Lovern_9 @lovern-9 - Tumblr Blog

Can you write a fic where reader is a musician and apart of a band but one night she has a song idea but doesn’t like how her voice sounds in it so she gives the song to prince and it ends up being his biggest song purple rain. And Michael is kinda sad she gave it to him since he barely slept when he got song ideas so ‘god wouldn’t give them to prince’ btw reader and prince are friends .also could you make her African British like me😭

the ones you throw away ✦

⊹ ࣪ ˖ ꒰ঌ ♡ ໒꒱ ⊹ ࣪ ˖ thriller era! michael jackson x rockstar gf! reader

summary ⋆ after writing a song inspired by a stranger standing in the rain, reader ends up handing it off to prince during a late-night studio conversation in los angeles. months later, sitting beside michael watching the performance on television, she’s forced to confront the possibility that she gave away more than just a song.

content ⋆ thriller era michael jackson, fem! reader, established relationship, musician reader, prince cameo, creative insecurity, third person, oc bandmates (the reader is not an oc dw), emotional arguments in hotel rooms, quiet domesticity, michael spiritually competing with prince, british spelling warning, 7.3k words O-O

author's note ⋆ I HOPE THIS FULFILLS THE REQUEST, i wasn't really sure where i wanted to go with it at first but i found my footing eventually. I'M ALSO SO SORRY, I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO ADD THE FACT THE READER AS AFRICAN INTO THE PLOT SO I KINDA JUST DIDN'T DESCRIBE HER APPEARANCE, you are free to view her as any race! i just didn't really want my representation of the nationality to be shallow. also my first time writing in third person, do you guys like it? genuinely tell me cuz i'm not sure how i feel about it and i wouldn't mind going back to second.

the rain hadn't stopped since that morning.

it was the kind of rain that didn’t even bother announcing itself, just a grey sky that had decided it was falling today and wanted to get it over with. the window above the radiator had fogged softly at the edges, and outside the rain had turned the whole street reflective, streetlamps stretching their amber across the wet pavement.

she was trying to decide between two jackets.

“that one’s ugly,” michael said from the bed.

she didn’t look at him. “you said that about the last one.”

“because the last one was ugly too.”

“michael.”

"i'm just saying." she could hear him shifting against the pillows. he’d spent the better part of the last half hour watching her pack with the complete contentment of someone who, for once, had nowhere to be and was revelling in it. he'd flown in four days ago — a promotional stop for thriller that had conveniently extended itself once he'd realised she was still in the city. the label had stopped questioning his schedule adjustments. probably easier for everyone involved.

“you’re going to LA. they have a whole—” he waved his hands vaguely, trying to gesture the concept into existence, “—aesthetic over there.”

“what does that mean?” she glanced over her shoulder.

“you know. beige. tiny dogs. open shirts. everyone looks like they own a convertible.”

“LA's aesthetic is sunglasses and designer drugs." she folded the jacket and shoved it into the case anyway.

“exactly,” michael said. “with those clothes, you’ll be dressing like you solve murders.”

she raised a skeptical eyebrow and asked, "are you calling me sherlock holmes?"

he let out a snort at that before raising his hands in surrender.

“fine,” he said. “but when you’re sweating to death in leather, don’t blame me.”

she threw a rolled-up pair of socks at him without turning around properly. she heard him catch it, smug and immediate, and hated that she was smiling.

the room was warm, the radiator was ancient and had two settings: off and unreasonable. the flat smelled faintly of the candle she’d lit that morning and the remnants of last night’s takeaway she kept meaning to throw away. it felt comfortable in a way that was suddenly a little fragile knowing she was leaving in two days. southbound had a slot booked at sunset sound in los angeles: three weeks with jerry wexler, which still didn’t feel entirely real whenever she said it out loud. the band had been buzzing about it for months, danny nearly vibrating out of his skin every time someone brought it up. she was excited too. she just moved through excitement more quietly than most people.

she was trying to decide between two pairs of boots when she felt him step up behind her, his chin settling onto her shoulder.

“come lie down,” he said.

she didn’t look up from the stack of t-shirts she was currently attempting to force into a corner of the suitcase. “i’m busy.”

“you’ve been 'busy' for forty-five minutes and that case is still half empty.” michael leaned further over her shoulder, peering into the mess of half-folded denim and miscellaneous cables with clear opinions for someone making absolutely no effort to help.

“because you keep distracting me.” she turned just enough to look at him properly. he’d put on the expression again — all wide eyes and wounded innocence despite the fact he knew perfectly well what he was doing. “michael.”

