I have a big heart

[wincaraz]

current mood

[marcskywalker]

[lunadustcentral]

More Than a Thriller

synopsis: After a movie date goes wrong, Michael becomes strangely determined to get you back inside the theater. The more the night goes on, the more you begin to wonder what he's so afraid of.

The exit doors swung shut behind you as you stepped out of the scary movie, only for Michael to follow close behind moments later.

You barely made it out before he was beside you again, laughing like nothing in the movie had even bothered him.

“Baby, come on… it’s just a scary movie,” he said, baring his teeth in an exaggerated grin and curling his fingers into mock claws like something out of an old horror film.

“Are you sure you want to be alone with me? I might be a ghoul,” he teased, spinning you lightly as if the night itself belonged to him.

“Michael, stop it,” you protested, though your voice lacked real conviction.

“Then why did you pick a horror movie for our date?” you asked, glancing at him with a puzzled look.

“Why wouldn’t I want my beautiful girl holding onto me?” he added with a grin. “You’re such a tease,” you shot back.

You let out a sigh, already moving ahead, while he stayed close behind you like a shadow that refused to fall away.

“Wanna get some ice cream?” he suggested. “But you’re paying,” he added with a laugh.

“Quit teasing me, I’ve had enough stress for the night,” you said, exasperated.

You tilted your head toward the sky. “The only good thing out tonight is the full moon,” you said, unaware of how still he had gone beside you.

You glanced up again. “Yeah, look. It’s about to pass through that cloud. We’ll see the full moon soon. Isn’t that neat, Mikey?”

He didn’t answer.

But he wasn’t looking at you anymore.

On second thought, he said, “Let’s go back and finish the movie. It was just starting to get good.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m not watching no freaky werewolf movie with you, Mikey.”

“Well, you might meet one if we don’t go inside,” he said, but his voice caught halfway through the sentence. His eyes kept flicking between you and the sky like he was waiting for something you couldn’t see.

“Come on,” he said, taking your hand and pulling you back toward the theater.

“Hey, Michael, loosen your grip,” you gasped, trying to pull your wrist free. A sharp sting shot through your arm as his fingers tightened without him seeming to notice. “You’re hurting me.”

“I’m sorry, love, it’s just…” he trailed off.

The air around him changed.

His hand jerked back like something inside him snapped. He stumbled away, clutching his head.

“Michael?” you called out.

No response.

His breathing turned sharp and uneven, like he was fighting something inside his own body.

Then it started.

A low sound ripped from his throat as he dropped to his knees. His fingers dug into the ground, trembling violently. His shoulders hunched as if something was forcing its way out of him.

“No… not now…” he choked out.

Bones cracked beneath his skin, slow at first, then faster, like branches breaking in a storm. His back arched violently as his silhouette stretched unnaturally tall. His clothes tightened, then tore as dark fur pushed through in thick waves.

You stumbled back.

“Michael…” you whispered, but it barely came out.

His hands were no longer human as claws tore through his fingertips. His jaw lengthened with a sickening stretch, teeth sharpening until words could no longer form.

When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were gone.

They burned a deep glowing yellow.

“I told you… go back inside.”

You stood frozen, trembling.

The creature stepped forward, then stopped.

The glow flickered, like something inside was still fighting.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, voice breaking between human and something else.

“Michael…?”

At the sound of his name, something in him steadied.

“I tried to get you inside,” he whispered. “I didn’t want you to see this.”

You hesitated, but didn’t move back.

Instead, you stepped forward. “It is still you,” you said quietly.

He lowered his head, claws digging into the ground as if holding himself together.

For a moment, everything went still.

Then slowly, painfully, the transformation eased. The fur didn’t vanish, but it stopped spreading. The shaking slowed. His breathing steadied.

When he looked up again, his eyes were still glowing faintly, but softer now.

“I didn’t want to scare you,” he said.

“I should be terrified right now,” you admitted softly. “But all I see is you.”

Silence stretched between you, heavier than the night itself.

Then he reached out, hesitant, like he was afraid you might disappear.

You stayed.

His hand brushed yours, warm despite everything.

For a moment, he just held on like he was memorizing what being human felt like.

Then his grip tightened slightly, just for a second.

His eyes flickered.

“I don’t know how long I can stay like this,” he said quietly.

You looked down at your hands.

“If I change again, don’t wait for me too long, okay?”

Silence.

“I’m not going anywhere,” you said.

His eyes closed briefly, like it hurt to hear that.

“Can you stay with me?” he asked again, quieter now.

And this time, it didn’t feel like a question about the night.

It felt like a question about everything that came after it.

[michaelmuse]

— 𝐞𝐫𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 ; 𝐁𝐀𝐃 (michael)

through every era, him. 18+ (i got super carried away so enjoy a long one!)

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

150 days.

150 excruciatingly long days without him.

150 days since Michael cut the cord — ending your three year long relationship on a whim.

It came as a shock — something you would’ve never thought in your worst nightmare that would come true.

You had crawled into bed with Michael one night, skin glistening from the expensive floral scented lotion you’d just delicately rubbed into your skin, settling comfortably in the sheets next to him. He was quieter that night — he mumbled at dinner, barely conversing with you, playing with his food. Michael didn’t have a large appetite, so his lack of eating hadn’t phased you as much as it did now. You didn’t expect him to be too chatty that night either, you had already had a heated disagreement a few hours earlier that remained unresolved — something that was becoming more frequent in recent times due to his demanding career.

So, when you nestled against him, his hands rigid at his sides, was when you noticed something was undeniably wrong.

“Is everything okay, baby?” You asked, peering up from his chest to glance at his pokerface.

“I think we should split up.”

The words hit you full-force, panic and shock instantly flooding your emotion — sitting up so frantically it made Michael flinch.

“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Your voice was frantic and distressed, face forced into a scrunch of anxiety.

Michael stayed silent for a few moments, not daring to meet your eyes, just staring blankly at the wall next to him.

“Michael, don’t fucking joke with me. Fucking say something.”

“Stop cursing, please.” He forced out, voice hoarse and low, attempting to keep his dignity.

You scoffed in disbelief, “So, you blurt out that you wanna break-up, but all you care about is a curse? Are you fucking serious?” Anger was the emotion at the forefront of your brain now, utterly disgusted with his coldness towards you mixed with the cruelty of his words.

“Things are complicated right now.” He started, still facing away from you, “I’ve got the album and the tour, and we’re fighting too much already because of it. It’s not good for us especially if I’m away for long periods of time. You deserve someone who can be around for you. Someone better.” He sighed, shaking his head, “I don’t want to let this progress and then end up hurting one another more.”

“‘Let this progress?’ Michael we’ve been together for three years, nearly four. You didn’t think to end things three and half years ago if you didn’t wanna get hurt? Are you serious?”

“I still love you, I just want to protect us both from pain.” He spoke quietly.

“Love? This isn’t love, Michael, this is cruel. This is worse pain. Someone who loved me wouldn’t treat me like this. Why are you doing this to me? To us?”

His heart clenched as your voice cracked, not brave enough to look you in your eyes, now brimming with tears.

“I’m sorry.”

The words felt faux as they left his lips — silencing encasing the room. You scoffed, standing up swiftly from the bed, rushing into the bathroom, slamming the door harshly behind you. You missed the way Michael flinched once more as the loud sound echoed throughout the quiet room, a single tear falling down his cold cheek — attempting to ignore your wails of despair from behind the door.

He saw you for the last time as you rushed out of the bathroom — bag full of your toiletries in hand as you raced towards the bedroom door, sobbing.

He called your name, but you cut him off, swearing brutally at him, along the lines of ‘Go fuck yourself, Michael’. Your memory of that night wavered thin now — your brain compartmentalising the pain to the back of your mind, pushing it the furthest away from to prevent you from punishing yourself with the hurtful memory.

You were packed and moved out the same night — moving back in with your parents, who comforted you for weeks on end as you experienced the worst heartbreak you’d ever felt in your life. The one person you loved and trusted the most in your life had been the one to hurt you the most, too. It was a strange phenomenon — to still love and yearn for the person causing you agonising misery.

At month one, you spent most days in bed — wallowing in your despair, reading old love-letters, staring at photos taken on your first tropical vacation, your anniversary, his birthday. You were torturing yourself — a bittersweet pain that you struggled to rid yourself of. Ending most nights by sobbing into your hand as you read the newspapers — headlines of your split plastered everywhere. Utterly devastated at how disgusting tabloids portrayed you as a deadweight on Michael’s blossoming career, that you were only dragging him down, that he made a good decision to free himself of you.

By month two, you got back to work. You had managed to find your new routine — working hard on your own music, pouring your damaged heart into each song, passion flowing from your lips with each lyric. You didn’t cry as much — only now and again when Michael would pop up on the television, his new album ‘Bad’ going world platinum again, just as his others did, his success booming. What irked you most was he looked perfectly fine — smiling happily for the cameras, performing on stage on tour with pure, irrevocable talent, adoration and excitement oozing off of him, like he didn’t destroy someone’s life two months ago.

By month three, you acted unaffected. You’d moved out into your own place — gaining some unwanted independence. You began going about your life like you’d never met him — going on a few dates, dancing at clubs with your friends with guys you were a stranger to, late night calls with men you knew deep down would never compare, but indulging in the fun of it nonetheless— heart fuelled by anger and frustration, desperate to get back at him. When you finally moved on sexually, you were irritatingly disappointed — no man on the planet could please you like Michael had. That’s what filled you with pure rage. Faking orgasms and pretending as though their cock’s even made half the stretch that Michael’s did had you furious — often pushing them away mid sex, ordering them to get out of your apartment.

You were now almost at month six and the ice in your heart towards Michael hadn’t let up.

You pretended, to your family and friends, that you were over it — that it didn’t affect you anymore. That you had totally moved on with your life. Wrong. You were still livid deep down — not a single day going by where you didn’t curl your fists up in fury at the thought of him. Fury that you still had an annoyingly large place for him in your heart — that no matter how bitter you tried to convince yourself you were about him, it did nothing to dilute the sickly sweetness that overpowered your heart.

And that lovesick heart of yours was pounding violently in your chest right now.

Sat in the back of a limousine, dolled up to the Gods — hair, makeup and outfit perfected to a T, you looked divine. So divine you were determined to make a statement — one just as bad his.

Ironic.

The man in question who you were dying to shock, self-proclaimed as ‘bad’, connotations to his new album, was someone you believed to be sweet, tender and loving. An album title you always thought was truly ironic as he was quite the opposite.

Not as of recent.

Diana Ross had been a thorn in your side since the day you and Michael met. Her relentless flirtatious energy towards the man you craved was angering — even before you called it official was she persistent with her teasing.

“So, you’re the girl Michael keeps talkin’ so much about.” She drawled, the day you met her, your handshake harsher than usual as you gripped her bony hand in your own, “Not his girl, yet though, right?” She laughed, “Better snatch that handsome thing up before I do.”

You confessed your love to Michael that night.

You did truly have intense feelings for him — but that old cow had given you the push you needed. No way in hell was she going to take him away from you — not on your watch.

So, rightfully so, you were anxious at the thought of her finding out about your split — wondering what her next move would be. You’d spend everyday reading the newspapers in a panic, skimming through a thousand words a second in an attempt to find any news of them being spotted together.

And the day came — a week before The 1988 Soul Train Music Awards. The very award ceremony you were heading to, looking so beautiful.

Michael and Diana were front page — pressed tightly against one another at a famous club. His smile was bright, wide and genuine — something you’d missed seeing in person, now adorning his captivating face because of that witch. She had looped her arm through his, the picture capturing her pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek. The title read ‘MICHAEL MOVING ON ALREADY? — OLD FLAME REIGNITED’

Oh, he had really done it this time.

He knew how much you hated her — loathed her, actually. The older woman often getting in the way of your relationship throughout the years you were together — despite having a husband herself, she was betrothed with your man.

So, even if technically he didn’t owe you a thing as you weren’t his anymore, you silently felt fury at him for letting her kiss him for the cameras.

Therefore, your only response was to fight fire with fire — childish? Maybe. But, clever? Absolutely.

“You ready, sweetheart?”

The sound of Prince’s voice next to you in the limo tugged a devilish smirk onto your face as you nodded.

If Michael wanted to play dirty — you would play real dirty.

The car had rolled to a stop — flashes of the paparazzi’s intrusive cameras burnt into your vision as the driver pulled the door open. You stepped out, smoothing your dress, a wide smile on your face, waving sweetly as you waited for your date to exit the vehicle.

If you thought the flash was bright before, you were mistaken. Spots blurred into your vision as Prince stood next to you, instantly taking your hand in his own, confidence oozing from him as always, before smiling down at you. You turned to him — pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, lipstick now smeared across his skin, earning a knowing laugh from his throat.

Cha-ching!

Those pictures, dripping with revenge, were a real moneymaker — something that would put that sloppy, old hag’s attempt to make you jealous to shame.

Everyone knew of the musical feud between Michael and Prince — the two men battling for the title of ‘the biggest star in the world’. You knew that Michael took the cake — but, you also knew that seeing his biggest rival with his ex-girl would shut down any attempt of riling you up.

“Nicely done.” Prince whispered, lips close to your ear as you were ushered inside the building. He was aware of your vengeful plan — and more than willing to help aggravate his arch nemesis.

“You too.” You sent a wink his way, engaging in a childish, unison giggle, knowing exactly what you were doing was going to end messy, “I’ll see you later.”

You parted ways with your exes nemesis, not before letting him press a calculated kiss to your knuckles, peripheral vision burning as more cameras captured your (fake) romantic moment, before being ushered to your assigned seat.

You were fairly near the stage, around three rows in front, next to your favourite female pop-star and close friend, Whitney Houston. A real, genuine smile burst across your face when she seated herself next to you.

“Girl.” She breathed out a laugh, placing her clutch bag gently in her lap.

“What?” You laughed, smiling across at her in confusion.

“Honey, I think you know what.” She shook her head with a grin, “You made quite the entrance back there.”

Perfect.

The corners of your lips tugged up into a deeper smile, “Then my plan is working.”

Whitney chuckled, “I just know that poor man is beyond ticked off right now.”

“‘Poor man’?” You scoffed, “He is far from poor. You saw the papers, right?”

“Everybody did, sweetie.”

“Number one, not helpful,” You pointed a finger at her, ignoring the way she cackled, “And two, he had it comin’” You paused, “Everyone, including him, knows how much I hate her.”

“Hate who?”

You froze — the infamously familiar voice that once had you smiling like a damn idiot before, now had your face falling as your head lurched behind you.

And there he was.

Michael.

In all his annoying glory — sporting a dashing red button-up, a sleek tie around his neck, paired with a black suit jacket, that hugged the curve of the lean muscles in his arms in a way that your breath hitching in your throat.

It aggravated you that he looked so good.

But, you knew that he knew that you looked better.

Your irritation only blossomed as you glanced at the seat to your right — eyes rolling in annoyance as his name, scribbled onto a flimsy piece of paper on the chair right next to you, hit your vision.

Fuck award show assigned seats.

“Well, shit, girl.” Whitney mumbled, laughing under her breath as she turned away from the tension that was rising as Michael took his seat.

“Hello.” He spoke, voice soft and gentle, just like you remembered.

“That’s all you have to say to me?” Your voice came out harsher than expected, an angered frown visible on your face as a grin bloomed on his.

His mouth went to open, but you cut him off, hand shooing him away, “Actually, don’t even speak to me, please.”

“You look beautiful.”

“What did I just say Michael?”

You hated the way he smirked at your snappy tone, lip coming between his teeth as he obeyed your request, getting comfortable in his chair. You also hated the way your heart did an extremely noticeable flip in your chest at the compliment.

This night was going to be the death of you.

And it only got worse as Michael retreated to the stage, not once, but twice — each time looking more gracious and handsome as the next. He won Best Single and Album of the Year for Bad — the trophies enclosed around his beautiful, slender hands, ones that once gave you blissful satisfaction.

You despised your weak mind for the way you let it run away with itself — eyes trailing over his tall, elegant frame each time he’d take the stage. That infamous smile that had you weak at the knees did nothing to cool the desire that was overpowering your anger, the yearn for him only increasing.

Michael thumped into his seat next to you with a sigh, now two awards richer, running a hand through his long curls that cascaded down his shoulders.

You could sense he was looking at you — his smiling face visible in your side eye-line, but you refused to turn, your eyes fixated on the stage as the next category was revealed.

“Saw your little stunt earlier.” He whispered, “Real classy.”

You scoffed quietly, “That’s rich.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

You knew that tone — that cocky, teasing tone that had you gritting your teeth.

You finally turned to face him, “Oh, right. I’m sure letting that old crow kiss you is a regular thing now, huh?”

“Saw that, did you?” He was testing you, it was evident in the way the knowing smirk on his face never faltered.

You were halfheartedly listening as your name was read for the nomination, not even bothering to care as you held your gaze with the man seated next to you — a brutal lock of eyes that said a thousand words. You were furious, failing to hide it miserably, and he, well, he was enjoying it.

“I did.” You started, “Nice to see a downgrade was my replacement.”

Michael’s smile flickered at your harsh dig at his life-long friend, “I think I could say the same about your date.”

“At least I have one.”

That sure wiped the smirk off his face.

“And definitely not a downgrade in the bedroom.”

You basked in his shock — the smirk he once sported now adorning your face, nearly missing the way your name was called from the stage, the room erupting in applause.

“Excuse me?” Michael’s voice was bitter, cold, mortified at your admission. A false one at that, but he didn’t need to know. Yet.

“Sorry, can’t hear you.” You shrugged him off, rising to your feet with a proud smile — at your award mostly, but also at your triumphant win in the petty disagreement, as loud cheers exploded in your ears.

You took the stage — a new found confidence oozing off of you, a gorgeous smile on your face as you took the award from the announcer’s hands, pulling them into a small hug. You thanked your producer, musical team, family and friends — humbleness evident in every word you spoke.

You looked perfect — utterly radiant under the bright lighting blaring down onto the stage, award glistening in your hands as your pearly white smile twinkled in the spotlight.

Michael, albeit still in an angered daze over your admission, couldn’t help himself but rake his eyes over your frame — breasts pushed perfectly up your corseted dress, the curve of the plush mounds visible to everyone’s eyes from the audience, eyes never leaving those perfect tits he’d once nestle his face into as he flung your legs over his shoulders and filled you to the hilt with his cock.

