lamps hummed. The disco ball turned its slow, lopsided way in the draft from the vent.
You went back behind the counter, picked up your cup — stone cold now — and went back to logging the records.
Third from the left. New stock needed. You noted. And then a rather large giggle spilled out of your mouth into the empty space.
Please stop trigger tagging with #epilepsy tw/cw/warning/etc.
I need every single person to understand how horrible tumblr’s tagging system is
I go into the tag for epilepsy and its all flashing lights. We can’t use our own tag because people without epilepsy fill it up with improper warnings.
Use ‘flashing’ in place of ‘epilepsy’ in your tags. You aren’t warning people of epileptics, you’re warning us of flashing lights. Please please tag properly. Epileptics say this endlessly and constantly and it’s ignored. You are risking lives by doing this.
Here’s proof of what I mean:
THIS POST IS 100% OKAY TO REBLOG, I ENCOURAGE PEOPLE WITHOUT EPILEPSY TO ESPECIALLY DO SO!
What really ticks me off when talking about ai is when people are like "it's unavoidable" or "you'll have to learn to use it someday" or "its going to be part of the future" like no it's plenty avoidable actually if you have a spine stronger than a dandelion. You simply say "no" and continue to use your own goddamn brain.
i love to see people who are like "you can talk about csa but not around minors that's gross!" like idk how to tell you this but. who do you think is getting csa'd. i'll give you a hint: the first letter in csa does not stand for "adult"
One of my college professors, in a queer lit class actually, spent an entire class on the following argument:
“Push by Sapphire is children's literature. Prove me wrong.”
(Context if you're not familiar with the book and why this was an extremely provocative thing to say)
OP's point was exactly the bulk of my professor's argument. And imho my professor was right. Millions of children have to live through this shit every year. And I just remember my professor posing undergrads (some of them very indignant or offended about this line of argument) the question:
"So they have to live through it, but they're not allowed to read about it?"
Or, as the professor clarified, "So they have to live through it, but don't get to have access to the words and information they need to understand and process what's happening to them? They information they need to know that this is wrong, and telling the right person can (hopefully) save them from more of it?"
A lot of people tried to argue, "Well, okay then, kids who have had to live through that can read those books, but only those kids, it's not appropriate for kids who don't already know or have trauma about it."
But there is no way to reliably or completely separate out those two groups. After all, if there was, cases of csa wouldn't almost all go undetected or unpunished.
If you don't talk about csa to or in front of children, you drastically reduce children's ability to tell you when they're victims of it.
And gotta say, I spent a lot of the time sitting in that lecture (2016) thinking if a lot of tumblr users had to sit through it, they'd probably explode - and that's something to work on, if you relate to that response, because we need to be able to have these conversations - because when I say "think of the children!" I for once mean it unironically.
lis in wonderland @litenkrake - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