“i’m not doing anything.”

“you’re breathing on my neck.”

“that’s just breathing. i can’t really stop.”

but then he kissed the space just below her ear and she immediately regretted making eye contact with him at all.

“come lie down,” he said again. “you’ve got two days.”

“i’ve got two days and a lot to do.” she untangled herself from him carefully, pressing a quick peck to the corner of his jaw before turning back to the wardrobe. “go be decorative somewhere else.”

he made a sound of deep personal offence and retreated. a second later the bed frame creaked beneath his weight again.

“what about this?” he called a moment later. she looked over her shoulder to find him holding up the green dress she’d had since university, the one with the fraying hem she kept meaning to fix.

“put that down.”

“this is a good dress.”

“it’s falling apart.”

“vintage,” he said seriously. “that’s what they call it in the boutiques. vintage.”

“i will leave you in this flat.”

he put the dress down, laughing, and she turned back to the wardrobe while the flat settled into its comfortable noise again — rain against the glass, the radiator ticking, michael humming a tuneless melody behind her. she’d learned in the past few months that he was almost never silent. humming, tapping rhythms against his knees, half-singing words to songs that didn’t exist yet. it had become part of the texture of him somehow, the sound of him occupying space.

she was reaching for a jumper when she glanced out the window.

there was a man standing on the pavement across the street.

just — standing there. no umbrella, hood down, his coat gone dark across the shoulders from the weather. he wasn't sheltering, wasn't waiting for anyone, wasn't looking at his watch. he was just standing with his face tilted up, like he'd decided the storm was happening to him and had made his peace with it.

she stopped reaching for the jumper.

the streetlights blurred strangely through the downpour, washing everything in soft bruised colours.

the stillness of him against all that movement pulled at her immediately, the way he looked almost deliberate standing there, like he was exactly where he meant to be despite everything falling on him — and she felt a strange pull somewhere beneath her ribs. not an emotion she could name yet. just a sensation taking shape.

the melody came before she understood what it was.

four notes, barely there, just breath and pitch. she wasn't humming, not quite. it was quieter than that, more like the sound had arrived in her and was finding its way out.

she stood at the window and watched the man across the road while the melody unfolded slowly, five notes now, something wide and aching in a way that wasn't sad exactly, just — vast. like looking at too much sky at once.

behind her, michael had gone quiet.

she didn't stop. didn't reach for anything to write it down, just stayed there while it moved through her. outside, water streaked gold beneath the streetlamps and eventually the man turned and walked away, slow and unhurried, like he'd finally decided to leave.

she watched him until he disappeared around the corner.

the melody stayed.

she turned back to the wardrobe, reaching absently for the jumper, still humming under her breath without really noticing she was doing it.

“what is that?” michael asked behind her.

“don't know yet,” she murmured.

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it was going to be an eleven-hour flight.

danny had fallen asleep before they’d even left the taxi, which was either a talent or a medical condition; she’d never quite decided which. he was the kind of frontman who could sleep anywhere and still walk onstage looking touched by god twenty minutes later, which remained deeply irritating to the rest of the band.

across the aisle, priya had her headphones on and her eyes closed, though whether she was actually asleep or simply done with conversation was anyone’s guess.

the rest of the southbound crew were scattered somewhere further back through the cabin, and the plane had drifted into that strange late-night atmosphere long-haul flights always seemed to develop, where everyone collectively agreed to pretend they weren’t trapped in an uncomfortable metal tube somewhere over the atlantic.

michael was asleep beside her.

he’d fought it for a while — had sat upright with great personal dignity reading a magazine for approximately twenty minutes before his head had started making that gradual, negotiated descent toward her shoulder. she’d felt the exact moment he lost the argument with himself. now he was slumped against her side, breathing evenly. she’d carefully taken the magazine from his hand before it could slide into the aisle.

she should sleep too.

instead, she stared at the back of the seat in front of her for a moment, then reached into the bag beneath her feet and pulled out her notebook.

it was still there. of course it was. melodies didn’t really leave once they arrived; that was the gift and the problem with them. she’d been carrying it since the window, since the man in the rain, four notes becoming five becoming something she still couldn’t quite close her hand around. she’d caught herself humming it in the shower that morning without meaning to. had caught it on her lips while she was locking up the flat.

she clicked her pen and looked at the blank page.

there was something useful about writing on planes. the world narrowed down to a few manageable things, provided you could ignore the nausea: the engine beneath your feet, the darkness beyond the glass, the occasional rustle of somebody turning over in their sleep. no distractions. no obligations. no michael holding dresses against himself with complete sincerity until she gave up trying not to laugh.

