A/n: As a person in a religious guilt cycle should I be making this? No but God do I love this genre. And why is my writing style all over the place, I’m sick!
The cold air circled around the atmosphere mixed with the overstimulating sound of sopranos and altos. The piano melody combined with the hard bass from the drums and cymbals.
It was a large recipe to brew up a pulsing headache. Your mother sung loudly next to you, pale yellow dress swinging around, sometimes brushing against your knees.
Goosebumps trailed along your arm, reminding you that you should’ve brought a jacket. The instruments slowly descended and the church erupted into applause.
The applause came to an end and the preacher stood behind the podium and captured everyone’s attention. The deep voice of the reverend filled the room, small murmurs of folk agreeing and hooting in approval.
Your eyes were trained on one person the rest of the service.
Michael Joseph Jackson.
The preacher’s son who’s also the drummer of the church. One of the most attractive out of all of the sons. Lover of all, knows the Bible from page to page, jumping at the first opportunity to help.
And helpful he was.
When he offered Bible study sessions, you didn’t hesitate to agree. You showed up with your white Bible with gold imprint on the cover, pressed hair tied into a ponytail with a white bow, and a tray of cookies.
He greeted you with nothing but a warm smile, covering the dark intention lurking. He guided you to his room and it was clean and quaint, family pictures set up, large cross on the wall.
It was everything you would expect from the preacher’s son. His family was out running errands and wanted to provide you both a quiet atmosphere to focus on the Word.
A few moments passed by before you noticed him sitting closer to you, and his cologne became a bit too noticeable. He seemed enthusiastic pointing out certain words and spewing stories of testimonies and epiphanies.
“The Bible mentions how the wife submits to the husband…like following his lead y’know.”
His eyes twinkled in a fervent energy, placing his hand on your thigh. Your eyes darted to the sudden touch, large palm splaying against your dark skin.
He continued on, seeming as if he didn’t notice. “Isn’t God just amazing?” A bright smile on his face, hand eagerly going farther till the tips of his fingers brushed against the edge of your panties.
“Y-yes, Michael.” You cleared your throat, feeling a slow warmth accumulate in your stomach. “Are you okay?” You asked him, glancing at his hand that rested under your skirt and then the open Bible on the table. “Of course, why’d you ask?” His head tilted, doe eyes holding a dauntless taunt.
“J-just your—um—your hand.” You pointed out. He chuckled giving a tight squeeze to your leg. “I’m just affectionate, I’m sorry. Did I make you uncomfortable?” He asked removing his hand.
His face fell flat in a sinister way, eyebrows dropping to a scowl and his lips lost all evidence of a smile. “No! Of course not.” You reassured quickly.
You’d never seen him without a smile and the sight worried you. “Aw, you’re the sweetest.” He leaned over giving a gentle kiss on your cheek making you swallow. Your eyes fluttered close at the small pulse in your panties.
“Are you okay?” He asked, hand resting on your knee. “Just fine. Maybe it’s just my stomach.” You created an excuse off the top of your head.
“Let me help you with that.” Michael smiled but not the usual, friendly greeting.
An ominous, menacing smile.
He held out his palm, and you hesitantly took it. Maybe he’s guiding you to the medicine cabinet or downstairs to make you hot tea.
Instead he guided you to his neatly made bed, “Lay down, angel.” He demanded with a smile but his voice held no room for compromise.
You should’ve taken the opportunity to go home. Grab a cookie, suggest a new Bible chapter, anything to stop this sinful desire building in the room.
Instead you laid down.
~~~~
“M-Michael.” You whimpered as his tongue flicked against your clit quickly. His large hands held your thighs open as you laid across his bed. Your skirt was bunched around your waist, and your panties were somewhere across his room.
“Sorry, angel, I needed your pretty pussy.” He mumbled. The vulgar words from his mouth made you clench around nothing, igniting a fire inside of you. Your hips instinctively rubbed against his mouth.
His soft sheets rubbed against your skin, and the feel of your plush thighs in his hands made him itch for more. He had to physically restrain himself from taking you right there. All he knows is he needed you, not caring about the open Bible that rested on his desk.
You couldn’t help but pray for forgiveness in your heart. What a freaking contradiction. You tried to fight the pleasure. Your eyes glanced at the large, formidable cross. You couldn’t stare at it any longer, only remind you of the delicious pleasurable feast going on below you.