The thought had him readjusting his slacks — hard-on now painful against the restrictive clothing at the delicious reminiscing of your love-making.

It was your next words that had the sexual memories leaving his head.

“And I wanna thank my wonderful date for tonight— matter of fact, come up here! Prince, where y’at, honey?”

The room erupted into cheers once more — everyone but Michael, who attempted to drown out Whitney’s disbelieving laughter from two seats down from him, watching as you shielded your eyes from the light, searching for the man in the crowd.

Michael stared lethal daggers into Prince’s back as he sauntered up the stairs to the stage — his chest heaving in undeniable envy as he watched Prince pull you into a tight hug. Those gorgeous breasts now pressed up against Prince’s chest.

He was livid. Hands tightening around the material of his trousers, knuckles white as his grip turned taut.

“Not only is he a Pop King,” The room exchanged hushed gasps at the title, one that everyone knew belonged to your furious ex, “But, he’s also a fantastic plus one.” Laughs fizzled out the shock at your insinuation that Prince was only there with you, not for his own musical nominations.

Michael, however, had never felt fury quite like it.

That title was his.

One he worked so hard for — something him and that idiot, in his mind, up on stage with you had fought over for so many years. And you knew that.

He knew you were aggravating him deliberately.

Prince smirked, eyes finding Michael’s in the crowd, expression darkening, “Sorry, Michael.”

And with a smooth arm wrapped around your back, and a swift dip in the air — he kissed you.

Well, not actually.

His lips attached to the corner of your mouth, barely touching, but to the audience, and more importantly, the cameras, it looked as though your ex-boyfriend’s fiercest enemy was kissing the life out of you on stage.

And, boy, did everyone in the room eat it up.

Standing ovations and screams of joy sounded in the room as they clapped — basking in the pure drama of it all.

Prince pulled away from you with a smile, winking at you as you laughed, shaking your head. He took his hand in yours, guiding you backstage, the noise of the crowd dying down as you were ushered away.

“You’re evil.” You chuckled, chest heaving from the adrenaline.

“Well, maybe it’ll give him the push he needs to try get y’back.” Prince admitted, “Either that or to write ‘nother okay album.”

You shoved his arm playfully, “Oh, stop. Y’know it was a good album.”

“Sure, sweetheart, sure.” He teased, sending another smug wink your way, earning another giggle from your lips.

You’d barely made it ten steps backstage before an all familiar frame blocked your way.

You swallowed thickly as Michael’s cold, blank expression met your eyes, his hands curled at his side as he held your gaze — watching as the smile fell from your face.

He didn’t fail to notice how quickly you dropped Prince’s hand, either.

“Come with me. Now.” His voice was darker than his usual soft, gentle tone — not holding a deeper undertone of something that had a chill running down your spine.

“Oh, he mad now.” Prince spoke up, a soft, breathy laugh leaving his lips, “Don’t be jealous, brother, y’got ‘Ross don’t’cha?”

Michael’s jaw clenched, his gaze turning to Prince, eyes darkening into something icier, “I’d walk away if you know what’s good for you.”

Prince laughed once again, eyes flickering back towards you, “Good luck, girl.” He turned back to Michael, placing a hand on his shoulder, “Be sure to bring her back t’me when you’re done, yeah?”

Michael lunged, flinging his hand off his shoulder in a brutal shove, turning towards him with clear intent. You rushed in between a seething Michael and a laughing Prince, hands steadying the angered man on his chest.

“Enough. Both of you.” You hissed, “Just go.” You signalled to the amused man behind you.

Prince didn’t fight it — just turned to walk away with his hands in the air in surrender, chuckling as he went.

“Michael, what the hell was that for?” You snapped.

Michael didn’t speak — only grabbed your wrist in a firm, not aggressive, more so possessive, grasp, tugging you away, his longer legs moving swiftly with each stride, your own practically in a run as you fought to keep up.

He found a nearby bathroom, pushing the door open with all his strength, ignoring the way you winced at the sound of the handle harshly slammed into the wall. The door was shut and locked quicker than it had opened — before you were pushed against it.

“Me?” He started, answering your prior question, his chest heaving as he stared down at you, pupils blown in distress, “I think I should be asking you that question, sweetheart.”

The pet-name spat from his mouth with a curl of his lips — face contorted into a scowl.

You gained your pride, taking two hands to his shoulders and shoving him, your strength against his own doing as little as moving him a few steps backwards.

“Don’t get it twisted, Michael.” You retorted, “You started this with that bitch.”

Michael scoffed, “Go’head, baby, try and convince yourself I’m in the wrong here.” His tongue poked out from his inner cheek, “You’re insatiable.”

“Don’t you dare call me that.” Your voice seeping with distaste at the familiar pet-name, “You lost that privilege the second you gave up on us like we were nothin’.” You shook your head, “Would’ve let you have it back if you didn’t let that old slut rub up on you like you’re a fuckin’ groupie.” You laughed darkly, looking him up and down, “Not now. Lost every fuckin’ chance with me.”

Michael looked taken aback by your disrespectful words — teeth grinding together as he never took his eyes away from your own.

“I never gave up on us willingly.” He revealed, ignoring the way you scoffed with a laugh, as he took a step closer to you, “And as for her,” He paused, attempting to find the right words.

“See? You can’t even convince yourself there’s nothin’ going on there.” You cut him off, hands flailing in the air as you spoke theatrically.

“Let me finish, woman.” He shot back, “As I was sayin’ — she means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing. She’s an old friend. Someone who mentored me as a kid. We have history — but nothin’ more than platonic. Barely even platonic, just professional.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Michael. No ‘professional mentor’ kisses their ‘colleague’ like that.” You air-quoted the words that felt faux with your manicured fingers, shaking your head, “Do you take me for some kind of idiot?”

“Not in that sense, no.” He started, “For actin’ like that with him? Maybe.”

You laughed in disbelief, “You just love it, don’t you? Pretending to yourself that I’m the bad guy, that I went up there and acted like that just to hurt you with no real reason?” You looked him up and down with disgust, “You’re so blind.”

“How many times, girl? There’s nothin’ going on with me and Di.”

He regretted the use of the nickname the second it left his mouth.

“Di? That sounds real professional to me, asshole.” You turned on your heel, clicking the lock back open and twisting the handle, pulling the door open in an attempt to storm out.

Before you could even move, the door was slammed shut once again. The loudness blooming a new found silence in the room, one that failed to occur from the second you walked in there.

Michael’s hand, despite his burning anger, remained gentle as moved your body back to face him, pressing you back into the door.

“Don’t even think about it.” He whispered, “You are not walkin’ away from me.”

“That’s ironic.” You bit back, “If you hadn’t have done that in the first place, we wouldn’t be havin’ this argument.”

“Y’think I wanted to do that? Think I wanted to sit there and watch you panic? Listen to you cry? Hear you cuss me out because of pain and anger I caused? No. That’s where y’dead wrong, girl.” He let out a shaken breath, “I have always, from the moment I met you, till this very day, loved you. Loved you so much I had to give you the life you deserved. I had to let you go. Had to get you away from the pain I was bringin’. No one wants to be with someone who’s never there, and when they are, they’re always fightin’.” Then, he went silent, his eyes now softened as they met your glassy ones, tears threatening to fall as you let him talk.

You both stayed in deathly loud silence, louder than any door slamming or screaming argument — silence that spoke more words than any you’d ever said.

You swallowed thickly, your resolve cracking as his admission settled in your brain, “That wasn’t your decision to make, Michael.” Your voice was quieter now, still with the same stubborn sharpness, but less accusatory, now filled with evident upset.

Michael breathed, his head hanging low, his forehead a mere few inches from your own, “I regret that night every fucking day.” He whispered, a vulnerable string of words that hung heavy in your heart, “Letting you walk out that door was the worst mistake of my life.”

“Why her?” Your voice cracked as you spoke, a stray tear falling down your cheek as you met his gaze.

“It wasn’t a personal attack. She was just at the same club and approached me.” He revealed, “The picture was taken before I even had a chance to say no.”

You shook your head, breaking the eye-contact as you looked at your feet, hiding your rapidly falling tears. Michael’s trembling hand reached for your face, a tentative hand cupping your warm cheek, lifting your face to meet his eyes once more.

“Mama..”

“Stop.” You turned your head, pushing his hand away with your own, “I can’t even look at you.”

“Don’t act so innocent.” Michael’s tone, that had once softened, grew the all too familiar iciness that had been evident the whole evening, “I’m trying to fix things here despite your little ordeal earlier. D’y’know what it’s like to see you kissing him up there? That used to be me if you even remember.”

You let out a low laugh, “He didn’t even kiss me, fool, ‘was all an act. Unlike you and Di.” You barked, “Y’know you actually blow my mind, you’re so—Mmmph!”

Michael connected your lips in a frantic kiss, cutting off your incessant bickering, lips moving against yours quickly.

You shoved him back, gasping for air at the sudden loss of breath, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Puttin’ that bratty fuckin’ mouth to better use.”

He kissed you again — mouth sliding against your own in a feverish lip-locking, a hand now gripping the nape of your neck, the other on the curve of your waist.

And this time — you let him.

You melted into him, hands flying to his face, eyes fluttering shut as you caved, droplets of tears falling onto the tops of your cheeks — falling deeper into his mercy. His tongue slid across the surface of your bottom lip, still awaiting permission despite his frustration. You allowed it, letting his tongue slide into your warm mouth, humming in delight at the taste of his minty breath on the hot muscle, revelling in the way he pushed his body into yours. His hands wondered — now travelling down your body to grab a handful of your ass through your dress, continuing his oral assault on your swollen lips.

“Jump.”

You obeyed, leaving his lips to leap into his arms — his hands cradling your behind as he connected your lips once more, settling you on the sink, slotting himself between your ajar legs.

Michael detached his mouth from own, moving his lips down the curve of your jaw, and down your exposed neck — letting his hips rock into yours involuntarily, while he sucked possessive marks into your skin, at the sound of your breathy moans, head tilted back to allow him better access.

“Michael, please.” You whined, voice a needy plea, hands sliding up into his hair, threading through his tight curls.

“Please, what, angel?” He mumbled against your neck, breath hot against your skin, fresh lovebites forming as he spoke.

“Please—mmhm—Need you, fuck.”

Michael pulled away, hands flying to your dress, pulling down the zipper harshly — before pulling you to your heeled feet, pushing it off your body swiftly, leaving you in just a skimpy bare of lace panties.

Ones you knew were his favourite.

“Oh, sweetheart,” He breathed, eyes raking over your bare frame, glossy doe-eyes peering up at him as he towered above you, “Wore my favourite just for me?”

You nodded, “Just f’you, Mike.”

Michael turned you, with precise smoothness, pressing your stomach against the cold of the sink, your bare back now pressed against his chest.

He slid a tentative hand up your side, toying with the tiny string the thong that clad your bottom half, as he locked eyes with your own in the mirror before you, “How am I supposed to know you didn’t wear them for him, mama?”

You pushed back against him, rolling your hips into the statement of his arousal, “Shut up about him and fuck me.”

A harsh hand connected with your left ass cheek — a half-gasp half-moan ripping from your throat at the sudden contact, “Thought I told you to keep that bratty mouth shut?”

You, testing your luck, ground against him once more, smirking at the way his hand tightened against your hand-printed behind, “Give me what I want then.”

Michael shook his head behind you — one hand working on his belt, pushing his slacks down along with his boxers, his palm wrapping around his achingly hard cock, pumping himself slowly, while the other pulled down your panties, now morphed into the shape of your plush folds from your leaking arousal, to the side, “Be careful what you wish for, doll.”

With one swift, sudden thrust, Michael pushed inside you — bottoming out instantly. A scream erupted from your throat at the instant fullness, your tight cunt struggling to adjust to the sheer size of him as his leaking tip kissed your cervix. Your pussy betrayed you as it clenched around him, drooling around him, coating his cock in your slick.

His hand flew to your mouth, his large palm enclosing around your swollen lips, muffling the whimpers that left you as you struggled around him — eyes fluttering shut at the feeling of him throbbing inside you.

“Keep those eyes open, mama,” He ordered, sliding out of you slowly until the only thing that remained inside your quivering hole was his plump mauve cockend, “Want you to see how pathetically you fall apart on my cock. My cock. No-one else’s.”

He pushed in again with the familiar harshness from before as your eyes shot open — now starting a brutal, animalistic pace that had you clawing at the tense of his hand that enveloped your mouth, hiding the high-pitched squeals and whines of pure, irrevocable lust that took over your mind, body and soul.

Michael groaned into your ear, eyes locked on your own as he fucked into you with such a pace and lack of gentleness that you’d never seen before. During your companionship, Michael took his time with you — worked you open with his mouth and fingers, took his time to get you ready for the thickness and length of him. But, not this time — all the pent up rage brought upon him from the start of the night now being fucked into you with every harsh rock of his hips.

Keeping you flush against his chest, his free hand slid down to where you connected — rubbing tight figure eights against your clit that throbbed for attention. Your head fell back against his shoulder, eyes rolling to the back of your head, ignoring any order he gave you to hold his gaze.

“Mmphmh—M-Mich—Michael, please!”

Words failed you as you cried against his hand, drunk on the way his cock dragged in and out of your gummy walls that sucked him in with each thrust — the sound of your feverish moans and your squelching cunt mixing with his breathy groans filling the air of the bathroom that now stunk of Michael’s intoxicating cologne and passionate sex.

“Take it, baby, take this fuckin’ dick.” He grunted into your ear, his words unlike his usual loving coaxes, “Make up for what’cha did.”

Michael hissed as you bit down on the skin of his palm, his hand pulling away from the source of pain as he meet your gaze in the mirror — your own expression now deepening into a scowl, “Fuck you.”

The words spat from your mouth, dripping with venom, at his words of blame, watching as his face scrunched up in frustration.

“Oh, you’ve done it now, ma.”

His pace never let up — if anything, since your oral stunt, it quickened. He forced you down, now completely bent over the sink as he created a new angle — his cock now driving deeper into your sopping cunt, abusing the sweet spot inside you relentlessly.

Now released from his grasp, your loud, incessant cries sounded throughout the small room — so voluminous that any passerby would hear every scream of his name.

His hand collided with your ass cheek again — cursing under his breath as the familiar feeling of a much needed orgasm crept up his abdomen. The lustful spark in your stomach blossoming much the same as he slid a hand into your hair, tugging your head upwards to look directly into the mirror once more. You were a state, completely, and literally, fucked — eyes streaming with tears that coated your hot cheeks, lips swollen and stricken with spit from his frantic kisses, and a small yet equally evident imprint of his fingers around your mouth where he held you harshly.

“‘M gonna cum so fuckin’ deep in this pussy that you can’t fuckin’ walk without flooding your little panties with my seed.” He grunted, never letting his thrusts faltering as you squirmed beneath him, “Who’s needy little cunt is this?”

Words failed you as you continued to cry — only desperate, eager whimpers falling from your lips.

Another spank connected with your ass cheek, coaxing a loud whine out of you, “Answer me when I ask you a fuckin’ question, woman.”

“Yours!—fuck, Michael, it’s all yours.” You panted, tears falling from your eyes faster than you could stop them.

“Say this pussy’s mine.” Michael spat, tugging hard on your locks of hair.

“My pussy’s all yours, baby, fuck—mmph!—Gonna cum!”

Michael hummed, clearly pleased with your response, his hips stuttering as he neared his own release, “Cum with me, beautiful, cum on my cock like a good girl.”

You cried out, loud and despairingly, as you finally broke — red-hot ecstasy taking over your body as you came, the flood gates of your pleasure breaking open to consume you. Michael followed, the tight clenching of your quivering pussy sending him over the edge, spurting his hot seed into your fertile cunt as he groaned lowly — the sensation of his cum filling your fluttering sex only furthering your own orgasm.

You slumped against the countertop — chest heaving as you attempted to catch your breath. Michael stilled behind you, swallowing thickly as he softened inside you. He leant down, pushing his chest against your back, coated with a sheen of sweat, before pressing a soft, loving kiss to your shoulder.

His kisses trailed up to your neck, beneath your earlobe, your cheek, before using a trembling hand to tilt your head to the side, and pressing his lips against your own. You sobbed into the kiss, more tears, now from overwhelming emotion, falling from your eyes. Michael’s hand cupped your cheek — deepening the kiss, that once held so much irritation, resentment and anger, now filled with undeniable attachment, deep love and compassion.

“I love you.” Michael breathed, disconnecting your lips, resting his forehead against yours — singular curl that stuck to his slick forehead tickling your own, “Please be mine again.” He whispered.

You nodded, pressing a soft kiss to his nose, head reeling from the overstimulating rush of emotions.

“But don’t pull that shit again.” He added with a playful smile.

“Yeah,” You sniffled with a breathy laugh, “You too.”

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

taglist: @444sturns @lotuspetalss @shadyforharrington @sassenachmalfoy @sgl8 @slugstarzz @tirallymissu @undergroundtwink @castielsb1tch @grey342 @simply-lovley44 @ang9lic @lovecherishly @ssamanthasaenz @peacemakersbeloved @ghettofabu05 @lov3lylxvender @lavnderluv @nuhteyam @amoravelee @carterstales @dolliestmelody @ambmxj @msapplehead @ghulify @cafe-lectura @westcoastsayian @bernardsbaby @whoiseanna @winterswifee @inana177 @brownskinnedwitch @btslvts @iwonthurtubaby @dear-mono @hcwait @butterfliesandcoffeex2 @junkie05 @skiicoreee @donniesbbg @mjssluttyfish @michaeljacksonspyt @szalipcombo @princessrosalia @loveposiie @starddustt @veliriumm @your-premier-amour @1andonlytashae @callmeliptoncuzimtea comment/message to be removed! taglist now closed <3

[noril23]

[hisgoodfish]

him.

[mikeysbadgyal]

caught

pairing - otw!michael x black fem!reader

rating - explicit (18+)

word count - around 1.9k

summary - michael catches you masturbating and he just can’t look away.

warnings — masturbation, voyeurism, oral (reader receiving), p in v, sub!michael (he begs + crawls), top!reader, facial (he nuts on your face), michael is inexperienced but also kinda isn’t, praise, desperation, again..lots of begging, multiple thank you’s and please’s + a little choking & finger sucking.

A/n : this was requested but i also wanna dedicate this to @enzo6ekiii 🫶🏿 happy birthday!!! I had so much fun writing subby mike i need him so bad.