eleven hours in the sky with nowhere else to be.

she wrote the first four notes down in the shorthand she'd been using since she was fifteen — not proper notation, just her own system, loops and dashes that would mean nothing to anyone else but were perfectly legible to her.

then the next phrase.

then the bridge that had been hovering somewhere at the edge of her thoughts since yesterday, which turned out to already be there in full once she reached for it, like it had simply been waiting for her to get quiet enough.

michael shifted beside her at some point, his hand finding her arm in his sleep automatically, like he’d gotten used to knowing where she was.

she paused, waiting to see if he’d wake. he didn’t. she kept writing.

by the time she put the pen down the page was nearly full and the cabin was almost completely dark, the endless drone beneath her feet making it impossible to tell how much time had passed anymore. she looked at what she'd written.

it was good. she knew the difference, knew that recognising something special and being capable of writing it were two entirely separate abilities. this felt like one of those songs that arrived already formed, needing very little from her except attention. she read it through twice.

southbound had always worked because everybody understood the shape of it. danny at the front with the microphone and half the room already watching him before he even opened his mouth. priya behind the drums, keeping everything moving. her further back with a guitar strapped across her shoulder, writing most of the songs and stepping in for harmonies when she needed to.

she'd spent so long existing inside that structure it had stopped feeling like a decision somewhere along the line.

this song felt different.

more exposed. less interested in hiding behind cleverness or distance. it felt awkwardly close to her somehow, like somebody had reached directly into the centre of her chest and translated what they found into music before she could stop them.

it didn’t sound like southbound.

she could already see the stage it belonged on. it sounded like the kind of song carried by one person standing alone at the centre of it.

a solo artist.

the idea made her recoil immediately.

no matter how many times she looked at the page, she couldn’t make herself believe that person was her.

the thought was sudden and ugly, and she loathed how effortlessly a part of her had embraced it as truth. this was a legacy song, the kind people got remembered for, the kind that defined a career. and she had spent most of hers standing slightly outside those kinds of moments.

then she closed the notebook and looked out into the dark. she didn’t examine that too closely. just put the notebook back into her bag and finally let herself close her eyes. michael’s hand was still resting against her arm.

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los angeles was aggressively sunny in a way that felt almost rude after london.

she’d stepped off the plane and the heat had just landed on her all at once, like the city was trying to prove a point. danny had thrown his arms open and shouted yes like he was personally accepting an award, nearly dropping to his knees to kiss the ground after that hellish flight. priya had put her sunglasses on at the airport and barely removed them for the next three days.

michael, meanwhile, had spent most of arrivals with his head down beneath a baseball cap while bill attempted to steer him through the terminal without attracting too much attention. it worked for approximately seven minutes. long enough for one person to recognise him, then another, and suddenly he was smiling politely at strangers while still visibly jet-lagged.

“you’d think they’d let me look terrible in peace,” he muttered once bill finally got them all outside.

she rolled her eyes at that as they climbed into the car, like he could ever actually look terrible.

sunset sound was on sunset boulevard and it was everything a studio on sunset boulevard should be — worn in the right places, legendary in the specific way that meant the walls had absorbed enough music to have opinions.

jerry wexler had shaken her hand and looked at the band over his glasses with the expression of a man who had heard everything and was still prepared to be surprised anyway, which she’d liked instantly.

she’d said goodbye to michael outside their hotel that morning, both of them already running late in opposite directions. his schedule was chaos at the moment, interviews and meetings and rehearsals stacked on top of each other, and southbound practically lived at the studio now that recording had started properly.

“call me when you get back,” he’d said, leaning against the car door while bill checked his watch nearby with increasing despair.

“you say that like quincy’ll let you answer.”

“that’s hurtful.”

she threw her hands up in the air in surrender, “i’m just being realistic.”

he’d laughed at that, reached over to squeeze her hand once, then ducked into the car before the growing cluster of people across the street could fully process who they were looking at.

she still found herself glancing at payphones every few hours anyway.

the first week was mostly about finding their footing.

that was normal — the first week of any recording session was less about the music and more about everyone learning the room. learning wexler’s rhythms, learning which decisions to bring to him and which ones to argue out amongst themselves before he ever heard them. danny took longer than usual, too excited to be still, singing everything at about ten percent faster than it needed to go. priya was the opposite, overcautious, doing three takes where one would have done fine.

she kept her head down and worked.