You were laid out, your legs parted, head thrown back against a pillow, eyes half-closed as you worked yourself closer to the edge.

Your fingers moved slowly, circling your swollen clit. Too lost in your own pleasure, you didn’t hear the footsteps on the carpet.

Michael had been walking through the hallway, his mind still spinning from the session earlier.

He’d almost passed your door when he caught it low moans and soft, wet sounds that stopped him in his tracks.

The crack in the door was barely two inches wide, but it was enough. He leaned closer before he could stop himself, peering through the gap. The sight on the other side had his dick throbbing instantly.

His breath caught in his throat. You were on your back, your shirt had ridden up, exposing the curve of your stomach.

Your panties were pushed to one side, revealing the slick folds of your pussy. Your fingers glistened as they worked, two of them sliding through your wetness, spreading it over your clit.

The sight of your pretty pussy, all swollen, the little nub peeking out, wet and shiny, made his mouth fill with saliva.

He could see the way your hips rolled, the way your hole clenched around nothing, the way a clear string stretched between your fingers and your slit.

He quickly pulled himself out, thick, aching, pre-cum already beading at the tip as he began to stroke, matching your rhythm. He bit his lip to silence the groan that wanted to tear out of him; you looked so good like that.

His eyes stayed locked on your pussy the way your fingers disappeared inside you. He loved the way your thighs trembled.

You circled your clit with your thumb while your other hand pressed deeper, two fingers, then three, stretching yourself open. Your head was thrown back, your mouth open, your breath coming in little gasps.

His own strokes grew rougher as he pumped himself fast, his palm slick. He was so turned on that he leaked clear, sticky beads that dripped to the carpet.

He pictured his mouth on your pussy, your legs over his shoulders, grinding against his face as he licked and sucked.

His hips twitched forward too far, bumping the door, causing it to creak open.

You froze, staring at the door. Realizing who it was, you pulled the sheets up to your chin. “Michael?”

His curls were a halo around his face, damp at the temples.

His jeans were unbuttoned, his dick jutting out from the fly, his fist wrapped around his shiny shaft. He had been stroking himself while he watched you.

“I’m sorry…”

“Please don’t make me go. I need to touch you. Please.”

He wanted to back away, but his feet seemed glued to the floor. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing, his hand remaining wrapped around his length.

“You were watching me,” you said, your voice low. “You were listening.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. “I heard a sound. I thought you might’ve been… then I saw you and I couldn't stop. I'm sorry.”

You didn’t tell him to get out. You didn’t say anything. You just pulled the sheets down, moving your hand back down to your pussy, the wetness coating your fingers again. You spread your legs a little wider, a silent invitation.

“Let me come in. Please. I’ll get on my knees. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me taste you. I’ll be so good.”

“Seeing you with your fingers inside like that, I thought I’d lose my mind. I want to be the one making you drip like that.”

“You think you deserve that?” you asked.

“No,” he said. “I don’t deserve anything. But I’ll earn it. I’ll beg. I’ll do anything. Please. I see how wet you are. I want to feel that around my tongue.”

You crooked a finger. “Come here.”

Michael let out a sound that was half whimper, half groan. He pushed the door open, but he didn’t walk. He knelt, his knees hitting the floor with a thud. He crawled across the carpet and onto your bed, where you were.

“I’m sorry for watching, but I’m not sorry for wanting you. I can’t be sorry for that.“

You reached up and gently grabbed his hair. His eyes rolled up to meet yours, wide and pleading.

“Tell me what you want, Mikey,” you said, brushing a curl from his forehead.

“I want… I want to touch you,” he stammered, his voice dropping lower, rougher. “I’ve thought about it so many times seeing you like this.“

“You can touch me.”

When his fingers finally brushed against your soaked pussy, he moaned, his fingers pressing deeper, sliding through your folds, gathering the slickness. He watched his hand move, fascinated, his brows furrowing in concentration.

“Is that good, Mama?”

“Tell me what to do.”

“Rub my clit,” you murmured, your voice husky. “Right where my fingers were. Move in slow circles.”

He found it immediately, his fingers pressing against the sensitive nub; he began to move in circles.

His touch was clumsy at first, too light, then too firm, but he watched your face for cues, adjusting when you gasped or arched. Learning you with every stroke.

“Yes,” you breathed, “like that, but faster.”

A low moan rumbled from his throat when your hips bucked into his hand.

“Oh my, you’re so wet. You’re so… I can’t think.”

“You don’t need to think,” you said, tangling your fingers in his hair again.

“You need to listen. Do what I say.”

“Yes,” he whispered against your skin. “Anything. Tell me. Please.”

You guided his hand, letting his fingers slip inside you. He gasped at the tightness and the slick grip.

“I want to taste you,” he begged, coming up from between your legs, pulling his fingers out and bringing them to his lips. He licked them clean, his eyes fluttering shut. “Please. Let me taste you.”

You nodded, and he slid back down your body, his mouth trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses along your ribs, your belly, until he settled between your thighs again.

His tongue was hesitant at first, a kitten’s lick, testing. You bucked your hips, and he let out a desperate sound as he dove in.

His nose was bumping against your clit, as he lapped at your folds, groaning into you. His large hands gripped your thighs, holding you open as he devoured your pussy.

“Yes,” you gasped, grinding against his face. “Yes, just like that. Please don’t stop.”

He ate you like you were the only meal he’d ever need. His tongue circled your clit, flicking, pressing into you as he sucked gently, then harder, using his fingers to spread you open so he could get deeper.

“More,” you gasped.

He obeyed immediately, wrapping his lips around your clit and sucking while his fingers pushed inside you, two of them.

You were tight, hot, clenching around him. He groaned against your flesh.

“Am I doing it right?” he asked, pulling back just enough to speak.

“Is this good enough?”

“Yes-fuck, yes-”

“I love hearing you say that. I love knowing I’m the one doing this to you. “Please keep making those sounds.”

He buried his face in you again, licking and sucking and fucking you with his fingers until your thighs began to tremble, until your back arched off the mattress, until you screamed his name coming undone against his mouth.

He sucked up every bit, licking you through your orgasm until you pushed him away, oversensitive.

He came up from between your legs, his chin glistening, his eyes dazed. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for letting me do that.”

“Can I be inside you now?” he asked, his voice barely audible. “Please. I’ll be so gentle. I’ll last as long as you want. Just tell me yes.”

“I want it so bad,” he said. “I think about you all the time. Every night. I touch myself thinking about your mouth, your hands, your…please, I’m begging you. Let me fuck you. I’ll be so good. I’ll do exactly what you say.”

“You will,” you agreed, and you guided him onto his back, tugging his pants further down, then climbing over him, straddling his hips, your pussy brushing against the length of his dick.

He moaned, his hands flying to your waist, but you pinned them above his head.

“No touching and no moving,” you said. “Unless I say so.”

He nodded, his chest heaving. “Yes. Yes, okay. I won’t move.”

You lowered yourself slowly, watching his face contort with pleasure as you sank down onto him, inch by inch. He was so big, filling you completely, and you both moaned when you were fully seated.

“Look at me, Mikey,” you commanded. “I want you to watch me ride your dick.”

His eyes were locked on you, big and wide, his mouth open. You began to move, grinding against him. His breath came in short, desperate gasps; pleas and praises spilled from his lips.

“Oh, my…yes, so tight you feel so good. Please, please.”

You rode him with your hands braced on his chest. “You feel amazing, Michael,” you said. “So good inside me. Such a good boy.”

He whimpered at the praise, his hips bucking up into you despite his promise. You slapped his chest lightly. “I said no moving.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it. You’re too perfect. Please let me move just a little.”

“No. You take what I give you. And you’re going to come when I tell you to. Understood?”

“Yes,” he whined.

He dropped his head to your shoulder, biting back a cry. “Fuck, baby,” “You feel I can’t hold on much more.”

“You can and you will.”

You kept him on the edge, riding him faster, then slower, until he was a mess.

“Please let me come, please. I’ll do anything. I’ll worship you forever, please.”

You slowed your pace, a teasing smile on your lips.

“Not yet. I want to hear you beg a little more.”

“I need it, please. I’ll be good.”

Leaning forward, you brought one hand to his throat, squeezing as your fingers curled against the sides of his neck.

"Quiet," you whispered, your other hand lifting to his mouth. "Open."

His lips parted, and you slid two fingers past them. He hollowed his cheeks as he sucked your fingers, his saliva coating your fingers.

You pressed your palm a little firmer against his throat, not enough to cut off air, but enough to make him feel the pressure to remind him who was in control.

He moaned around your fingers, the vibration traveling up your arm. When his hips bucked, you tightened your grip on his throat in warning.

"That's it," you said. "Suck. Good boy, Mikey."

He kept sucking eagerly, his tongue swirling, his eyes rolling back. You rode him through it, your hips rolling in lazy circles, feeling the way his dick twitched inside you.

The combination of your hand on his throat and your fingers in his mouth had him utterly undone.

He was so vocal it was so sexy; every thrust drew more pleas and whimpers from him.

His hands roamed your hips, your breasts, your thighs, breaking his promise, but he never tried to control the pace. He let you take what you wanted.

You pulled your fingers free with a soft pop, replacing them with your thumb, dragging it across his lower lip.

“You’re riding me so good, ma,” he gasped. “I won’t last much longer, please. Tell me when and tell me how you want it.”

“I want you to come all over my face,” you said, and his eyes went wide as he nodded frantically.

“Yes. Yes. Whatever you want.”

You rode him harder, faster, until you felt him stiffen beneath you. “I’m going to, I’m so close, please.”

You pulled off, rolling onto your back, pulling him with you. He hovered over your face, one hand braced beside your head, the other gripping his dick. He was slick with your wetness, throbbing.

“Is this..are you sure?”

“Yes, give it to me. I want it all,” you said, licking your lips and sticking your tongue out.

He cried out as his body tensed, his dick jerking. The first rope of cum hit your lips, warm and thick.

The second landed across your cheek, the third on your chin, the fourth across your nose and eyebrow.

“Thank you,” he gasped. “Thank you, thank you.”

He kept pumping, milking himself, more spurts landing on your tongue, your forehead, your throat.

He collapsed on his knees, his chest heaving, his dick still dripping.

He looked down at you, your face dripping with his release, his cum running down your cheeks, pooling at the corners of your mouth. You wiped your mouth, bringing your hand to your lips, licking a stripe of his cum off your fingers.

As he watched you do that a fresh wave of arousal flowed through him.

“That was the first time… no one has ever… was I okay?”

He rested his forehead against your shoulder, his breath ragged.

You lifted his chin, making him look at you, at the mess he’d made. “You did so fucking good,” you said softly, and he smiled.

“You were more than okay,” you said.

“I’m going to go grab a rag from the bathroom.”

“Okay,” you whispered back.

A few minutes later, he came back with a warm rag in his hand.

He pulled you closer as he carefully wiped his release from your face.

When he was done, he curled up against you, his hand splayed across your stomach, his lips pressed to your shoulder, still whispering lots of thanks to you.

♥︎

A/n : i lowkey got lazy at the end sorry guys 😭😭 <333

[urbanfunkchild]

Desire, Interrupted

Pairing: Michael Jackson x Fem!reader

Summary: Broadway's leading lady. The most famous man in the world. Three months of restraint, one jealous breakdown in the rain, and a midnight knock at the door. He's done being patient and you're done waiting.

Tags: 18+, possessive + jealous michael, he's a bit older, dangerous/history era, theatre setting, you are an actress in the 90s, michael is slightly avoidant and dramatic, but ever so sexy ;), he legit rips your panties rather than taking them off oop

Word Count: 11621

Author’s Note: request for @moonshadowsx, i hope this is ok for u. it got really long, i have been writing since 8 this morning and its now 7pm lmao. i loved exploring this world as i LOVE a streetcar named desire.

If you'd like more, send me an ask ;)

part 2 is up - HERE

There was a stillness in the house tonight that wasn't the usual Tuesday vibe. Streetcar Named Desire always pulled a quieter audience than the musicals next door; people came to listen, and to fall deeply in love with Blanche and her unwinding madness.

It was your 108th show. Eighteen months on and off as Blanche Dubois in the infamous St James Theatre, performing rigidly through illness, mental anguish, family drama, and public scrutiny. Being a popular theatre actress had been a dream since childhood and you had gone on to achieve what you wanted. It was divine timing.

But as you finished Scene 8 in Act 3, something niggled in your stomach. You had a sickly feeling someone of enormous fame was watching, somewhere out there in the stalls.

You pushed it away. You owed Blanche every drop of yourself, eight times a week, regardless of who was sitting in the dark.

When the lights went down for the final time and you came off into the wings, Sandra was already there with the wet cloth for the back of your neck.

"Oh you little darling," you said. "I'm so peaky tonight."

"I wasn't going to say a thing. But I had briefly assumed it had something to do with our star-studded audience member sitting out there."

You froze.

"Who?"

She bit the inside of her cheek, holding back a smile. "Michael Jackson. Third row, centre. And it's his third night."

You stared at her. Heart thundering.

"Third night?"

"Third night, baby."

You let her walk you back to the dressing room without saying anything else, because you didn't want her to know how hard your hands had started shaking. You sat down in front of the mirror — the old, dirty NYC theatre mirror with the bulbs around it and lipstick stains from starlets long gone and pictures of your family tucked into the edges — and you tried to look unbothered.

You were a fan of his. He had just released Dangerous. He was at the crux of his fame, and you'd read his book in your twenties and looked up to him for years.

There was a knock at the door. James, the front-of-house manager, burst in.

"Y/N. A dashing performance, as per usual." He held out an envelope. Heavy cream paper, your full name on the front in beautiful handwriting. "Secret admirer. He said if you agree to the arrangement, you're to call his assistant."

You took it with shaking hands.

Sandra ushered James out. Then she ushered herself out too, with a knowing look over her shoulder.

You broke the wax seal.

Y/N,

Forgive me for writing to you like this. I am a very shy person off stage — quite the departure from the onstage persona, but I'm sure you can understand, being a performer yourself.

I have seen your show three nights in a row. The first night I came because I'd read about you in the NY Times. The second night I came because I didn't believe what I'd seen and needed to know if you could do it again. Tonight I came because I've realised you do it every night, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about you in between.

I would like to take you to dinner. Anywhere you want to go, whatever night you have free. If your answer is no, I won't write again and I won't come back to the theatre. The work is yours and I would never want to be the reason you were uncomfortable.

If your answer is yes, please call the number below.

With great care, Michael Jackson

You called the next morning, still in your pyjamas, coffee going cold beside the phone.

You'd rehearsed three opening lines and abandoned all of them by the time the line picked up. You just gave your name and said you were returning a call about a dinner. The assistant was warm and easy. He didn't make it weird. He asked what night you had free and whether you'd eaten at La Grenouille. You said Thursday. You said no. He said a car would come for you at the stage door at half past eleven. He said the driver's name was Frank.

You hung up and sat at the table for a long time, looking at the letter still folded on the kitchen counter where you'd read it again over breakfast. Twice.

₊˚°⊹˚

Thursday came around faster than you could prepare for.

You did the show in a strange, light-headed state. Blanche came out of you anyway, because muscle memory wouldn't be shaken by one dinner regardless of who was on the other side of it, but you walked off the stage feeling like you'd performed through gauze.

Sandra had your dark green silk dress laid out before you got there. She zipped you up and smoothed the back of your hair.

"You look beautiful, sweetheart."

"Sandra, I am really nervous."

"He'll love you. And if he doesn't, you have a really cool story for those fancy cocktail nights you go to."

She squeezed your shoulders once and pushed you toward the door.

₊˚°⊹˚

La Grenouille was on East 52nd. Frank had you there in twelve minutes.

You stepped out onto the pavement, into the kind of restaurant where Jackie Onassis used to lunch — low light, white tablecloths, an absurd quantity of fresh flowers. You knew the place by reputation. Only the rich rich dined here.

You stepped inside.

It was empty.

He had bought it out for the night.

Your stomach turned over once, slowly. What kind of mad person buys out a whole restaurant?

The maître d' walked you the length of the room to a table at the back, beneath an arrangement of roses you could have hidden behind. And sitting at the table, already standing as you approached —

Michael.

Dark trousers. White shirt, open at the collar. A black jacket cut close to his shoulders, a sparkly brooch on the lapel. His hair was tied back loosely, dark curly strands framing his face. He looked expensive but matter of fact. He looked nervous.

He looked at you like you'd walked into a room he had been waiting in for a long time.

"Hi," he said softly, with a cheeky grin.

"Hi."

He pulled your chair out himself. You sat. He sat opposite. He folded his hands on the white tablecloth and looked at you and didn't say anything for a beat too long.

Then —

"I wasn't sure you'd come."

"I wasn't sure I would either."

He laughed; small, sudden, more relieved than amused. It was a wonderful sound — soft and slightly cracked, like he hadn't laughed in a few days and his throat had to remember how.

You stayed at the restaurant until almost two in the morning.

He asked you about Blanche — he actually wanted to know. He told you the one moment in the second act, after the line "I don't want realism. I want magic," when your smile faded before the sentence was over. He said it genuinely moved him, the nuance in the performance. He said he'd been thinking about you for three days.

You stared at him.

"You're not like other men," you said.

He didn't do anything performative with the line. He didn't deflect. He just looked at you across the table with that quiet attention, like he already knew it.

"Good."

When Frank appeared at the door at quarter to two, Michael stood first, came around the table to pull your chair out, walked you to the car. He helped you into your coat. His hands lingered very briefly on your shoulders.

Outside, on the dark pavement, you turned to face him.

"Will you let me write to you again?" he asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Will you let me call you?"

"Yes, Michael." You laughed.

He nodded. He looked down at his shoes. Looked back up. He was nervous again, properly nervous, the calm of the dinner falling away now that the night was nearly over.

"Can I —" he started.

You didn't let him finish.

You stepped forward, reached up, and put your hand on the side of his jaw.

He stilled completely under your touch. His eyes went huge.

Then you kissed him.

It was meant to be a soft thing. A thank you for the evening thing. A see you soon thing.

It became something else within about two seconds.

His mouth was warm and he made a small sound against you — somewhere between a sigh and something raw — and then his hand was at the small of your back, gentle but very present, and he was kissing you back like he had been thinking about kissing you for the last three hours and could not quite believe he was being allowed to.