it was easy, disappearing into the band. easy to spend ten hours discussing arrangements and guitar tones and backing harmonies instead of thinking too hard about the notebook in her bag.

she didn’t take it out once. sometimes she’d unzip the front pocket just to check it was still there, fingertips brushing the cover before she closed it again. then she’d go back to whatever wexler was saying about the bridge on track four or danny’s phrasing on the second verse.

she didn’t forget about the song. that would’ve been easier. every time she thought about it for too long, she recognised too much of herself in it. she didn’t like that.

michael called every evening they weren’t together, both of them spending nights far too late at their respective studios to actually see each other.

he'd ask about wexler, about the tracks, about whether danny’s discovered the concept of tempo yet. she'd ask about the album, about the label, about whether quincy had allowed him to leave the studio at any point that week.

“how are you sleeping?” she wondered aloud one night with a yawn, the phone was wedged between her ear and shoulder while she picked at the remains of leftover takeout.

a pause. “fine.”

“michael.”

“four hours,” he admitted. “maybe five.”

“that’s not fine.”

“like you can talk.” she could hear him moving around on the other end of the line, that familiar restless energy carrying even through bad reception. “i keep — things keep showing up. you know how it is.”

she did know. she'd watched him surface from sleep at two in the morning reaching for whatever was nearest to write something down, had seen the particular focused distance that came over him when something was arriving.

“you need to sleep properly,” she said.

“tell that to the songs,” he replied, fondness tucked somewhere beneath the exhaustion. “how's yours coming?”

her breath hitched. “which one?”

“you know which one.”

her eyes flicked toward the bag across the room.

“fine,” she said after a second. “going fine.”

she changed the subject after that, and he let her. she didn't open the notebook that night either.

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it was the middle of the second week when she saw him.

she’d come out of the live room during a break — wexler had called fifteen minutes while he sorted something out with the sound engineer. running entirely on four hours of sleep, she’d gone looking for coffee.

the corridor outside studio b was narrow and permanently dim, lined with old session photographs. she almost walked straight into him.

he was coming the other way, jacket still on despite the heat outside, looking like he was travelling between one important place and another. he looked up at the exact same moment she did, and for half a second neither of them reacted, both caught in that strange delay that came with seeing somebody entirely out of context before recognition fully arrived.

"oh my god," she said. "what."

prince smiled — that particular smile of his, like he found most things faintly entertaining, including this conversation. “funny place to run into you.”

“what are you doing here?”

“favour session.” he gestured vaguely down the corridor toward studio a. “somebody needed a guitar part. you?”

“three weeks with wexler.”

both his eyebrows lifted briefly, which from prince was basically a standing ovation.

“wexler,” he repeated.

“i know,” she said, and felt the grin properly break across her face. she hadn’t realised until right then how badly she’d needed to see a familiar face that wasn’t coming through a phone receiver.

the last time she’d seen prince had been at the grammys back in february — that entire ridiculous evening where he’d performed little red corvette and the room had collectively lost its mind. she’d watched from her table while danny had spent most of it clutching her arm and hissing 'do you see this???’ every thirty seconds.

and even then they’d only managed about twenty minutes of actual conversation before the night swallowed them both again.

“you look tired,” he observed, not unkindly.

“i’m fine. it’s good tired.” she leaned back against the wall. “you eaten? i’ve got about fifteen minutes.”

they ended up in the tiny kitchen at the end of the corridor, her with the coffee she’d originally come looking for, him with a bottle of water, sitting across from each other at a formica table.

it felt easy straight away, the way it always did with prince. just two people who’d spent enough years drifting through the same rooms to stop pretending around each other. they drifted easily between subjects: studio gossip, terrible managers, the existential horror of record executives, increasingly judgemental opinions about a mutual friend’s new record deal.

“it’s a terrible contract,” she said.

“it’s a terrible haircut,” prince corrected.

“both can be true.”

then the conversation thinned naturally for a moment, neither of them rushing to fill it. she looked down at her coffee cup.

“i’ve got a song,” she admitted.

he waited.

“i wrote it on the plane over.” she hesitated. “you ever make something and realise halfway through that it’s asking for more from you than you actually know how to give?”

prince was quiet for a moment. "play it."

she almost said i don’t have my keyboard.

but she had the notebook — the first time she’d actually taken it out of her bag in days, and of course it happened after accidentally running into prince in a studio corridor — and she had a voice even if she didn’t entirely trust it right now. so she opened to the right page and sang across the table quietly, just melody and fragments of lyrics, no accompaniment, feeling faintly ridiculous singing bare-handed in a studio kitchen in los angeles.

he didn’t say anything straight away when she finished. he’d gone strangely motionless across the table, thumb pressed briefly against his mouth like he was still listening to the shape of the melody after the sound had already faded. his thumb dragged once along the side of the water bottle in his hand, slow and absent-minded, like she’d interrupted a thought halfway through forming.

“tell me i don’t suit it,” she said.

he let out a short breath through his nose, almost disbelieving. “i can’t tell you that.”

“prince—”

“i mean it,” he interrupted. the usual amused distance had faded, replaced by a focused attention that made her suddenly aware of how quiet the room had become. “you’ve been holding onto this by yourself?”

the question caught her off guard.

“for about a week.”

another pause stretched out, punctuated only by the distant, muffled thump of a kick drum from studio b.

“huh.”

“what does that mean?”

he leaned back a little in his chair, watching her carefully.

“means i would’ve lost my mind by now,” he said. “that’s not the kind of song you leave sitting in a notebook.”

her fingers tightened around the edge of the page. “maybe i don’t know what else to do with it.”

prince tilted his head a fraction, studying her in that unnervingly direct way of his.

“maybe,” he said slowly, “or you’re just scared of it,”

the accusation landed harder than she expected. because the irritating thing was that he’d understood almost immediately. perhaps not all of it, but enough. enough to see that the problem had never really been the song.

“you know what i think?” he said after a moment.

“that i’m being dramatic and moody?”

a brief smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“that,” he agreed easily. “and i think you got too used to hiding inside bands.”

she let out a short laugh at that, mostly because hearing somebody say it out loud made her chest tense unpleasantly.

“southbound’s not exactly hiding,” she pointed out, more amused than genuinely offended. they’d worked too hard for that — years of awful touring circuits, broken equipment and overnight drives eventually turning into magazine covers and two wins at the brit awards earlier that year.

“no,” he agreed easily. “but you are.”

somebody shouted something unintelligible further down the hall. her index finger caught against the corner of the page.

and then she could see it. not herself. him.

the scale of it. the theatricality. the way the song wanted somebody completely unafraid of standing at the centre of things. somebody who knew how to carry enormity without apologising for it.

somebody like prince.

“you should take it,” she said before she could overthink it.

he blinked hard enough that she knew she’d genuinely surprised him.

“what.”

“the song.” her pulse had started climbing now that she’d said it out loud, but the idea already felt strangely certain. “you should have it.”

he held her gaze for a long second, clearly waiting for her to take it back. when she didn’t, he leaned back against the chair again.

“no.”

“but—”

“no,” he repeated, calmer this time but no less firm. “that’s your song.”

the scribbled pages felt strangely distant from her now, like she was looking at something she'd found instead of something she'd made. “i don’t think it is anymore,”

his eyebrows pulled together at that. “you wrote it.”

“that doesn’t mean i’m the person meant to sing it.”

she could practically feel him turning the idea over in his head, resisting it on instinct. which, somehow, only made her want to hand it to him more. because prince knew music. knew instinct. and if even he hesitated before taking it, then maybe she hadn’t imagined the size of the thing after all.

“you really don’t hear yourself on it?” he asked.

absently, she traced over one of the scribbled lines on the page. “no.”

prince sat there, jaw shifting slightly like he was arguing with himself internally. “you got a tape of it?”

she paused. “a demo?”

“demo. anything.”

“no.” a short laugh escaped her. “i wrote it thirty thousand feet in the air and then immediately started avoiding it, remember?”

he exhaled quietly through his nose, remaining unconvinced by the entire situation. his fingers tapped once against the book.

“alright,” he said.

“alright?”

“you’re giving me this song and i have to decode whatever the hell these notes are supposed to mean.” he glanced down at the page again, holding it up to the light as if that would make it any clearer. “for all i know, this could be a map to atlantis.”

she laughed. “they make sense to me.”

“not really reassuring.” he glanced at you, just having thought of something. “what were you gonna call it anyway?”

she gave him a look that resembled a deer in headlights. “uhhhhh.”

“c’mon,” prince said, already sounding suspicious.

“they were mostly just placeholders.”

“that bad?”

“very.”

prince waited her out until she finally muttered: “ballad in bad weather. or… i dunno… seven minutes of rain sounds.”

his mouth went into a straight line as he processed her words. “those might be the worst titles i’ve ever heard.”

“i panicked!”

“clearly.”

she covered part of her face with one hand while he shook his head under his breath, faintly appalled.