He broke the kiss first. Slowly. Like he didn't actually want to.

His forehead came to rest against yours. His breathing was uneven. So was yours.

"Get in the car," he said. "Before I ask you to come home with me."

So you got in the car.

You touched your lips with the back of your fingers as Frank pulled away from the kerb. You looked back through the rear window and saw him standing on the pavement outside La Grenouille with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching the car go.

You barely slept that night.

₊˚°⊹˚

That was three months ago.

Three months of him in your life now, properly. Three months of his handwriting on the envelopes that arrived at the stage door every 2 show day, without fail, never anything elaborate, just a card, a few lines, sometimes a pressed flower from wherever he was that week.

Three months of long phone calls at strange hours, because he was on the road and the time zones rarely lined up, and you would pick up the phone at one in the morning to hear his voice on the other end saying he was sorry, he was sorry, he should have called yesterday and the day got away from him.

You always told him to stop apologising. He always apologised anyway.

He came to New York whenever he could. He sent a car. The car always took you to somewhere thoughtful; a private dining room at a restaurant he'd remembered you mentioning, a quiet table at a hotel bar after your show, once to a small jazz club in Harlem where the owner had cleared the back room for the two of you and the band had played until three in the morning and Michael had held your hand under the table for the whole set.

He kissed you a great deal. He said he loved to kiss.

He kissed you in the back of cars and in the corridor outside your dressing room and once, memorably, on a fire escape in the Village at four in the morning when neither of you had wanted the night to end. His hands had been at the small of your back and in your hair and skimming the edge of your waist over your coat, and you had been pressed against the brick wall behind you with his mouth at the side of your throat, and you had genuinely thought — yes, tonight, here, in this freezing alley if it has to be —

And then he had pulled back. Pressed his forehead to yours. Breathed out slowly.

He had said not like this.

You hadn't known what to do with that, so you'd nodded, and he had walked you to your front door and kissed the back of your hand like a man from another century and gone home alone.

He had never once brought you back to his place. Wherever his place was in the city; a hotel suite, a friend's townhouse, you weren't entirely sure — he kept it separate. He took you out. He held you close in perfectly picked out places. He left you at your door.

You had asked him about it once, gently, you didn't want him to think it was a complaint. He had looked at you for a long time and then said — I've done this wrong before. I don't want to do it wrong with you.

You had not pushed the subject after that.

He was smarter than you had expected, and that was the thing that had made you fall for him more than anything else.

You'd known he was talented. Everyone knew that. You'd known he was an adorer of all things theatrical, — three nights at Streetcar had told you that before you'd ever spoken to him.

What you hadn't been ready for was how widely he read, how carefully he thought, how much he knew about your world specifically.

He knew theatre. Properly. Not the surface of it, not the famous productions and the names everyone could recognise; he knew Stanislavski and the Group Theatre and what Lee Strasberg had been doing in the basement of Carnegie Hall in 1948. He could tell you which production of Long Day's Journey Into Night he thought was the best one ever staged and why. He had opinions on Stoppard. He had read Mamet.

You had asked him, once, where he had learned all of this.

He had shrugged, a small private shrug, and said — I had a lot of time on tour buses when I was young. I read everything I could find.

You had been smitten before then. After that you had been quietly, comprehensively gone.

In April he flew you out to LA for a long weekend.

He was working on a short film for his new album. A piece for the History record — something elaborate, something cinematic, with a proper script and proper scenes that needed acting rather than performing. He told you over the phone that he was nervous about it. He told you he didn't quite trust his own ear for the dialogue. He asked you, very tentatively, if you would mind sitting with him for a few hours and helping him run the lines.

You had said yes before he had even finished asking.

He sent a car for you at JFK and you flew first class and Frank; Frank was apparently a permanent fixture in your life now, kind, quiet and secretly very funny. He picked you up at LAX and drove you to a house in the hills you had never been to before, and you understood, by the way he stopped the car a respectful distance from the front door, that this was where Michael lived.

He came out of the front door before you had got out of the car.

You had not seen him in three weeks. He was in a soft white t-shirt and dark trousers and his hair was loose and he looked, in the late afternoon California light, like a slightly different version of the man you had been spending time with in the cold city. More relaxed. More at home in his own skin.

He held you on the gravel drive for a long minute without saying anything, cradling your head in his hands.

You spent two days running his lines for him.

You sat on the floor of a sun-filled living room, grand piano and all with the script between you. You ran scenes. You pushed back on line readings. You asked him what his director had said about a particular beat and then told him gently that you disagreed. He listened. He took notes.

He made you cups of tea and brought them over without spilling a drop. He asked you, at one point, what your second year movement teacher at Juilliard would have said about the way he was holding his shoulders in a particular scene, and you laughed so hard you had to put the script down. He was filming some sort of horror short and he was taking it entirely too seriously.

He kissed you on the sofa in the late afternoon of the first day and you spent an hour there together, just kissing, his hand under the back of your shirt, hovering on your bra clasp, the script forgotten on the coffee table. He stopped before it could go anywhere. He always stopped. You were starting to understand it as a kind of devotion; a careful patience — even though you privately wished, more and more, that he would stop being so careful with you.

He drove you back to the airport on Monday morning himself. No Frank. Just him in a car he kept in the garage, with the windows down and the radio low and massive sunglasses on his face, so he wouldn't be recognised.

At the curb of the airport drop off, he kissed you politely on the side of your face and told you he would call you that night.

He did. And the night after. And the night after that.

You came back to New York and back to Blanche and back to the eight shows a week.

You felt — for the first time in a long time; like a person whose life had a bit of excitement outside work in it. A private part. A warm element.

Your relationship with michael was like a room with the door closed that nobody else got to see inside.

You had no idea you were about to walk into the worst of it.

₊˚°⊹˚

You had been nominated.

You had received the call on a Tuesday morning from your agent and you had sat down on the floor of your kitchen and cried, properly, the way you had not cried in a long time. Best Actress in a Play. A Streetcar Named Desire. Your second Broadway nomination and your first in a lead role.

Michael had been the third person you'd called. He had gotten very emotional on the phone. You couldn't really tell if he was crying or not. He had said I knew it, I knew it, I knew it about six times in a row.

The luncheon was at the Rainbow Room. Three weeks after the nomination. The whole industry would be there. He was flying in from LA the night before to come with you. He had asked you, very seriously, if you were sure you wanted him there. He had said he didn't want to be the story and would be very happy to wait at the hotel and meet you afterward if you would prefer.

You had told him you wanted him with you. You wanted to become public and let the world know that you were fully, incomprehensibly in love with him. But you had to tell him this first, and you had no clue how to say it out loud.

You had also told him, more carefully, that Daniel was going to be there and would be a large fixture within the day.

Daniel.

Your co-star. Your Stanley. The man who had been pawing at you and breaking you down and dragging you across a stage for fourteen weeks of the run, eight shows a week. A wonderful actor and a carefree socialite with a great career ahead of him, who had never, in all the time you had worked together, ever made you feel uncomfortable for a single second.

He had been nominated too. Best Actor. The two of you had done press together for the nominations. You had hugged him on stage at the press call and the photograph had gone everywhere — Streetcar leads embrace after Tony nods.

You never really brought up Daniel to Michael, because you assumed he knew: it was all business.

He had been excited about the event and he had been excited for you. The morning of the luncheon you had got ready in your apartment and he had arrived to collect you in a dark suit with a flower in his pocket and he had told you, quietly, that you looked extraordinary.

₊˚°⊹˚

The Rainbow Room was at the top of 30 Rock and it was a beautiful, slightly absurd venue for a lunch.

You had been there once before, briefly, for some industry thing. You had not been there as a nominee. You had not been there with a date, never mind an international heart throb.

Everything had been fine on the lead up, until your agency in collaboration with the production team of Streetcar, threw a hefty stick of dynamite your way that changed the tone of what would play out.

The call was quick, snappy, almost 2 days before the event.

It had been Greg, your producer. Greg who you trusted. Greg who said the words darling, listen, this is a wonderful opportunity in a tone of voice that made your stomach drop.

"The studio had a thought"

You rolled your eyes, you already knew. Daniel was single. You were nominated together.

"The press already loved the photograph of the two of you embracing. The buzz around the production was good but it could be great — and the Tonys were only 3 weeks away, and a little bit of fanfare around the two leads going into the awards could move the needle on a Best Revival nod for the production itself.

Would you consider going to the luncheon together?

Just as professional dates. Just for the photographs."

You had stared at your kitchen wall for a long moment.

You had said "Greg, I'm seeing someone."

He had said "I know, darling, and I would never ask you to do anything you weren't comfortable with. But it's one event. It's a few hours. The story writes itself for the morning papers and then it's done."

You had said you would think about it.

You had thought about it.

You had said yes, eventually, because Greg had been good to you and because the production deserved the boost and because Daniel had been a generous co-star for fourteen weeks and you wanted him to win Best Actor.

And because — and this was the part you hadn't quite admitted to yourself — you and Michael had not yet had the conversation about what you were to each other. Not properly. He had not asked you to be anything specific. He had kissed you on fire escapes and held you on his sofa in LA and told you he didn't want to do it wrong with you, and that had been wonderful and patient and lovely, but it had also left a great deal in the room undefined.

You did not have a boyfriend.

You had Michael, and Michael had you, and neither of you had said the word yet.

So you said yes to Greg.

And you called Michael that night.

You told him on the phone.

You told him exactly what Greg had said, exactly, and what it was and exactly what it wasn't. You told him it was for the production. You told him it was photographs and a luncheon and two hours and then it was done. You thought he'd know these things, coming from the industry himself.

You said "Michael, I would still very much like you to come. I want you there. I want you there with me. We can arrive separately and you can sit at the table with my agent and I think Sandra is going, and it will all be fine. People can finally see us in public together"

There was a very long silence on the other end of the line.

Then he said very quietly, evenly — "of course. Whatever you need."

"are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I want to be there for you."

"Michael."

"Honestly. I am fine with it. Get some sleep."

He hung up before you could say anything else.

You sat on your bedroom floor for a long time with the phone in your lap.

You had known him for three months. You had been on enough phone calls with him to know what every register of his voice meant. The voice he had used to say I'm fine had not been fine.

You wanted to call him back. You knew that calling him back would make it worse.

So you didn't.

He arrived at your apartment in a dark suit with a flower in his pocket and he kissed your temple and told you you looked extraordinary, and you held onto him for a beat longer than you meant to in the hallway, and he stroked the back of your hair and didn't say anything further about it. One of his spare drivers would take you, separately and you'd meet up.

You hoped deep down that you'd be able to juggle responsibility and still introduce Michael to your industry friends and just… have a good time.

₊˚°⊹˚

Daniel was waiting at the entrance to the Rainbow Room.

He looked good. He always looked good. He was thirty six years old and had perfect bone structure, and that was basically what had got him cast as Stanley in the first place. Broad through the shoulders, slightly rough at the edges, the kind of handsome that worked better in person on stage, rather than in the movies.

He was wearing a navy suit and his hair was pushed back from his forehead and he was grinning at you, wiggling his eyebrows at the presence of a man; of Michael, as you came across the marble floor toward him.

You felt Michael's hand drop from the small of your back about three feet before you reached the door.

He had peeled off to find his seat. You had not seen him do it. You realised it in the second after it had happened and your stomach churned with anxiety.

Daniel reached for you.

You let him. He kissed your cheek and held both of your hands and looked at you the way Daniel always looked at you when there was a camera nearby — a little too warm, a little too proud, a little too here she is — and the photographers on the press line started flashing immediately.

"There she is," Daniel said, loud enough for them to hear. "There's my Blanche."

You inwardly grimaced at the use of that statement.

"There's my Stanley," you said, because the script of these things wrote itself.

He kept hold of one of your hands. He drew you in toward the press line. The flashes started in earnest now — the proper, blinding, sustained kind that you only got at events like this, when you were the photograph the photographers had been told to get.

Daniel was wonderful at it. He had grown up on a soap opera, multi camera, before he had moved to the theatre. He knew exactly how to angle his body, exactly when to laugh, exactly when to lean in toward you and say something private into your ear that the cameras would read as intimacy. His hand was at the small of your back now, creeping toward your backside, where Michael's had been not ten minutes ago. It was lower than it needed to be, and you knew; you just knew, professionally, that this was the kind of touch that sold a photograph. The only kind, really.

You forced a smiled at the photographers.

You let him put his arm around your shoulders for a posed shot. You let him kiss the side of your head for another. When one of the photographers called out give her a proper one, Danny, come on, Daniel laughed and ducked his head and kissed you on the cheek, very close to the corner of your mouth, and held it for a beat too long, and the flashes went off so brightly you saw spots for thirty seconds afterward.

When you finally got past the press line, when Daniel finally released you to go and stand with his own publicist, you turned around to look for Michael.

He was at the table. He was already sitting down. His back was to you.

You crossed the room.

You made your way to the table with your stage smile on, greeting the people who stopped you, accepting congratulations on the nomination, kissing cheeks. You had done this a hundred times. You could do it on autopilot.

Michael stood up to pull your chair out for you. He did it without even thinking, a true gentleman. Courteous attention; that had been one of the first things you had ever loved about him. He smiled at you; small, warm, a little bit out of control — and helped you into your chair.

He didn't say anything.

You knew, by the angle of his jaw and the jittery mess of his hands, and the way he had not yet looked at you since you had sat down, that something was really wrong.

"Michael," you said quietly.

"Mm."

"Are you alright?"

He turned to look at you. He smiled. It did not reach his eyes.

"I'm fine, these things make me really anxious."

He turned back to the table, and politely asked Bill to hand him the salt.

You felt your stomach drop as you saw Daniel approach the table.

He was being a good sport about the whole scenario, was the thing. However, he had no idea what was happening, he had no idea Michael was anything other than a friend who had come with you for moral support, because the production had not told him anything different and you certainly hadn't. He was laying on the charm; and thick.

He shook Michael's hand.

He said it was an honour.

He said

"thank you for coming to support my girl " — and he meant it warmly, he meant it in the goofy way, the way an older brother might tease; but you watched Michael's hand tighten very briefly on his napkin under the table.

Michael smiled at him.

"My pleasure," Michael said. "She's spoken highly of you. I've been looking forward to meet the man behind the Stanley."

Daniel laughed. Clapped Michael on the shoulder.

You saw Michael flinch very faintly under the contact.

Daniel went back to his own table.

You turned to Michael.

"Michael —"

"I said I don't really want to talk about it. Let's just eat lunch and get through this."

His voice was perfectly even. He still wasn't looking at you.

You started to overthink; maybe it was a mistake to bring him here? Maybe he wasn't ready to commit to someone? Show the world that you were his?

You chewed the inside of your lip, totally catastrophising the situation. When your eyes flickered up, Sandra gave you a woeful look.

Everyone could sense the tense energy.

It got worse during the speeches.

The production's publicist had clearly briefed Daniel. He truly was a sweet man with no malice in him at all, but he was also an actor, and when he was given a brief he ran with it.

During the cocktail portion of the afternoon, while you were trying to talk to Greg, Daniel kept appearing at your elbow. He kept putting his hand on the small of your back. He kept laughing at things you said and tipping his head back the way the photographs liked.

The photographers loved it. They were getting their story. You could see the headlines already Streetcar leads electric at Tonys luncheon, sources say more than chemistry between the stars than even the characters themselves.

You simply could not get back to the table. Back to him.

Every time you tried, somebody stopped you. A nominator. A producer. An old friend. They wanted to congratulate you. They wanted a photograph. They wanted to introduce you to someone.

You looked over at the table.

He had not moved. He was talking politely to Sandra, who had been seated next to him as a buffer and a familiar face, and Sandra was watching you across the room with a look on her face you knew very well. The Sandra look that said I see what is happening and I am keeping him calm but you need to get over here.

His security detail was intimidating enough that no other guests approached the table. He must have been jealous, and feeling rather left out. Regret started rushing through your body.

You tried.

You really did.

You were two feet from the table when Daniel caught your elbow.

"Photographer wants one more by the window," he said cheerfully. "Light's perfect. Five minutes, darling."

He looped his arm through yours.

You looked toward the table. Michael was watching now. He had turned his head slightly. He was looking at Daniel's arm through yours.

His face was completely blank.

You felt sick.

"Daniel," you said quietly. "I really need to —"

"Five minutes, darling. Greg's orders."

He was already steering you away.

You looked back over your shoulder. Michael was standing up. He was buttoning his jacket with those gorgeous hands. He was saying something to Sandra. Sandra was reaching for his arm. He was shaking his head, gently, and stepping past her. His security entourage followed.

He walked toward the door at the back of the room.

He did not look at you on his way out.

You stood frozen by the window with Daniel's arm through yours and a photographer asking you to look this way please, miss, just one more, and you felt every part of your heart slowly shatter. How could you have let this get so screwed up?

You don't remember making the decision to run, your brain was in complete overdrive.

And then you were moving.

You pulled your arm out of Daniel's so abruptly that he stumbled half a step.

"Darling, wait —"

"I'll be back."

"Greg said —"

"Tell Greg I'll be back."

You were already walking. Half walking. Mostly running, by the time you got to the door — and you did not care, in that moment, that you were a Tony nominee in a designer dress and heels who had just abandoned her co-star in front of half the New York theatre press. You did not care about a single one of them.

You shoved the door open.

You were in a service corridor. White walls, fluorescent strip lights, a janitor's trolley parked against one wall. The sound of the luncheon dimmed behind you the second the door swung shut.

You ran.

You did not know where he had gone. You followed the corridor on instinct — the instinct that came from years of touring theatres and knowing how back of house corridors worked. Service routes always led to service exits. Famous people who didn't want to be seen always went out the back.

You took a left.

Then a right.

You came down a flight of metal stairs in your heels too fast and almost went over, caught yourself on the railing, kept going.

You burst out of a fire door onto a loading dock and the rain hit you like someone had thrown a bucket.

It was coming down hard. It had not been raining when you'd arrived — the sky had been overcast but holding — and apparently in the last hour the weather had broken properly and now it was the kind of New York summer downpour that turned the city's gutters into rivers.

You saw him immediately.

He was at the bottom of the loading dock ramp, in the alley. Bill was beside him. There was a black car pulling up at the kerb. Michael was already moving toward it.

"Michael!"

He stopped.