“purple rain,” he said.

she frowned at that. “that’s annoyingly good.”

a grin spread slowly across his face, pleased. “i know.”

the words landed softly between them, certain, less like a suggestion and more like something he’d already uncovered.

purple rain.

prince read through the lyrics properly then, stopping twice to ask about the chord progression she’d translated into her bizarre shorthand. she answered automatically, strangely calm through all of it, like the decision had already been made somewhere underneath conscious thought and the rest of her was only now catching up.

further down the corridor, wexler’s voice called that they were back in five. prince handed the notebook back. she tore the page out carefully and passed it over. he folded it once and slipped it into his jacket pocket like it was a receipt, like it was nothing.

‘good.’ she thought. she also very deliberately did not look at the rough torn edge left behind in the notebook.

“good luck with wexler,” he said from the kitchen doorway.

“good luck with whatever you’re doing to that poor man’s guitar track.”

he gave her one last grin before disappearing down the corridor while she headed back toward studio b.

she finished the session that afternoon in a weird mood, slept properly for the first time in days, and absolutely did not think about the folded page sitting in prince’s jacket pocket. or at least, that’s what she told herself.

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the band left on a thursday.

they all stood outside the studio waiting for their cars, priya somehow carrying four more suitcases than she’d arrived with and danny still talking about the sessions like he was expecting somebody to adapt the experience into a documentary series. jerry wexler had shaken all their hands that morning, clearly pleased the week had turned out the way he’d hoped. somehow that felt better than outright praise would’ve.

she hugged priya first, then the rest of the band, and then danny grabbed her in a bear hug that lifted her slightly off the ground. he lowered her eventually.

“right,” he said, pointing at her with great authority. “don’t come back pregnant. i know what you and your fancy man get up to when the rest of us aren’t watching.”

she punched him in the arm hard enough that he yelped.

“ow—”

“two weeks without me,” she said. “behave yourselves.”

“we’re not the one staying behind with michael jackson—”

“danny.”

“i’m just saying. the sexual tension in that hotel room could power greater london.”

the car horn saved him from another thwack.

danny left still grinning, rubbing his arm with absolutely no sincerity, and she watched them pile into the cars — priya rolling her eyes at him from the front seat while the others tried to wedge suitcases between their knees. then they were gone, tyres disappearing into traffic while the late afternoon los angeles sun turned the whole street gold. michael was leaning against the car behind her. she turned properly then and took him in for the first time since arriving — not through a phone line, not squeezed into rushed conversations between studio sessions.

he looked exactly how she’d expected. tired around the edges, the way he got after too many nights without proper sleep, the strain underneath him more visible now than it had been three weeks ago.

but he was here. and he was smiling. right then, that felt like enough.

"hi," she said.

"hi," he said.

she crossed the distance between them and he opened his arms before she even reached him. the familiar weight of him pulled a long breath out of both of them at once.

his hotel room was on the tenth floor with a view that kept pulling her away from conversations halfway through — the city sprawling sparkling beneath the windows, nothing like london. no clear edges to it. just more and more los angeles. she drifted back toward the glass twice while michael jackson ordered room service from the phone near the bed.

“what do you want?”

“anything.”

“you say that now,” he said, already unconvinced. “then the food arrives and you’ve suddenly developed several opinions.”

“sounds about right.”

eventually he made an executive decision for both of them and she didn’t argue.

they ate cross-legged on the bed with the television low in the background while she told him about the sessions — about jerry wexler and his glasses and the way he’d just say again with absolutely no further explanation and somehow everybody instantly understood.

she told him about danny in venice beach, which took several minutes to explain properly because she kept breaking off laughing halfway through it. about the track they’d almost cut before changing their minds at the last second. about how it had somehow become her favourite thing on the album.

michael listened the way he always did: completely. his attention never drifted, he didn’t wait for his turn to speak, just genuine focus that made you feel like the thing you were saying mattered more than anything else in the room. at some point he leaned over and pressed a kiss against her temple. she leaned into it automatically and felt a ridiculous amount of happiness over something so small.

"how was the rest of it?" he asked. "outside of the beach incident."

“good. priya found a record shop she’d have moved into given half the chance.” she tore apart the last of the bread roll absently, full and pleasantly heavy from food and exhaustion. “oh — and i ran into prince. at the studio, actually. he was doing a session down the hall.”

"prince was at sunset sound?"

“favour session. some guitar thing apparently.” she shifted slightly against the pillows. “was good seeing him. felt like ages since the grammys.”

“what’d you get up to?”