He didn't turn around. Not at first. He stopped in the middle of the alley with the rain coming down on him, and his shoulders went up slightly, and then very slowly he turned to face you.

He looked at you across the alley.

You came down the loading dock ramp. Your shoes had no grip. The rain was already in your eyes. You could feel your hair flattening against your scalp and your makeup running and you did not care. Heart hammering in your chest.

You crossed the alley.

Bill stepped back slightly, gave the two of you a space, and then slid into the back of the black car.

You stopped in front of Michael.

He was soaked through already. His suit was ruined. His hair had come loose where he had been pulling at it and was sticking to the side of his face. He was looking at you with an expression you had never seen on him — not anger exactly, but something much rougher than anything he had shown you in three months.

"Michael —"

"Go back inside Y/N."

"What?"

"Go back inside. They're going to be looking for you."

"I don't care."

"Yes you do."

"Michael, I don't —"

"You should." His voice cracked very slightly.

He looked away from you, down the alley. "You should care. That's the whole point of today. That's the whole point of life, to care. You've worked your butt off for this and you should be in there right now with your co star, smiling for the cameras, and not out here in the rain ruining your dress."

"I'd rather be out here with you."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't say things like that." He was still not looking at you. His jaw was working. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."

You felt something shift very coldly in your chest.

"Make what harder?"

He looked at you.

The rain was running down his face. His eyes were wet and you could not tell, in that downpour, whether any of it was tears or whether it was all just water, and you understood, in a slow terrible way, that it didn't matter.

"I shouldn't be here," he said.

"What?"

"Today. This. I shouldn't be here. I knew it when you called me on Tuesday and I came anyway because I'm — " he stopped, gathered himself. "Because I'm selfish. Because I wanted to be near you. But I should not be here."

"Michael, what are you talking about?"

"You're at the start of something." He gestured vaguely toward the building behind you. The rain was coming off his sleeve in a sheet. "You're at the beginning. You've built this on your own. You've done everything right. You've got reviews and a nomination and a co star who looks like that; touches you hungrily, and a publicist who knows exactly how to position you. And I am — "

His voice cracked properly this time.

"I am not a good thing to attach yourself to right now."

You stared at him.

"What are you saying?"

"You know what they say about me."

"Michael. You can't seriously be doing this to me right now."

"You know what they print. You know what the papers do. You know what they were doing last summer. They are not done with me. They are not going to be done with me for a long time, and you do not deserve to be standing next to that. You do not deserve the questions. You do not deserve some journalist asking you in the middle of an interview what you think about — " he stopped dead, pressing the heel of his hand to his eye.

"You don't deserve any of it. You deserve someone better. You deserve someone proud to be with you in public, and I don't know if that can be me right now."

The last few words were like a butcher knife carefully plunged straight through your heart.

"I knew this was too good to be true. That you'd be like every other celebrity - underneath all the exquisite fame and fortune - cold and unbothered." You seethed.

"I don't even know why I trusted you. I fell for you Michael, invite you out here to show you off because I was proud and you pull this?"

You pushed the wet hair from your face, the rain still pouring down heavy. "How very cliche of you."

He didn't flinch.

He looked at you for a long moment with the rain coming off his face, and you watched something in him settle into a shape you had not seen before. Not anger. Not defensiveness. Something more depressing. Something that had been sitting in him for a long time, maybe his whole life, and had just been waiting for the right night to come out.

"Y/N."

He said your name like it was the last time he was going to.

"Look at me."

You were looking at him. You did not understand what he meant.

"No," he said softly. "Look at me. Look at me."

You looked.

You looked at his ruined suit and his soaked hair and the rain running off his jaw, and you looked at his eyes, and you looked at the way he was holding himself — slightly hunched, slightly small, like a man who was trying to take up less space than his body actually took up.

"You see me. Right?"

"Michael —"

"You see what I am. The papers tear me apart. The hair. My face. The —" he gestured at himself, vaguely, the whole of him — "everything. You see it."

"I see you. the real you."

"Yeah." A small, sad smile. "But you see all that too. You have to. Everybody does."

"Michael, what are you doing."

"I'm trying to be honest with you. For once. I've been — I have been pretending for three months that this could work, and I came here today and I sat at that table and I watched you walk around with him and I watched the way the room moved for the two of you, and I understood something I should have understood a long time ago."

"Don't."

"You're going to leave me eventually."

"Michael —"

"You are. You're going to. Maybe not this year. Maybe not the year after that. But you are going to wake up one morning next to me and you are going to look at me and you are going to realise that you could have had — " he stopped. Swallowed. "I want you to have the easy version. You could have had the man who walks into a room with you and the room doesn't make up a crazy tabloid rumour about you. You could have had the man who can take you to your own award show without ducking out the back."

"Michael — stop —"

"I'd rather you leave now."

You felt the bottom drop out of your stomach.

"What?"

"I can't do this again. I can't be the thing that gets left."

"Michael, please look at me — "

"Go back inside."

"Michael — "

"Go back inside. Please."

You reached for him.

He stepped back.

It was the worst thing he had done to you yet. He stepped back from you, further out of the alley, and you watched his hands come up between you like a barrier. You understood that he had decided this and that you were not going to be able to talk him out of it.

"I am asking you," he said quietly. "I am asking you please to let me go"

You could not speak.

"Please."

You could not speak.

you stood in front of him with your mouth open and nothing coming out — he nodded once, very slowly, like you had answered him.

"Take care of yourself."

He turned around.

He walked to the car. Bill was holding the door. Michael got in without looking back at you. The door slammed shut, the rain still plummeting down, bouncing off the black sidewalk.

The car pulled away and turned left at the end of the alley and disappeared into the wet smear of traffic on the avenue.

₊˚°⊹˚

You don't remember the cab ride home.

You don't remember Sandra getting you into your building or up the stairs or through your front door. You don't remember her running you a bath or peeling the ruined dress off you or wrapping you in your dressing gown. You remember pieces of it. You remember her hands at the zip and her voice somewhere above you saying baby, baby, baby in the soft repetitive way she said it when she didn't know what else to say.

You'd asked her to leave eventually.

She had not wanted to. She had stood in your doorway in her own coat with her own hair still damp and looked at you for a long time, and you had told her, quietly, that you needed to be by yourself. You had told her you would call her in the morning.

That had been an hour ago. Or two. Or six. You weren't sure.

You were sitting on the floor of your bedroom.

You did not know why you were on the floor. You had walked in here to find a hairbrush and you had sat down with your back against the foot of the bed and you had not got up again. Your body could not manage any task, for the thought of him completely disabled you.

Your dressing gown was loose at the front and your hair was still wet and there was a small dark patch on the rug where your hair was dripping, and you watched the patch grow without doing anything about it.

You kept replaying it.

The alley. The rain. The way he had stepped back from you when you reached for him. The red brake lights at the end of the alley.

You kept replaying the wrong parts of it.

You should have grabbed him. You should have grabbed him by the lapels of his ruined jacket and pulled him into you and told him every single thing you had been too composed to say for three months. You should have told him, in the alley, in the rain, in front of Bill — you should have told him that you were in love with him. You should have told him you had known it since the night on the fire escape in the Village. You should have told him that you didn't care about the papers. You should have told him you would walk into any room in the world with him as long as he was the one walking in with you.

You had stood there with your mouth open like an idiot and you had let him decide for both of you, and now he was somewhere in the city — a hotel, a friend's apartment, a car going to the airport, you had no idea — and you had no way of reaching him because you had never been to his place and you didn't even have a number for him that wasn't Wayne's, and Wayne was not going to put you through tonight, you knew that, Wayne was going to be polite and protective and very firm, just as an assistant should be.

You had let him go.

You had let him go and you had not even fought for him properly, and now he was alone and he thought he was right and he thought he had done you a favour.

The worst part was that he had been wrong about everything.

You did not want the easy version. You had never wanted the easy version. You had spent fourteen weeks playing a woman who had been destroyed by the easy version, by the man who looked right on paper, by the brother in law who fit into the family photograph — and you had walked off that stage every night and gone home to phone calls with a man who blissfully did not fit anywhere, who was complicated and strange and famous and shy and clever and gentle and could not eat lunch in a restaurant without buying it out first, and that was the man you had wanted. That was the man you had been falling in love with. The complication had never been the problem. The complication had been the point.

He didn't know because you had never told him. You had spent three months letting him think he was a luxury you were graciously accommodating in your otherwise clean and uncomplicated career, and now he had decided to remove himself from your life as a kindness, and you were sitting on the floor of your bedroom realising you had loved him for at least eight weeks of those three months and had not said a single word.

You had been so careful. You had been so good and so professional and so grown up about the whole thing. You had not wanted to scare him. You had not wanted to push. You had wanted to be the woman who held back, who let him set the pace, who was patient and understanding about his patience.

You wished, now, that you had been someone completely different.

You wished you had been the kind of woman who, on the fire escape in the Village at four in the morning, had said yes, like this, exactly like this, please don't stop. Take me right here and now.

You wished you had told him, on the sofa in his house in the hills that you would burn your career to the ground for him if he asked you to. You wished you had said it like that, exactly, in those words. You wished you had been melodramatic and naked and unreasonable and thirty three years old, the way you had every right to be. You wished you had been less of a professional.

You wished you had told him you were in love with him.

You wished —

There was a knock at the door.

You froze.

You looked toward the bedroom doorway. The apartment was dark beyond it — you had not bothered to turn any lamps on after Sandra had left — and the only light was the spill from your bedside lamp pooling at your feet on the rug.

It was past midnight.

It might be Sandra. She might have come back. She might have decided not to leave you alone tonight after all.

The knock came again.

Not Sandra's knock. Hers — three quick taps, businesslike, the same knock she used at your dressing room door. This was different. This was harder. This was the knock of a person who had been standing on the other side of a door for a long time trying to work up to it.

You got off the floor.

You did not breathe properly. You walked through your dark apartment in your bare feet with your damp hair sticking to your neck and your dressing gown loose around you, and you reached the door, and you put your hand on the latch.

You did not look through the peephole.

You opened the door.

Michael was standing in the corridor.

He didn't speak. For a long moment, he just stood there in the dim light of the corridor, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths, rainwater still gleaming on his skin. The silence between you was a live wire, humming with everything that had been said and everything that hadn't.

Then he moved.

It wasn't a slow movement. It wasn't gentle or hesitant. It was a sudden, decisive lunge, as if he'd been holding himself back by a thread and the thread had snapped. His hands came up, not to push you away this time, but to seize you.

One hand clamped around your upper arm, the other went to the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your damp hair. He pulled you into him with a force that knocked the air from your lungs.

His mouth came down on yours.

He kissed you like a man trying to undo his own decision. There was no softness, no exploration. It was hard and desperate and wet with rain and something saltier—tears, maybe his, maybe yours, you couldn't tell.

He kissed you like he was drowning and your mouth was air. He kissed you like he was trying to erase the alley, the last hour, the last three months of careful distance. His tongue pushed past your lips, rough and demanding, and you gasped into him, your hands flying up to clutch at his soaked shirt.

He broke the kiss only to breathe, his forehead pressed to yours, his eyes screwed shut.

"We drove eight blocks," he rasped, the words torn from somewhere deep in his chest. "and then I told Frank to turn around. I told him to bring me back here. I sat in the car downstairs for hours mulling over what I said to you. How unfair and jealous I was..."

You tried to speak, but he shook his head, a sharp, frantic motion.

"Don't," he said. "Don't say anything. If you say anything reasonable, if you tell me to go, I will. I'll go. So don't."

He kissed you again, swallowing any response you might have made. This time, his hands began to move. The hand on your arm slid down, over the slippery silk of your dressing gown, finding the tie at your waist.

He fumbled with it, his fingers clumsy with urgency, and when the knot gave way, he shoved the fabric apart. The gown fell open. The cool air of the corridor hit your bare skin underneath—you had nothing on but your panties.

A low, guttural sound vibrated from his throat into your mouth.

He pushed you backward, into your apartment, kicking the door shut behind him with a heavy thud that echoed in the dark space. He didn't turn on a light. He just walked you back, his mouth still devouring yours, until your shoulders hit the wall beside the entryway table. The impact made a frame rattle.

He tore his mouth from yours, his breath scorching hot against your cheek. "I tried," he whispered, almost to himself. "I tried to be the good one. I tried to let you go. I can't. I can't do it. Even if this life is complicated"

His hands were everywhere. One palm slid up your ribcage, rough and warm, and closed over your breast, his thumb sweeping over your nipple in a circle that made you arch off the wall with a sharp cry.

He bent his head, his mouth leaving a trail of wet, open-mouthed kisses down your jaw, your throat, the hollow of your collarbone. When he took your nipple into his mouth, biting it slightly, you cried out again, your fingers digging into his shoulders.

"Michael—"

"You said my name in the alley like that," he muttered against your skin, his teeth grazing the peak. "I like the way it sounds coming out of your mouth."

He straightened, his eyes blazing in the near-darkness. With a sudden, shocking strength, he turned you around, pressing your front against the wall. His body covered yours from behind, lean and hard and trembling. You felt the rigid line of his erection through his trousers, pressed against the curve of your ass. He groaned, a raw, pained sound, and ground himself against you once, twice, a slow, deliberate friction that had you pushing back against him, seeking more.

One of his hands splayed across your stomach, holding you to him. The other went to your hip, his fingers hooking into the lace of your panties. He didn't peel them down. He ripped them.

The sound of tearing lace was obscenely loud, and then the scrap of fabric was gone, falling to the floor at your feet. The cool air hit your exposed skin, followed immediately by the scorching heat of his palm cupping you from behind, his fingers sliding through your wetness with a rough, exploring stroke.

"Fuck," he breathed into your ear, his voice shattered. "You're so wet. You're so wet for me. Even after— even after what I said."

You were beyond words. You could only press your forehead against the cool plaster of the wall and whimper as his fingers found your clit, circling it with a pressure that was just shy of painful, perfect, maddening. He worked you like that for a minute, his breath coming in harsh gusts against your neck, his body a tense, vibrating line against your back. Then his fingers slid lower, pushing inside you, two of them, curling upward. You cried out, your knees buckling. He held you up easily, his arm like an iron band around your waist.

"I thought about this," he whispered, his lips moving against the shell of your ear. "In the car. I thought about having you like this. Against a wall. On the floor. In my bed. I thought about how you'd feel. How you'd sound."

He added a third finger, stretching you, and you moaned, long and low, the sound torn from somewhere deep in your belly. He fucked you with his hand, his pace relentless. You were climbing fast, too fast, the sensation in your abdomen tightening to a breaking point.

"Not yet," he commanded, his voice rough. He withdrew his fingers suddenly, leaving you empty and gasping. He turned you around again to face him. In the faint light from the streetlamp filtering through the blinds, you could see his face clearly for the first time.

His eyes were wild, dark pools of hunger and anguish.

His lips were swollen from kissing. Rain and sweat had plastered his dark hair to his forehead. He looked at you, his gaze dropping to your bare body, to where his own hand had just been. His expression was one of ravenous, almost frightening need.

"I need to taste you," he said, the words simple and devastating.

He sank to his knees on your hallway floor. You swayed, your hands coming to rest on his shoulders for balance. He didn't give you time to process it. His hands gripped the backs of your thighs, pulling you toward him, and then his mouth was on you.

The first flat stroke of his tongue made you seethe. How could he have kept this side of himself from you?

It was hot and wet and impossibly intimate. He didn't start slow. He dove in as if he'd been starving for it, his tongue laving broad, firm stripes through your folds before zeroing in on your clit. He sucked it into his mouth, applying a steady, rhythmic pressure that had your legs shaking.

His nose bumped against you, his breath hot. One of his hands left your thigh to slide back inside you, his fingers pumping in time with the suck of his mouth.

The dual sensation was overwhelming. Pleasure, sharp and bright, ripped through you, building with terrifying speed.

You looked down. In the dim light, you could see the pale, beautiful patterns on his neck and chest, the patches of vitiligo stark against his skin where his shirt had come open — a constellation of light on dark that made him seem otherworldly, a creature of myth on his knees for you.

The sight of it, the sheer vulnerability of him in this position combined with the aggressive, consuming way he was devouring you, sent a fresh, violent wave of heat through your core.

"Michael, I'm— I'm going to—" you choked out.

He hummed against you, the vibration tipping you over the edge. Your orgasm crashed into you, a silent, seizing wave that tore a ragged scream from your throat. You bucked against his mouth, but he held you firm, his tongue working you through the convulsions until you were limp and shuddering, your fingers clenched in his hair.

He didn't stop. As the last pulses faded, he gentled his mouth, licking you softly, cleaning you with a tenderness that was at odds with the frenzy of moments before. Then he rose, his movements fluid. His face was glistening with you. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes never leaving yours.

"Why the hell did you not do this to me that night in the village?" You asked, completely out of breath.

He was breathing hard. His hands went to his own clothes.

"Honestly, I didn't know if I had it in me or that you were the one for me. Clearly I do and you are" He said darkly. "So I am doing this now, because I know I need you. Be mine. Properly. No more hiding."

He ripped his tie off and tossed it aside. Your breath caught at his words, at the weight of them, at the way he said them like a man who had spent the entire car ride back here deciding.

His fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, and in his impatience, a few popped off, pinging against the floor.

He shoved the shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall. Then his belt buckle clanged, his zipper hissed, and he pushed his trousers and boxers down in one rough shove.

You saw his body fully for the first time.

He was wiry, all lean muscle and long lines, just as you'd imagined. His shoulders were narrow but defined, his chest smooth, his stomach flat. A dark trail of hair leading down the way. The vitiligo you had glimpsed earlier extended further than you had realised, sprawling across his ribs and down one hip, the contrast making him look pieced together from moonlight and shadow.

He was painfully erect, his cock standing thick and hard, the tip flushed and wet.

He was the most breathtaking thing you had ever seen.

He closed the distance between you in one stride. "I need to be inside you," he said, the words a raw scrape of sound. "Now. I can't wait. I can't be gentle."

"I don't want gentle," you breathed.

A shudder ran through him. He lifted you as if you weighed nothing, his hands under your thighs, and you wrapped your legs around his narrow waist.

He carried you like that, through the dark living room, into your bedroom. He didn't lay you on the bed. He laid you on the rug, the same rug you'd been sitting on earlier, the one with the damp patch from your hair. He came down over you, bracing himself on his arms, his body caged between your legs.

He positioned himself at your entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against you, and he paused, his eyes searching yours in the lamplight. For a second, the shy, hesitant man was there, flickering in the depths of his gaze.

"Tell me to stop," he whispered, agony in his voice. "If you want me to stop, tell me now." You reached up, cupping his jaw, your thumb stroking over the patch of pale skin on his cheekbone.

"Don't you dare stop."

He drove into you in one deep, relentless thrust.

The stretch was immense, a burning fullness that stole your breath. He was big, and he didn't give you time to adjust. He buried himself to the hilt, his hips flush against yours, and let out a broken groan that sounded like it was ripped from his soul. He held there for a moment, trembling, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.

"Oh, God," he choked. "Oh, God, you feel— I can't—"

He began to move.

There was no rhythm at first, just a frantic, driving pace, as if he was trying to fuse himself to you. Each thrust was deep, punishing, hitting a spot inside you that made stars burst behind your eyelids. The rough material of the rug scraped against your back, his body was a heavy, delicious weight on top of you, and the smell of rain and sex and his skin filled the air.

"Look at me," he demanded, his voice rough.

You forced your eyes open. His face was above you, strained with pleasure, his lips parted.

"You're not settling," he gritted out, punctuating each word with a thrust. "Do you understand me? You are not. Settling."

"I know," you gasped.

“I love you.”

He said it like it hurt.

“I love you so much.”

"Fuck, Michael. I love you too--"

"I can’t do another almost.”

His hand tightened around yours. The thrusts ragged.

“If this is happening, then it has to really happen.”

"I'm yours. I'm yours, Michael —"

He kissed you again, swallowing your cries.

His pace became more controlled, deeper, each stroke a deliberate claiming.

He shifted, hooking one of your legs over his arm, opening you wider, changing the angle. The new position made him go even deeper, the head of his cock rubbing directly over that sweet, sensitive spot with every plunge.

You were coming undone again, a second orgasm building greatly. Your nails scored down his back, feeling the ridges of his spine, the smooth expanse of his warm skin. He hissed at the sensation, his movements growing more ragged.

"I'm close," he warned, his voice thick. "I'm not going to last. Come with me. Please. Come with me."

It was the "please" that did it. That same shattered, vulnerable "please" from the alley, but now drenched in desire instead of despair.

Your orgasm detonated, a silent, shattering explosion that clenched around him, milking his length. He shouted, a raw, unfiltered sound, and drove into you one final, brutal time, his body locking as he emptied himself deep inside you in hot, pulsing waves.

He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the rug, his face buried in your neck. His breaths were great, heaving gasps against your skin. You could feel his heart hammering against your own, a frantic, syncopated rhythm slowly calming.

For a long time, neither of you moved. The only sounds were your slowing breaths and the distant hum of the city at night.

Slowly, carefully, he rolled off you, taking his weight but keeping an arm around your waist, pulling you with him so you lay on your sides facing each other on the rug. His skin was slick with sweat, his hair a mess. He looked wrecked. Beautifully, completely wrecked.

He reached out a trembling hand and brushed a strand of damp hair from your forehead. His eyes, now soft and exhausted, traced your face.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"For which part?"

A faint, shattered smile touched his lips. "The part where I ripped your underwear. And possibly the part where I was… rough."

You shook your head, your own hand coming up to trace the pale pattern on his shoulder. "Don't be sorry for any of it."

He caught your hand, brought it to his mouth, and pressed a kiss to your palm. It was a gesture from another century, infinitely gentle, a stark contrast to the animal hunger of minutes before.

"I meant what I said today," he said quietly, his eyes serious. "I am… a lot. It's not going to be easy."

"I don't care."

"I know you don't. I believe you now." He sighed, a deep, weary sound. "I think I just needed… proof. Not from you. From me. That I could want something this much and not run from it. And seeing you with another man just wrecked me. I didn't know what to do"

You shifted closer, until your foreheads were touching. "So I'm yours now?" You said.

He was silent for a moment. You felt his breath against your lips. "Mine. Properly. No more hiding."

He caught your mouth in a deep, hard kiss.

Outside, the rain began to fall again, a soft patter against your window. You lay there together on the floor, in the pool of lamplight, skin to skin, his wiry, marked body curled around yours, and for the first time all night, you felt the terrible, hollow ache in your chest begin to mend.

part 2 click here

[lil6uapa]

chlorine michael jackson

michael jackson x f!reader ────୨ৎ──── ♡ wc: 4.3k

synopsis: childhoodbsf!mj and reader in a hot tub... what can go wrong? (or right :D)

cw: smut, switch!michael, hot tub sex, dry humping, dirty talk, praise, tensionnn, mutual pining, michael jackson being a whimperer (surprise), creampie

based off bad!era mj but any era works (i think)

the hot tub lights cast soft blue ripples across the water, reflecting against the stone around the edge of the patio. the early summer night air brushed against your damp skin coolly in contrast to the heat of the water, while music drifted faintly from somewhere inside the house. overhead, the sky was dark and cloudless, a soft breeze moving through the otherwise still night.

michael leaned back nearby with his arms resting along the edge of the hot tub, curls damp around his face, while he watched you with obvious amusement.

“you know,” he said casually, brushing wet curls back from his forehead, “for somebody always talkin’ big, you scare real easy.”

you looked over immediately. “i do not.”

michael laughed softly under his breath.

you’d known michael long enough to recognize that exact look in his eyes before he even said anything else. the one that usually meant he was about to annoy you on purpose.

the two of you had been attached at the hip since childhood. your families blurred together so often growing up that half your memories included michael somewhere in the background of them — sitting beside you at family parties, showing up to your house unannounced (and vice versa), dragging you outside in the middle of summer evenings because he was bored and wanted company. somewhere along the way, physical closeness had stopped meaning much between you years ago.

hugs.

leaning against each other.

holding hands.

cuddling while watching movies.

being close to michael had never required thought.

leaves rustled softly in the night breeze.

michael’s eyes suddenly shifted past your shoulder.

the teasing look on his face faltered, his mouth flattening slightly as his attention fixed on something behind you.

“…wait.”

you narrowed your eyes at that. “michael.”

“no, seriously.” his brows furrowed now while he stared harder behind you. “what is that?”

you rolled your eyes.

“i hate you.”

“i’m serious,” he insisted, though the corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “right there.”

you turned your head despite yourself.

your eyes scanned once. twice. nothing.

you started turning back toward him with an unimpressed look already forming–

michael lunged forward suddenly with both his hands toward the water behind you.

a startled squeal escaped you as you grabbed onto him on pure reflex, your arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders while you nearly climbed halfway up him in a panic.

michael burst into loud laughter. bright and boyish.

“oh my god!” you gasped out, still clutching him while he laughed harder against your shoulder. “you are actually evil.”

“it was funny!” he argued through laughter.

“it was not funny!”

you smacked his shoulder lightly, trying not to laugh and failing miserably once his laughter got worse.

michael’s laughter had always been contagious. it was impossible to stay mad at him for long when he was laughing like that.

“yes it was,” he grinned. “you should’ve seen your face.”

“you practically climbed into my lap,” he added.

“i trusted you!”

“that’s your own fault.”

“oh my god, shut up.”

another laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

michael pointed at you instantly.

“see? you’re laughin’ now.”

you groaned dramatically, letting your forehead fall briefly against his shoulder while his laughter softened into quieter little giggles beneath his breath.

eventually, both your breaths started to settle.

except neither of you moved apart.

your arms still rested loosely around his shoulders. michael’s hands still held your waist below the surface.

comfortable. normal.

well, it should’ve felt normal.

instead, the silence that settled between you suddenly felt…heavy somehow.

different.

your forehead still rested lightly against michael’s shoulder while the water moved softly around you both, rippling between your bodies.

neither of you spoke.

you could feel michael breathing now. 

not just the movement of his chest beneath your hands, but the actual rhythm of it. slow at first, then slightly uneven when you shifted subconsciously closer.

his hands tightened around your waist. small. almost unnoticeable.

except you noticed it immediately.

your brows pulled together faintly.

slowly, you lifted your head from his shoulder.

michael was already looking at you.

the patio lights reflected faintly in his eyes while water dripped from the curls hanging around his forehead. his expression had gone strangely still now, his hands warm where they rested against your waist.

neither of you moved apart.

you’re not sure why.

usually moments like this broke naturally on their own. one of you would laugh. tease the other. splash water. say something stupid.

instead, michael just kept looking at you.

your eyes flicked down toward his mouth before you could stop yourself.

bad idea.

because the second your gaze dropped, michael noticed. his brows pinched for a fraction of a second.

then, before you could really process it, michael looked away first.

his jaw flexed.

you felt his throat move against your arm when he swallowed.

“…christ,” he muttered quietly under his breath.

heat crawled slowly up your neck. you swallowed once before forcing out, “what?”

michael shook his head once, almost like he was trying to clear it.

“nothin’.”

his voice sounded lower now. rougher.

the water shifted softly around you both when you adjusted yourself, your legs brushing against his–

michael inhaled sharply.

the sound froze you.

oh.

your heartbeat stumbled hard in your chest.

because suddenly you could feel it too.

the reaction pressed unmistakably against your thigh.

heat rushed instantly to your face.

michael went still beneath your hands.

for a second, neither of you said anything.

michael laughed quietly under his breath, though it sounded more embarrassed than amused now. one hand came up to cover his face as he looked away.

“….m’sorry,” he murmured.

your brows pulled together slightly.

of course he was apologizing. that was so michael.

when he’s struggling to keep himself composed, he still sounded more concerned about crossing a line than anything else.

you'd be lying if you said his reaction to you wasn't turning you on.

 “….don’t apologize,” you breathed.

michael looked at you. his curls hung damp against his forehead now, water dripping slowly down the side of his neck while his hands stayed fixed carefully at your waist like he didn’t trust himself to move them anywhere else.

he looked away again, exhaling sharply through his nose, almost like a disbelieving laugh at himself.

“just... give me a second,” he murmured. "it'll go away."

michael took slow, controlled breaths like he was genuinely trying to calm himself down.

then before you could overthink it, the words slipped out softly.

“….do you want me to help you?”

michael’s eyes shut briefly while a quiet breath escaped him, almost strained. unfortunately for him, the boner he'd been trying so hard to kill came back tenfold.

one of his hands slid higher instinctively along your waist before stopping there hard enough to make your pulse jump.

“i—”

he cut himself off.

his head tipped back slightly instead, exposing the long line of his throat while he stared up toward the sky for a second like he was physically trying to pull himself together.

it only made him look worse.

or better.

no definitely better.

water glided slowly down the column of his neck while his chest rose unevenly beneath your hands.

finally, michael looked back at you again. wrecked.

he swallowed once before replying quietly, “you don’t have to do anything.”

your heart hammered painfully against your ribs.

“i know,” you whispered.

“i’m asking if you want me to.”

for a second, michael just stared at you.

then slowly, his forehead dropped forward until it rested gently against your temple. 

his eyes closed.

his lashes brushed softly against your skin.

the flush along his neck had darkened now, spreading toward his jaw while his breathing stayed uneven against you.

when he finally spoke, his voice came out rough and quiet. 

“…i’m a gentleman.”

your chest tightened at the sound of it.

the words seemed to hang between you for a moment.

slowly, you lifted one hand from his shoulder, cradling his face gently until he looked at you again.

his eyes were dark now.

unfocused almost.

still trying so hard to hold himself together for you.

your thumb brushed lightly against his cheek before you leaned in just enough to press a soft kiss against the corner of his mouth.

michael inhaled sharply, head tilting instinctively to chase your lips.

then he was kissing you properly.

one hand slid up the side of your neck as he pulled you closer, the kiss hard and messy, like he’d been trying not to do this for far too long.

your noses bumped awkwardly together between breaths, both of you laughing softly into the kiss before it melted right back into something hotter.

michael bit gently at your bottom lip, tugging it between his teeth.

a soft sound escaped you before you kissed him again.

his hand dragged back down your body until it settled low on your waist, fingers spreading carefully just above your ass.

careful and still hesitant. you could feel it.

your hands slid down his arms slowly until they covered his, guiding them lower.

michael broke the kiss at that.

the sound you let slip when his hands finally squeezed your ass made his head drop against yours.

“you’re gonna kill me,” he muttered breathlessly.

you pushed your hips closer against his.

michael let out a shaky breath as your hands slid up the back of his neck, fingers catching slightly at the damp curls near his nape.

when he kissed you again, it felt almost desperate now.

like he physically couldn’t stop himself for more than a few seconds at a time. his nose bumped softly against yours between kisses while his hands tightened around your body, guiding you higher on his lap beneath the bubbling water.

the pressure of his hips against yours pulled a gasp from your throat.

your fingers tightened instinctively at the base of his curls as you broke away from the kiss for air.

“michael—”

he kissed the corner of your mouth before you could finish saying his name, breathing hard enough now that you could feel it against your skin.

“i know, baby, i know” he murmured softly.

you nuzzled your face into the crook of his neck. he smelled like chlorine and the faint traces of his cologne, warm amber and soft florals mixing with the heat of his damp skin.

michael’s hands guided your hips against his beneath the water, the movement slow at first before his restraint started slipping little by little.

soft sounds escaped you against his neck while michael’s breathing turned rough near your ear, his grip tightening every time you pressed closer to him.

“baby…” he breathed, almost strained now.

the name sent warmth blooming low in your stomach.

this was the first time he’d ever called you that, and you loved the way it sounded coming from him.

his groans started mixing with the breathier moans spilling from your lips as his hands squeezed more firmly at your backside, the bubbling water sloshing harder around you both as he buried his face against your shoulder.

every slow drag of your hips only made the ache low in your stomach worse.

but it still wasn’t enough.

you needed more of him.

“want more,” you whined softly against his neck.

michael’s hips stuttered against yours at the sound of your voice, a quiet groan escaping him.

“yeah?” he murmured breathlessly, pulling back just enough to look at you properly. 

strands of damp hair clung messily near your cheeks while your lips looked swollen from kissing, slightly parted every time another shaky breath slipped out of you. your eyes were glossed over.

you looked completely ruined.

just for him.

“i’ll give my sweet girl whatever she wants,” he said lowly, with a rasp slipping into his voice.

something about hearing him say it made your thighs press tighter around him. if michael noticed, he didn't mention it.

“anything she asks for.” he added.

“anything?” you responded in a whisper.

michael’s eyes stayed fixated on yours for a second before he repeated it quieter this time.

“anything.”

your stomach tightened hard at the sound of that.

“want you inside me,” you whispered sweetly, your hips pressing against his again at the thought of him giving it to you.

michael bit down on his lip, a crooked smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

you sounded so desperate for him.

and god was he just as desperate for you.

maybe worse.

even now, with your body pressed against his and his restraint hanging by a thread, he still tried to collect himself before he spoke again.

because he was a gentleman.

or at least he was trying very hard to be one.

“go on, take what you want,” he murmured roughly.

your hands immediately reached for the waistband of his swim shorts, tugging them down enough to free his dick.

though you couldn't see much through the bubbling water, you felt him. his warmth, his thickness, his length. 

the weight of him against your hand alone made your breath catch.

michael groaned softly under his breath, his head falling briefly against your shoulder while his hands tightened instinctively along your thighs.

you shifted carefully onto your knees to give him room while he pulled your swim bottoms aside.

the feeling of him brushing against your bare pussy made you arch into him.

“fuck…” michael hissed quietly, breathing turned heavier near your ear as his hands slid lower along your thighs to steady you.

your face buried closer into the crook of his neck while another broken sound escaped you.

“michael…” your voice cracked softly.

the slow push of his tip alone already had your head spinning. he barely gave you room to breathe.

“fuuck, baby,” he groaned into your shoulder, dragging the words out low and strained. “you’re so fucking tight.”

you nuzzled closer into his neck with a shaky whimper.

“s’too big, michael…” you hiccuped softly.

you were ruining him.

the way your voice broke at just the tip being inside you was doing something dangerous to his self-control.

“shh, it’s okay, baby,” he murmured gently, one hand stroking your damp hair.

his other hand slid lower against your thigh before tightening carefully at your hip.

"tell me if it hurts," he murmured, lips brushing softly against your temple.

then he started easing you down onto him properly.

slow.

your mouth dropped open at the stretch as he lowered you inch by inch, his grip firm enough to guide you while still giving you time to adjust. every small movement made another uneven breath leave your lips.

the heat of the water around you only made everything feel more overwhelming. his cock felt impossibly warm inside you, thick enough that each inch made your body tense before slowly relaxing around him.

michael’s forehead pressed against yours as he watched every reaction on your face.

“that’s it,” he whispered hoarsely. “doin’ so good for me.”

another inch.

your fingers tightened against his shoulders, a soft moan escaping before you could stop it.

his own breathing was wrecked, rough against your skin while his hands trembled slightly where they held you.

like he was using every bit of control he had not to lose patience and pull you down all at once.

instead, he kept guiding you carefully.

letting you feel every inch.

the stretch burned for a second before melting into warmth, your body slowly yielding around him while soft broken whimpers left your throat.

“fuck,” michael groaned quietly, eyes squeezing shut for a second. “you feel so fucking good.”

you buried your face deeper into his neck as another wave of fullness hit you.

then finally your hips settled flush against his.

both of you gasped at the same time.

michael’s head fell back against the edge of the tub with a low groan while his hands gripped your hips hard enough to leave marks.

“holy shit…” he breathed.

you could barely think.

he felt everywhere. warm and deep and overwhelming, filling you so completely that all you could do was sit there for a second trying to breathe through it.

his hands softened again, thumbs rubbing slow circles against your hips.

“you okay?” he asked quietly, though his voice still sounded wrecked.

you nodded weakly against him.

“mhm…”

a small smile pulled at michael’s lips before he kissed the side of your head gently.

“good girl.”

you almost sobbed at the praise. his voice alone could make you cum.

michael stayed there for a second, just holding you against him while both of you tried to recover from the feeling.

his chest rose against yours, shaky breaths fanning across your skin while his hands stayed fixed carefully at your hips like he still couldn’t believe this was real.

then slowly, he rolled his hips upward once.

the movement was shallow.

experimental.

but the drag of him inside you still pulled a broken moan straight from your throat.

michael actually whimpered at that, the sound muffled against your skin, before a strained groan followed right after.

“fuck…”

his grip tightened.

“that okay?” he asked quietly, his own voice already sounding completely gone.

you nodded quickly before he’d even fully finished asking.