“just talked. had about fifteen minutes in the kitchen between takes.”

she pulled another piece from the bread roll before adding, almost absent-mindedly “oh. i didn’t end up keeping that song.”

his expression tensed almost immediately. nothing obvious enough for anyone else to notice, but she felt it anyway.

“which song,” he said. not quite a question.

“the one i was humming. before we left.” she kept playing with her food instead of looking at him. “i played it for him and i just…” a small shrug. “asked if he wanted it.”

michael didn’t respond straight away.

his expression had gone careful in the way it always did when he was actively holding something back. he wasn’t angry — she knew what anger looked like on him and this wasn’t it. which somehow made it harder to deal with.

"you gave it to prince," he said finally.

she nodded, "yeah."

“the song you wrote on the plane.”

“michael—”

“the one you carried around for three weeks.”

“he liked it.”

michael’s face shifted slightly. “that’s not what i’m asking.”

he rested back against the headboard, studying her for a second like he was trying to figure out how to say the next part without pushing too hard.

“i heard you humming it,” he said. “in the kitchen. in the shower. half asleep on the sofa before we left.”

she kept her attention fixed on her hands.

“i woke up on the plane and you were writing it out,” he continued. “you didn’t know i was awake. i’ve never seen you look at something like that before.”

she fiddled with the sheets beneath her.

“it was right for you.”

the bread clinked against the porcelain plate as she set it back, appetite gone. “my voice doesn’t suit it.”

“it absolutely does.”

"michael."

“it does.” his hand dragged once across his face before dropping again. “you’ve spent so long convincing yourself you belong behind other people that now you don’t know what to do when something asks you to stand in front of them.”

she scoffed. “that’s not what happened.”

“isn’t it?”

she folded her arms across herself. “prince can carry a song like that.”

“so can you.”

“no, he—”

“you didn’t even give yourself the chance,” he cut in, not harshly, but with enough force to stop her anyway. “you decided beforehand that somebody else will wear it better.”

the television carried on talking to itself at the end of the bed.

“he’ll do something brilliant with it,” she said.

“you could have done something brilliant with it.” she didn’t answer. michael’s expression scrunched up further at her silence. “you just didn’t believe that.”

she hated how quickly he’d pressed against the wound.

“southbound works because we work together, i can’t just force myself to stand out.” she said finally, though it sounded weaker out loud than it had in her head.

“i know.” his voice dropped again. “but i’m not talking about the band. i’m talking about you.”

that sentence hit somewhere raw in her. the horrible feeling of recognising a truth too late. she muttered, “you heard one melody.”

his eyes stayed on her. “i heard you stop hiding, what you sound like when you stop holding yourself back.”

she pressed her lips together hard. “let it go.”

“i can’t stand watching you shrink yourself every time you have an opportunity to prove yourself."

“michael.”

“you were terrified of that song because you thought if you really stepped into it, you might not live up to it.”

that one landed hard enough she looked away entirely. beyond the windows, la had dissolved into scattered light, the city stretching endlessly beyond the horizon.

“let it go,” she whispered.

he looked at her for a long moment, all of it still there in his expression — the frustration, the fondness, and beneath both of them, the certainty of someone who believed in her more than she currently knew how to believe in herself.

then he exhaled through his nose and leaned back against the headboard again.

“fine.”

it was less of a real “fine” and more of an agreement to stop pushing. she leaned into his side and, after a moment, his arm came around her automatically.neither of them brought the song up again.

the room service went cold beside them untouched.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁﹏𓊝﹏. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

the thing about the back end of 1984 was that everything felt loud and fast all the time, even when you were doing absolutely nothing.

thriller had done what thriller had done — which was everything, essentially, all at once and then somehow just kept going — and michael had come out the other side of it looking faintly stunned in the way she imagined you would if you'd made the best-selling album of all time and were still somehow the same person who left his socks on her bathroom floor.

the grammys had been held in february and she’d spent most of the night at his table trying unsuccessfully not to cry while he kept getting called back onto the stage over and over again. by the fourth award her eyes were so red she looked unwell. which had prompted michael to start squeezing her hand every time he passed the table on the way back down, trying to console her through the ordeal of being too emotional about his success.

by the end of the night there’d already been multiple camera shots of her visibly wiping tears off her face, something danny has yet to stop bringing up.

southbound’s album had come out in may and done far better than anybody had expected. nine nominations at the following year’s grammys, which danny had responded to by calling her and priya screaming from a car park for approximately forty-five straight seconds before suddenly clearing his throat and going ‘yeah no, i knew it’ like he hadn’t just made three separate strangers consider calling the police.

she was proud of the album. properly proud. the sort that stayed with you for the rest of your life.

it had been a huge year. exhausting. brilliant. slightly impossible.

and now it was the tail end of it and she was in london and michael was in london and, for the first time in months, neither of them had anywhere they urgently needed to be.

they treated those few empty days almost cautiously, like people rediscovering a language they hadn’t spoken in a while.

it was a sunday evening.

the flat was properly warm now, mostly because michael had complained exactly once about her radiator and then refused to let her keep it after that. according to him, you could not release one of the greatest rock albums of the decade and continue living with “that old-ass radiator hissing like it’s fighting for its life in the corner.”

so safe to say she got a new one.

it was raining outside because of course it was, london had one move and committed to it fully. she was on the sofa with her legs across michael’s lap, not reading the magazine she’d opened twenty minutes earlier, happy just to sit there and let the evening happen around them. michael had the television remote and had been cycling through channels while complaining that london somehow still didn’t have a dedicated disney channel, intermittently checking itv because raiders of the lost ark was supposedly starting later and he refused to miss the opening sequence.

she was almost asleep when she heard it.

four notes. five notes. and then the rest of it opened up — the wide, aching thing she remembered arriving in her chest on a rainy london afternoon, watching a stranger stand in the rain with his face tilted up. the feeling with a shape to it. the melody she'd hummed in the shower, on the plane, in a studio kitchen in los angeles before she'd sung it quietly into the silence and handed it over.

she looked at the television.

prince was on stage. the crowd was immense — she could feel the size of it even through the screen, a roar that meant something had already crossed over from song into phenomenon. he was in the rain, actual rain falling on the stage, purple light everywhere, and the song —

her song.

she wasn't sure how long she sat there before she noticed that michael had stopped cycling through channels. that his hand had frozen on the remote. that the comfortable sunday evening weight of him had morphed into something else, that same quality of static she'd felt in the hotel room in la, but deeper now, how things got when they'd had time to settle.

she had to make herself look at him.

he was watching the screen, a complicated expression moving across his face. pride came first, which caught her off guard a little. then the other feeling underneath it, the one that had apparently been sitting in him ever since that hotel room in los angeles.

on the television the crowd swelled while prince moved through the synthetic rain and the song built toward transcendence.

"that's yours," he muttered.

she looked back at the television. "yeah."

the song kept going.

she felt a strange, overwhelming attachment to it all at once. the scale of it. the permanence. the knowledge that she’d helped place one of those songs into the world that people carried around for decades afterwards. and beneath that, watching prince standing alone in the rain, carrying the entire song without flinching, she felt the late and deeply unpleasant realization that maybe she could’ve stood there too.

never like him. but maybe she’d abandoned herself too early.

the song ended. the crowd noise faded. the channel moved on. they stayed exactly where they were after it ended, pressed shoulder to shoulder in the flat.

“you wrote that,” he said finally. “you wrote a song people are still gonna be playing when we’re old.”

he still had his eyes on the television, his lips twitching like he was deciding how honest to be. “and i just…” he exhaled once through his nose. “i need you to believe things about yourself a little sooner.”

the honesty in it hit harder than the earlier argument had. she didn’t deflect this time. “yeah,” she said. “alright.”

michael nodded once, small and absent-minded, some part of him had been waiting a long time to hear her say that. the flat drifted back into its ordinary evening sounds, the beginning of raiders of the lost ark finally playing on the television while the new radiator buzzed faintly somewhere behind the sofa.

he finally turned toward her then, holding her gaze a little longer before the sincerity in his expression gave way to the look she knew best — the one she’d realised was trouble approximately three weeks into knowing him.

“you know,” he said, “here i am staying up all night trying to stop god’s good ideas from getting to prince and you just hand him the song of the decade in a studio kitchen.”

she just stared at him.

“shut up,” she said. “mr. eight-time grammy winner.”

“i’m serious.”

“no, you are literally not.”

“do you know how exhausting it is competing spiritually with that man?”

she laughed then, properly this time. she hit him with the magazine and he caught her wrist before she could do it again, grinning now, all the heaviness from earlier finally beginning to dissolve.

“you know how well i could’ve rocked purple,” he said.

“michael.”

“you never even let me audition.”

she hit him with the magazine again. he grinned, pleased with himself in a way she unfortunately still found deeply charming, letting him pull her against his side from her position at the opposite end of the couch.

outside the rain kept falling.

she looked toward the window — the wet street below, london glowing under the lamps exactly the way it always did. maybe next time she'd believe it sooner.

✿ michael jackson masterlist

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