“please,” you whispered.

his mouth crashed against yours again while his hips rolled into you harder this time, deeper, the movement making the water slosh violently around both of you until it spilled over the edge of the hot tub, soaking the concrete.

your fingers tangled tighter into the damp curls at the back of his neck as he kept rocking you against him slowly, every thrust deep enough to make your stomach tighten.

he couldn’t seem to stop kissing you between breaths.

messy kisses.

desperate ones.

little broken sounds slipping from his mouth every single time you clenched around him.

“you feel so fucking good,” he breathed shakily. “christ, baby…”

his restraint kept slipping in pieces.

each movement growing rougher than the last, your body meeting his like you both couldn't stop chasing the feeling.

you moaned again. soft and breathless right against his mouth.

“yeah?” he rasped. “that feel good?”

you could barely answer — or could barely hear him, to be honest.

the way he was making you feel left your head completely fuzzy. every deep drag of him inside you made your thoughts melt together until all you could focus on was him.

when you didn’t respond, he tugged you down harder onto him.

a high moan tore from your throat instantly. a sound you would’ve never thought you’d be capable of making. 

and if michael wasn’t fucking you so good, you probably would’ve been embarrassed by it. 

he pulled back just enough to look at your face, watching your expression.

“tell me.”

it didn't sound demanding.

if anything, it sounded like something he needed to hear.

“y-yes–” you gasped helplessly. “yes, yes, feels so good–”

he leaned closer to your neck and started kissing, sucking, biting, leaving marks all over your neck. 

michael cursed softly under his breath at the feeling of you clenching around him.

“shit, baby… you’re squeezin’ me so tight.”

all you could do was moan as he dragged your hips down onto him through another deep thrust that made your entire body jolt.

the praise only made the heat low in your stomach tighten harder.

another soft whine slipped from your throat before you could stop it, your face burying deeper into his neck out of instinct.

michael groaned at the sound.

“those sexy fucking sounds…”

his hips rolled up into yours again, harder this time, and your grip on him tightened hard enough to sting.

one of his hands slid up your body, long slender fingers brushing teasingly against your chest before nudging your swimsuit top up just enough for your breasts to spill out. the cooler night air nipping at your damp skin.

"so perfect." he breathed.

he leaned in, his mouth closing around your left nipple with a slow, warm suck that pulled a breath from your lungs. at the same time, the knuckles of his other hand dragged against your stomach, your ribs, the underside of your breasts, teasing every inch of sensitive skin on the way up. he cupped your breast, squeezing gently before rolling your nipple between his fingers in time with the slow pull of his mouth.

every suck, every soft bite, every flick of his tongue had your body arching into him.

you couldn’t hold the sounds back anymore.

every thrust of his hips pulled another sound out of you.

little whimpers.

broken moans.

breathy gasps right against his ear.

“fuck,” he groaned softly into your skin, almost dazed. “keep makin’ those sounds for me, baby.”

you couldn’t stop even if you wanted to. 

his mouth shifted to your other breast with a worn groan while his hand slipped lower between your bodies.

the second his thumb brushed against your clit, your entire body jerked in his arms.

“oh my god—”

the cry that left you was loud enough to echo slightly off the stone around the hot tub.

“mm, that it?” he rasped, thumb circling you again with shaky desperation. “that what you needed, baby?”

you nodded helplessly against him, barely able to breathe properly now.

the feeling of him thrusting up into you while his thumb rubbed slow, messy circles against your clit was too much all at once.

your thighs started trembling around his waist.

“michael, please.”

“i know,” he breathed quickly. “i got you. i got you.”

he kept thrusting into you deep and slow, but the rhythm was getting sloppier every second. like he physically couldn’t focus anymore with the way you kept whining against him.

“fuck…” he groaned softly. “you’re so sensitive.”

another moan tore out of you when his thumb pressed a little harder.

every little movement pulled another noise from your throat.

your eyes kept fluttering closed from the overwhelming sensation while michael watched your face completely unravel for him, his own expression looking just as gone.

“look at me, baby. c’mon,” he breathed softly.

your eyes fluttered back toward him.

the second michael saw the tears gathering along your lashes from how overwhelming everything felt, something in him completely snapped.

“fuck—”

his forehead dropped against yours with a groan so deep it almost sounded painful.

his thrusts lost what little rhythm they had left after that.

harder now.

messier.

his hands gripping your hips almost desperately while he kept kissing you between breaths like he couldn’t get enough.

“close?” he rasped against your mouth.

all you could do was nod frantically.

your fingers clutched desperately at his shoulders as another wave hit you.

it was too much.

his mouth on your neck.

his thumb rubbing against you perfectly.

the way he kept filling you so deep every time his hips snapped upward.

your thighs started shaking hard around his waist.

“i-i’m gonna–”

“lemme feel it, baby,” michael interrupted, voice breaking. he sounded completely gone. "please..."

a soft curse slipped from him the second your body tightened around him.

“that’s it,” he groaned. “good girl… fuck, that’s it.”

his thumb moved faster.

messier now.

like he was getting desperate too.

the pressure finally snapped.

your whole body jolted against him with a broken cry, your face burying into his shoulder while your body tightened hard around him, nails scratching at his back.

michael groaned loudly at the feeling, his hips stuttering completely for a second.

“shit–”

your vision blurred from how overwhelming it felt, soft little sobs and moans getting caught in your throat while wave after wave kept hitting you.

michael fucked you through all of it, one arm wrapped tightly around your back while his forehead pressed against your shoulder.

“fuck…” he groaned shakily. “atta girl.”

then quieter, almost like the words slipped out accidentally.

“been wantin’ this so bad.”

you clenched around him hard at the confession.

michael groaned hard, head tipping back against the edge of the hot tub.

his lips brushed against your jaw when he looked back at you again, expression completely wrecked.

“you don’t even realize what you do to me sometimes,” he breathed shakily.

“been tryin’ so hard to be good.”

another deep thrust made your breath catch.

“every time you bend over during those stupid twister games…” he groaned softly. “or prance around in those tiny little swimsuits…”

“honestly so mean of you.”

another broken groan slipped from him right after, his face burying deeper into your neck like he was trying to hide there.

little strained sounds kept leaving him every few seconds while his hips lost what little rhythm they had left.

“can’t—” he choked out softly. “fuck, baby…”

his grip tightened almost painfully at your hips before he finally buried himself deep inside you with a whine, warm spurts of cum filling you as his whole body went tense against yours.

you could feel him shaking slightly while he held you close, breathing unevenly against your skin as the water settled softly around both of you again.

the aftershocks rolled softly through both of you, fading little by little into soft tremors.

the world around you felt silent except for the sounds of bubbling water and uneven breathing. 

slowly, you pulled back just enough to look at him properly again, your arms still resting loosely around his shoulders.

his curls were a mess.

lips swollen.

flushed all the way down his neck.

and the completely blissed-out look on his face made something warm burst in your chest.

the second michael noticed you staring, a breathless laugh slipped from him, his teeth catching briefly against his bottom lip when his grin widened.

you laughed too.

because somehow, even after all of that, the two of you still ended up the same way you always did.

still just you and michael.

───୨ৎ────────୨ৎ────────୨ৎ───

ummm i didnt know how to end it butttt SECOND FICCCCC r we getting somewhere guys

also pls dont acc have sex in hot tubs or pools😭😭 (as hot as it is</3)

hope u guys enjoyed :DD

[p3roxid3city]

[miseducationofmicheal]

Micheal Jackson At "The Grammy Awards" In,1984

[clarkent]

me @ 10

me @ 30

[ashcremated]

shhhh theyre sleeby 🤏🤏

[my-cup-of-coffeee]

oh god i’m back in the building

[french-vanilla-in-the-clouds]

I sincerely love it when men's eyes are etched in tragedy ✨️

[spikedfearn]

Across the Threshold

one-shot

remmick x fem!reader

summary: you've never let him in. Not once. And still, every night without fail, he comes crawling back to your doorstep. Thirteen centuries old and rotting with want, Remmick worships you from the porch, drooling thick onto the floorboards, begging for permission to taste. And you? You watch. You love the power. Love the ache in him. Love the way he weeps when you deny him again and again.

But the night you finally say come in—he breaks.

Now that he’s inside, he’s never leaving. Not quietly. Not gently. And not until he crawls all the way inside you and makes a cathedral of your skin.

wc: 5.4k

a/n: based off this prompt that blew up!! It's been exactly one month since I released my first Remmick fic Mercy Made Flesh so it felt fitting to release something today, as a thank you for the tidal wave of love and support I've received since!! Seriously it's insane!! So, as a further thank you, I'm hosting a giveaway for followers here if you're interested, as a way to give back to all of you <333 thanks to @ddlydevotion for finding the photo refs for the banner!! and thanks to Liz @fuckoffbard for once again beta reading for me!! credit to Diana @hyoscyxmine for the photo of Remmick she initially edited <333

warnings: vampirism, blood kink, obsessive behavior, feral begging, oral (f! receiving), sub!remmick, somno-adjacent sleepiness, religious undertones, predator/prey dynamics, begging kink, worship kink, voice kink, monsterfucking, marking, blood drinking during sex, degradation, dark romance, possessive partner, crawling kink, aftercare, bite kink, creampie, power imbalance, bodily fluids (drool, blood, etc), control kink, manipulation by omission, mildly blasphemous themes

likes, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated, please enjoy!!

Masterlist

You've never let him in. Not once.

And still, every night without fail, he shows up like clockwork—barefoot and bloodstained, wife beater stained and torn, revealing a sliver of lean muscle beneath, reeking of smoke and obsession.

Slouched on your porch like a dying dog, scratching at the threshold with dirt-caked nails, mouth open and drooling thick, almost foamy, like hunger’s rotted him from the inside out. His voice is raw from begging. But tonight? Tonight he’s feral.

You've got one leg draped over the door frame, robe hitched up just enough to taunt, a cool glass of iced tea sweating in your hand while he writhes just inches from your feet.

“You cruel little thing,” he rasps, drawl dragging slow and syrupy, his tongue catching on the words like they hurt.

“Y’gon’ make me crawl again, huh? ‘Cause I will. I’ll fuckin’—I’ll get on my belly like a damn animal, just for a taste. Just for a breath of you, sugar.”

His jaw’s slack, saliva roping down his chin, staining the porch dark beneath him as he grips the floorboards hard enough they creak.

“Let me in,” he whimpers, voice cracked and desperate, eyes blown wide.

“Please, I—I cain’t stand it no more. I cain’t fuckin’ breathe without you. Let me in. I’ll behave. I’ll worship you. I’ll—I’ll starve if you don’t.”

Your just watch him, tilt your glass.

“You've lived thirteen centuries, and you're on your knees for a girl in a nightgown?”

He nods, drooling harder, trembling.

“Yes ma’am. I’d beg for thirteen more if it meant you’d finally say the word.”

You don’t answer him at first.

Just lift your drink—slow, lazy, like the heat has made you sun-warmed and lethargic—and watch the ice swirl against the cylindrical sides. Your lips part only enough for a sip, sharp and cold on your tongue, as his voice frays at the threshold like an unraveling thread.

The porch groans under his weight when he shifts, mouth still hanging open, chin wet with the thick rope of saliva that’s already puddled beneath him. He doesn’t even wipe it away anymore. Doesn’t flinch at the indignity. If anything, he leans into it. As if the sloppier he gets, the more beastly and broken, the closer he’ll be to what you want.

Not human. Not civilized. Just yours.

Your bare toes flex against the doorframe—propped up, exposed, painted peach—and his breath stutters when he sees them. His jaw works open wider like he might sink his teeth into the wood instead, like he’s fighting the animal thing in him that wants to bite something until it bleeds.

“You gone quiet, sugar,” he drawls, voice like gravel scraped against wood. “You plannin’ to kill me out here?”

You hum. Just a little. Low in your throat.

Then finally, finally, you lean forward just a bit, letting the hem of your robe fall loose from your thigh, letting him see the curve of it where the porchlight catches golden on your skin. You know what you’re doing. You always know.

“You look like shit, Remmick.”

He moans—moans—like the insult made him hard.

“I—I know, baby. I know,” he gasps, crawling an inch closer on his knees, voice choked with some terrible, trembling reverence. “I’d tear out my fuckin’ ribs if it meant you’d give me one more breath. Just one. I’m—I’m so close to bein’ bones out here.”

His hands drag slow across the floorboards, smearing blood and spit as he chases your shadow like it might feed him. His claws are cracked and dirty, black at the edges, clacking like dull knives as he reaches for you.

But he won’t cross the threshold. Can’t.

Not unless you say the word.

You drag one foot down, let it press lightly against his chest, the ball of it nestling into the place where his heart doesn’t beat. You feel the way he flinches at the touch like it hurts him, like your skin is too holy for his body to bear. He makes a sound deep in his chest—part growl, part sob—and his head drops forward.

He presses his forehead to your ankle. Worships it.

“You’re a goddamn sickness,” you whisper, soft and cruel.

“I am, baby,” he breathes. “You made me sick. Ruined me good, didn’t you?”

And oh, how he sounds ruined.

You tilt your glass again, watch the last ice cube swirl and crack, watch his tongue dart out as if he could taste it from the air. His pupils are blown, wide and dark and endless, and his mouth keeps trying to form the word please like it’s the only one he remembers anymore.

A breeze rolls over the porch, stirring the trees, carrying the scent of you—hibiscus lotion, clean skin, cool linen and blood beneath it all—and Remmick shudders like a dying thing. His hips roll into the floor like he’s fucking the air, like scent alone could push him to the edge.

“Let me in,” he begs again, softer now. “Let me in before I do somethin’ wicked.”

You lean closer, dragging your foot up his chest and under his chin, tilting his face up toward you like a command.

“You already are wicked.”

He smiles, wild and ruined.

“Yes ma’am. And I’d be worse for you.”

You let the silence stretch just long enough for his breath to hitch.

Then you pull your foot away and stand, letting the robe slip an inch lower on your hips as you do. He tracks the movement like an animal locked on prey, hands gripping the wood, teeth bared like he might bite the air between you.

But you say nothing.

You turn, walk back into the house, and the door swings shut with a slow, echoing click.

And Remmick?

He stays there on the porch, slack-jawed, drooling, whispering your name like a prayer he wasn’t meant to know, his muscles flexing as his arms come up over his head in desperation, thick and defined, his face pinched in pain, fractals of dying light dancing off the worn gold of his chain, off the sweaty creases highlighting his biceps.

| six months ago |

You didn’t move here expecting silence.

You expected a little mold, sure. Some creaky floorboards, maybe a wasp’s nest under the porch or a possum in the crawlspace. You expected the gnats. You expected the heat. You expected the isolation.

But not the silence.

Not this bone-deep, split-the-world-open kind of silence. The kind that settles between your ribs and listens to your heartbeat like it’s trying to time its own.

The house—your house now, left to you by some long-dead aunt you don’t remember—is old and sagging at the edges. It leans a little to the right. The paint is peeled and sun-faded, the porch boards bow like a tired back, and the front screen door barely stays shut unless you wedge a rock into it.

But the bones are good. The land is wild and wide and humming with secrets.

And the silence? You’ve started to like it.

Until one night, it breaks.

It’s not thunder. Not a tree branch. Not the slam of a car door or the high bark of a neighbor’s dog. It’s slower than that. Heavier. Like footsteps made of velvet and grave dirt, deliberate and soft, but too certain to be harmless.

You hear it just past dusk, when the sky is soaked in pinks and bruised purples, and the porch light buzzes weakly behind you. You’re sitting on the front step, knees up, the sweat from your lemonade collecting in droplets between your thighs. Your robe’s open at the chest. The heat has stuck it to the small of your back. You haven’t seen a soul all week.

And then—

“Evenin’, darlin’.”

You look up.

There’s a man standing just past the gate. Barefoot. Broad-shouldered. Dressed like a memory from somewhere you’ve never lived—boots slung over one shoulder, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and a face that looks like it’s been carved from heartbreak.

You can smell weathered leather. Wet pennies. Something faintly intoxicating.

You don’t move. Neither does he.

He’s handsome, you think, in a way that feels off. Like he walked out of a photograph too old to be yours. His hair is a mess, dark and sweat-matted at the temples. There’s a thin scar along his throat. He looks...starved. But not in the way that makes you pity him.

In the way that makes you want to keep your distance.

Still, you don’t get up. You don’t speak. The air between you thickens, trembles.

He tips his head slightly, a crooked smile cutting across his face.

“You look like you could use some company.”

You don’t invite him in.

You don’t say much at all.

Just glance toward the horizon, murmur something about supper, and let the screen door slam behind you before he can take a step forward. You watch through the curtains as he lingers at the gate, hands tucked into his pockets like he’s trying to look harmless.

But you saw the way his eyes followed your legs. You saw how he noticed the sweat beading at your neck. How he inhaled when you passed him.

You lock the door that night. And the next. But he keeps coming.

First, it’s flowers.

Not from a store. Not anything wrapped in plastic or tied with ribbon. Just a bundle of wildflowers laid gently on your porch, still dusted with dew. You find them in the morning, no note, no explanation.

Then it’s peaches. Sun-warm and soft, their fuzz still clinging with bits of leaf and dirt. You bite into one and taste sweet nectar.

Then it’s a knife. Clean. Sharp. Ornate.

Then a book of poetry. Tattered, spine cracked, pages dog-eared with a name you don’t recognize scribbled inside the cover.

Then the sound of humming—just past the treeline. Low. Gentle. Almost...worshipful.

You don’t see him again for a week.

And when he returns, he stands on the bottom step like he’s been summoned.

You sit in the doorway this time, robe slipping off one shoulder. You’re not afraid. Not curious, either. Just...ready.

Ripe.

He keeps his eyes low. His voice is softer.

“You ain’t said my name yet.”

“I don’t know it,” you say.

He smiles like that hurts him.

“You don’t need it,” he says. “You already own me without it.”

It’s hot enough to peel the paint from the porch railing.

The air hums with crickets, thick as syrup, the kind of Southern heat that presses down on you like hands. Nothing moves. Not the trees. Not the wind. Not even the birds. The silence is alive—dense and waiting, like the breath before a confession.

And there he is. Again.

You hear him before you see him: the soft scrape of skin on wood, the faintest creak of a loose board under bare feet, the hitch in his breath when your scent hits him like perfume and punishment all at once. You left the door open tonight—not all the way, just ajar—and the porch light off. A single candle burns on the windowsill.

He doesn’t knock.

He never does anymore.

Just leans his weight into the frame, like even that much closeness is enough to tide him over for another day. But it’s not. You know it’s not. You can feel it in the way his fingers twitch. In the way he shifts his hips. In the way the wood creaks beneath his knees when he starts to lower himself.

You don’t speak.

You just watch.

The hem of your robe rides high on your thighs, your legs bare and smooth against the old floorboards, one knee bent, one foot outstretched. You could shut the door. You don’t. You could invite him in—but that’s not the game.

You’ve seen how he suffers.

And you love the way he suffers.

He’s filthy tonight. Shirtless and sweaty, streaked with soot and dry blood that canaled in the defined avenues of his abs, a bruise blooming along one side of his ribcage. His hair’s a mess. His eyes look hollow. His lips are parted, pink and trembling, like he’s been mouthing your name into the dirt all night long.

When he drops to his knees, it’s not a performance. Not anymore. There’s no seduction in it. Just ache. Just need.

He whispers something you don’t quite catch—your name, maybe, or the shape of a prayer that lost its way. You hear him drag his nails against the porch, slow and rhythmic, like he’s trying to carve your initials into the floor.

“I dreamed of you again,” he rasps.

His voice is shredded. Used up.

“You were wearin’ that white thing. The one with the lace at the top. You smelled like vanilla and thunder. You called me darlin’ and I almost cried.”

You breathe through your nose, slow and even, but your thighs shift. You don’t think he notices, but he does.

His eyes flick to the motion and he moans—soft and low, broken at the edges. He presses his forehead to the floor like it’s consecrated ground. Like maybe if he can just touch it long enough, you’ll take pity.

“Please.”

The word is wet in his mouth. He says it again.

“Please, I—I don’t care what you do to me. Don’t even have to let me in. Just talk to me, sugar. Just say somethin’. Let me hear your voice. Let me see you.”

You shift in the doorway.

Then you speak—finally—voice quiet and even, your glass catching the candlelight as you raise it to your lips.

“Why do you keep coming here?”

He whimpers.

“‘Cause I cain’t not. ‘Cause you’ve got me chained up in here—” He presses a palm to his chest, hard enough you can hear the bones creak. “—and I like it. I fuckin’ like it, baby. Ain’t that sick?”

You don’t respond.

Instead, you lean forward just enough to let your fingers curl over the frame of the door, letting your robe fall slightly open at the neck. His mouth opens wider. His pupils blow black like a hungry shark.

“You want to come in?” you murmur.

His breath catches.

Then he nods. Frantic. Wild.

“Yes. Yes ma’am. Please.”

You tilt your head.

“Why?”

He blinks. He’s confused by the question. Then hurt. Then desperate.

“Because I—I need you. Need what’s inside. I cain’t smell nothin’ else but you. You’re in my fuckin’ blood, sweetheart, and I ain’t never tasted you but it’s killin’ me just knowin’ you’re behind that door.”

He leans forward, mouth brushing the frame. His tongue darts out—not quite licking it, but close—and you see the briefest flick of the forked tip, glistening and trembling with restraint. He pulls it back like he’s ashamed of it, like he wasn’t supposed to let you see that part of him.

Your stomach flips.

You almost say it. Almost.

But then you pull back.

And he breaks.

He wasn’t always like this.

You remember that. You remind yourself of it often—because it makes this part better. Sweeter. Sicker.

Because once upon a time, he tried to play it cool. Casual. Almost charming. Leaned against your gate with that low, lopsided smile, said things like ma’am and pleasure to meet you and you sure keep to yourself, don’t you, sugar?

Now?

He’s a wreck.

On all fours.

Spit roping from his lips in long, trembling strands as he drags himself toward your feet like a dog that’s been kicked too many times but still comes running. His pupils bleed red, eclipsing the black. His shirt is gone. His nails are cracked and black at the edges, scrabbling over the porch boards in slow, shivering motions that match the tremble in his voice.

His mouth hangs open. Tongue wet. Forked.

You can see the way it splits when he pants—like he can’t decide whether to speak or taste or crawl inside you and live there forever.

He looks up at you through his lashes, and it’s not seductive.

It’s pleading.

Pathetic.

Eyes wide and glossy, like something half-feral and half-forgotten, a kicked-puppy expression clinging to him even as he drools down his chin. He’s shaking. His knees have long since gone raw from dragging over your porch, and he presses his forehead to the step just beneath you.

You tilt your glass. Take a sip.

He moans. Loud. Unfiltered. Buckling at the sound.

“God, please,” he breathes, his voice hoarse and slurred like he’s drunk on the smell of you. “Please, I can’t—I can’t take it no more, baby. You’re killin’ me. Killin’ me soft and slow and I fuckin’ love it.”

You shift, just enough for your robe to slide up one thigh.

His hands curl into fists. He bites down on a sob.

“I’ll be so good to you,” he whimpers, dragging himself another inch forward. “You don’t—you don’t know what I could give you. What I wanna give you. What I think about every night with my hand on my cock, prayin’ for a dream of your fuckin’ voice.”

You raise an eyebrow. But you don’t stop him. And that’s all the permission he needs.

“I’d eat it for hours,” he blurts, voice breaking. “I’d keep my tongue on you till you forgot your own name. I’d fuckin’ cry for the chance, darlin’. You don’t know what I’d do just to smell you on my face. Let me clean you up with my mouth. Let me keep you sweet.”

He pants like a sinner, sweating through the knees of his jeans, forked tongue slipping past his lips as he mouths at the space near your ankle. Never quite touching. Never daring.

“I’d make it good for you,” he groans. “Better than anyone. I’d hold you down or let you ride. Whatever you wanted. However you wanted. I’d tear my fuckin’ throat out if it made you wet.”

You stay silent.

Let him spiral.

Let him beg.

Let him drown in everything you’ll never give him.

His jaw hangs slack again, saliva pouring freely now, staining the porch with slick, twitching need. He doesn’t even seem to notice. His hips rock forward once—pathetically—like he’s rutting against the air just from being this close.

Then—

“Say it,” he croaks, wrecked and delirious. “Say the word. Just the once. Just once and I’ll die happy. I’ll let you ruin me every night. Let you bleed me dry, fuck me dumb, use me up ‘til I’m nothing but bones and thank you for it. I’ll be your thing. Your pet. Your meal. Just say it. Say it and let me in.”

You watch him twitch.

You don’t speak.

And that silence?

It undoes him.

He presses his face into the porch and sobs—one sharp, cracked sound that makes your thighs clench—and you think, maybe next time.

Maybe.

But not tonight.

It’s late.

Later than you usually sit up for him.

The air outside smells like wet bark and heat lightning. You’ve just bathed—skin still damp, robe clean, lips glossy with something sweet and sticky you let melt over your tongue before you opened the door.

The floorboards are still slick from the storm earlier, and the moon’s a thin thing, half-ash and half-bone. Somewhere in the trees, something howls.

But he’s louder.

He’s already there when you pull the door open, sprawled out like roadkill—on his side, one cheek pressed against the porch wood, arms limp at his sides, knees bent in. Like he dragged himself here and died at the edge of your mercy.

But when he hears the door creak, he moves.

Head jerks. Eyes flash. His nostrils flare, and he moans—low and open-mouthed, like he’s just caught your scent for the first time all over again.

“Sweetheart,” he gasps, trying to sit up and immediately wobbling, weak from hunger or lust or both. “Sweetheart, I—I dreamed you were gonna open it tonight.”

You say nothing.

He drags himself upright, kneeling again, hands in his lap like a penitent priest waiting for permission to sin. His thighs are slick with drool and sweat and something darker—something old. You don’t ask. He’s trembling.

You step forward.

And he growls.

Low. Feral. Possessive. His shoulders hunch, his nails dig into the wood, his tongue flashes out—forked, twitching—and he presses his forehead to the threshold like it burns him.

“You smell like soap,” he whimpers. “Like you’re clean and warm and wantin’. You did it on purpose, didn’t you? You always do.”

You kneel in front of him, robe gaping where the sash has gone loose.

He chokes.

You brush a knuckle down his cheek. He shudders so violently you think he might break apart at the seams.

And then you whisper it.

Soft. Small.

The word.

“Come in.”

He doesn’t believe you at first.

His body goes very still. Breath caught. Eyes searching your face for the trick. His mouth parts around a sob so sharp it cuts his throat on the way out.

“Wh-what?” he croaks.

“You heard me,” you say, voice low. “You can come in.”

And that’s all it takes.

He lunges.

Not with violence. Not with fury. But with such pure, starved need it knocks the breath out of your lungs. He collapses forward into the doorway like a beast finally slipping its leash, dragging himself across the threshold like it hurts—but in a way he wants.

He weeps.

On his knees again. Hands clutching your thighs. Mouth open and dripping against your bare skin as he repeats your name over and over, shaking, whispering thanks like a dying man kissing dirt.

“Thank you,” he gasps. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, fuck—thank you—”

His tongue presses to your thigh.

You twitch.

And he wails—the sound muffled against your flesh, trembling like a man who’s tasted Heaven and is terrified he’ll be dragged back to Hell. His arms wrap around your hips, pulling you down with him, until your knees hit the floor and you’re seated right there in the doorway with him cradled between your legs like a body in prayer.

“I’ll be so gentle,” he babbles, licking a stripe up your inner thigh. “I’ll be good. I’ll be sweet, sugar, I swear it—I won’t bite unless you ask. I’ll eat and eat ‘til you shake and sob and soak my chin and then I’ll fuckin’ beg for seconds.”

You let your head fall back, lips parted, robe slipping.

He sees it.

And loses what’s left of his composure.

He goes slow at first—painfully, reverently slow.

Tongue pressed flat to your cunt, hands gripping your thighs like lifelines, the tip of that sinful, split tongue tracing soft, teasing figure-eights just to feel you tremble.

And you do.

Every flick, every moan, every whimper he pulls from your throat drives him deeper into madness. He cries as he eats you. Cries. Big, open-mouthed sobs against your pussy as he whispers nonsense:

“So sweet—so sweet, fuck—never tasted anything like you—please, let me die here—let me drown—let me be your floorboard, your shadow, your fuckin’ leash, baby, I’ll be anything—”

You come on his tongue once, and he doesn’t stop.

Doesn’t even pause.

Just whimpers like your pleasure is sustenance, like your slick is water and he’s been crawling the desert for years.

You tangle your fingers in his hair. Tug. He moans into you. Grinds his hips to the floor.

“Can I fuck you?” he begs against your cunt. “Please, can I? I’ll go slow. I’ll go soft. I’ll make you feel worshipped. You want it rough? I’ll give you rough. Want it sweet? I’ll make you sob. I’ll bite your throat open and make you scream my name ‘til the walls crack.”

He looks up at you, face wet, chin slick, forked tongue flicking out like a serpent sensing the heat of your body. His eyes are glassy. Wild.

“Tell me I can fuck you.”

You nod.

He breaks again.

And then—

He crawls forward, palms flat on the floor, reverent and quiet. His cock is hard, flushed and weeping, twitching against his stomach. You see the way his hands shake as he guides himself to you. The way he groans—choked and low and obscene—when the head of it brushes against your entrance.

He looks up at you, panting. Lips parted.

“You sure?” he whispers. Like he’s asking permission to live.

You nod again.

“Then hold on to me, sugar,” he says, voice raw and trembling. “I ain't never comin’ back from this.”

And he pushes in—

Slow. So slow. Like he’s scared you’ll vanish beneath him. Like your heat is swallowing him whole. Like the walls of your body were carved centuries ago to hold only him.

He moans into your neck, hips stilling halfway through.

“Fuck,” he whimpers, voice shattered. “You feel like—like you were made for me. I’m—I’m not gonna last. I ain’t—please don’t let go of me.”

You clutch his shoulders.

He bottoms out with a sob, every inch of him buried in you, shaking like a man who’s finally come home. His forehead presses to yours. His hips roll once, reverent, like worship.

He doesn’t move at first.

Just stays buried to the hilt, mouth slack against your throat, breathing like a dying animal in your ear. You feel him twitch inside you—thick, hot, leaking—and for a moment you think he might cry again.

Then he growls.

Low. Deep. Possessive.

And moves.

One slow pull out—almost all the way—followed by a brutal thrust that slams your back against the floorboards hard enough to rattle the doorframe. You gasp. He moans. Loud. Open-mouthed. Obscene.

“Fuck,” he chokes, already shaking. “Oh, sugar. Oh, baby, you—you don’t know what you’ve done. What you let loose.”

He doesn’t wait for permission anymore. Doesn’t need it. You gave it the second you said come in.

Now he’s fucking like it’s all he knows how to do.

His hips snap forward over and over, wet slaps echoing through the open doorway, sweat dripping from his brow, tongue lolling out as he pants like a rabid thing. He braces one hand beside your head and the other beneath your thigh, holding you open, dragging you into every thrust like he wants to feel himself hit the back of you.

You’re soaked. Wrecked. Clawing at his back and gasping his name over and over like it’s the only prayer you’ve got.

“You wanted me like this, didn’t you?” he snarls, his drawl thick and guttural now. “Wanted to see me come undone. Wanted to see the monster in me. Well, here he is, sugar. Here I fuckin’ am.”

He grinds down. Deep. You cry out.

He smirks, wild and broken and high off the sound.

“You feel that?” he whispers against your mouth. “That’s me in you. Deep as I can go. You’ll feel me for days. I’ll make sure of it.”

And he does.

He fucks you until your legs tremble, until your voice is raw, until the only sounds are slick, messy, filthy. He presses his chest to yours, forehead to your jaw, panting through clenched teeth as he drives into you like he can’t stop. Like if he slows down, he’ll die.

You feel the sharp tips of his fangs graze your throat. His voice is wrecked.

“Let me taste you,” he begs. “Let me drink while I’m inside you. Let me be full, sugar. Let me be whole.”

You nod.

He doesn’t even hesitate.

His mouth opens wide and you feel the bite—sharp, electric, perfect—right where your neck meets your shoulder, and suddenly his hips are slamming into you harder, messier, feral, rutting through your orgasm as he drinks, drinks, drinks.

It hits you all at once. Heat. Pain. Pleasure so sharp it blinds you.

You come hard, clenching around him, and he sobs into your throat like it’s sacred, like he’s breaking apart inside your body.

You feel him twitch. His breath goes ragged.

“Gonna come,” he warns, voice slurred, tongue lapping at your skin between frantic, messy thrusts. “Gonna—fuck, sugar, I’m gonna fill you—gonna mark you—make you mine—mine—mine—”

And he does.

Hot and thick and endless.

He spills inside you with a guttural cry, hips stuttering, teeth still buried in your skin. You feel it pulse into you—claiming you, over and over, like his body doesn’t know how to stop. Like his need has no end.

He finally stills, trembling.

Still buried inside you. Still panting. Still moaning your name into the crook of your neck like he’s worshipping it.

And then—

He kisses the bite.

Soft.

Gentle.

His hands cradle your face like you’re glass, and for the first time all night, his voice goes quiet.

“You saved me,” he breathes.

And for once, you don’t correct him.

You don’t know how long you lie there.

Could be minutes. Could be hours. The air has gone still, heavy with sweat and sex and iron and him. The storm’s long gone, but you can still smell the rain—sweet and earthy, mixing with the blood drying at your throat.

You feel it when he finally starts to move.

Just a shift.

The slow drag of his hand up your thigh, fingertips curling into the dip of your waist like he’s reminding himself you’re real. His body is still flush against yours, cock soft now but still inside you, holding you open. Keeping you full. Like he’s afraid pulling out will make the whole night unravel.

You reach up, bury a hand in his tangled hair.

He makes a sound—small, shattered—and curls tighter against you.

“Don’t go,” he whispers, voice hoarse and full of something too heavy to name. “Don’t make me leave. Not after that. I’ll—I’ll be good. I’ll be so good.”

You don’t answer. You don’t need to.

Your fingers stay in his hair, stroking gently. His body softens against yours.

There’s blood smeared across your neck, your chest, down your ribs. His bite still stings, the skin pulsing, raw—but it doesn’t hurt. Not really. It burns. Like a seal. Like a signature.

You glance down.

He’s watching you.

Eyes half-lidded. Glazed. Glowing, almost—faint and strange, like he’s lit from within. There’s a little blood on his mouth. More on his chin. But he doesn’t wipe it away.

You wonder if he’s ever looked more peaceful.

“You taste like sunlight,” he murmurs, dream-drunk. “Like nectar. Like the end of the world.”

You huff a laugh, quiet and breathless.

“Don’t get poetic on me now.”

“I ain’t,” he slurs, eyes fluttering. “Just honest.”

He nuzzles into your collarbone, forked tongue flicking lazily against your skin like he’s still trying to memorize it. His hands roam—slow, aimless, like he doesn’t know how to stop touching. One settles on your hip. The other slides beneath your spine and pulls you closer.

“I ain’t lettin’ you go,” he mumbles. “Not after this. You said it. You let me in.”

You nod. You did.

And you meant it.

He presses his nose to your pulse point, breath fogging across your skin. His lips ghost over the bite. He presses a kiss there, reverent.

“I’ll be good,” he repeats, softer now. “You just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. You want a house? I’ll build it. You want blood? I’ll bring you the whole fuckin’ town. You want me to rot on the floor again? I will. Long as I’m yours.”

“You’re mine,” you whisper.

And he moans.

Like the words filled him with something he’s never had in thirteen centuries.

You feel him soften completely then, sinking into your body like sleep. One leg slung over yours, one arm anchoring you to his chest, his cock slipping free with a wet noise that makes him groan as you shudder. Your body aches, raw and sore and claimed, but you don’t move.

Neither does he.

Eventually, he sleeps.

You know because the grip he has on you loosens—but only a little. He still breathes you in. Still holds you like something holy and fragile and violently his.

And you?

You stay awake a while longer, staring at the door still cracked open, the threshold now crossed, the air inside heavy with what you both became tonight.

The blood on your neck has dried.

The slick between your thighs has cooled.

But his body stays warm against you.

And outside, the sky hasn’t yet begun to lighten.

No birds. No blue.

Just that inky pre-dawn blackness pressing soft against the windows, holding the night still around you like a secret.

Because he can’t survive the sun.

And tonight, for once, you don’t want the morning to come either.

[pinkdreameravenue]

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[benewitch]