You held your cross necklace tightly in your hands, edges digging into your palm, panting heavily. You tried to ground your mind anywhere else, repeating 'flee from sexual immorality.'
You told yourself you didn’t want this. Told yourself this was wrong and you needed to wait till marriage. Your body hadn’t gotten the memo, grasping his curls in your hand as you bucked against his mouth seeking out an orgasm.
He lapped at you like a dog, messy and hungry. “Can you cum f’me, angel?” He asked you. God, you would jump through hoops for him in this moment.
You quickly nodded and he brought his mouth back down to you. His tongue slid through your folds easily, collecting any arousal.
On the verge of your orgasm, Michael pulled away. Your eyes shot open in confusion, a frustrating urge taking over. “Did you want to stop angel?” He licked his lips, tasting the sweetness of your dripping warmth.
This was your chance. Your chance to keep your dignity and pureness. Your chance to keep your ticket into heaven. Your mind was ready but your soul had something else in mind.
“No! Please Michael, I need you.” You cried out, tears pricking your eyes. He had you right where he wanted you, begging and needy. His eyes darkened, the same sinister smile taking place.
He put his mouth on you once again, actions becoming meticulous and frantic, pushing you towards your orgasm. You repeated his name like a prayer as you released into his mouth, legs shaking around his shoulders.
He gently sucked on your clit until you calmed down. The aftermath hit you like a truck.
What did you just do?
You just let the pastor’s son eat you out in his family home. You don’t know what felt worse—the urge to do more or the shame you felt from the remnants of God's presence in the room.
Michael stood to his feet, licking your essence from his mouth.
﹒ ୨୧◞ 。summary .ᐟ what do you do when the man you built your entire life around disappears without so much as a goodbye for another woman? do you love him enough to stay? or do you respect yourself?
﹒ ୨୧◞ 。before you interact .ᐟ divorce, emotional infidelity, substance abuse, addiction, mental health struggles, medication, anxiety, panic attacks, grief, codependency, public scrutiny, paparazzi harassment, family conflict, legal disputes, custody proceedings, fainting, unhealthy coping mechanisms, weight loss, weight depiction, and complex relationship dynamics. age gap in relationship (reader is now 27, michael is 36). “im your freaky nikki :)” reference for the girls!
﹒ ୨୧◞ 。disclaimer .ᐟ this work contains depictions of addiction, substance abuse, and deteriorating mental health. this piece is not an accurate depiction of any real life individuals. — 22k word count.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ January, 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ An Undisclosed Location - Los Angeles, California.
Two weeks after the divorce papers arrived, (Name) found herself standing in the back corner of a Rite Aid, lingering near the pharmacy counter with a basket hanging loosely from one arm. Nothing particularly special in it; a little bottle of ibuprofen and some pads. Things that made this visit feel a little more normal. She was wearing a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes and a pair of oversized sunglasses, and scarf wrapped loosely around the lower half of her face.
It was funny. She’d become strangely good at blending in during the years she was with him. Michael had turned disappearing into an art form: fake noses, oversized jackets, wigs, and absurd disguises that left them both giggling in parking lots of a grocery store. She indulged him in all of it—somehow beneath all of it, they felt freer than they ever did as themselves at times. It was nice. But this visit didn’t feel that way.
Her managers would’ve insisted on sending an assistant if they’d known where she’d gone. Security would’ve cleared the counter and surrounding areas before she ever reached the pharmacy. Hell, someone else would’ve picked up the prescription, tucked it into a brown bag, and spared her the errand entirely.
But no one knew the perscription existed, and she intended to keep it that way.
Two weeks ago, a stranger in a suit had handed her a stack of papers and it felt as though something had climbed off the page, and directly into her body the moment she’d touched them. It burrowed through her the way an illness does, until it had rooted itself in places she couldn’t reach. It seeped into her bloodstream, threaded itself through her nerves, and nested behind her ribs.
The symptoms hadn’t arrived all at time, they spread slowly.
It fed on sleep and turned the simple act of hearing her own phone ring into something her heart interpreted as danger, taking several minutes to recover. Her appetite disappeared. Her pulse developed a mind of its own even when she was resting. She’d lie awake convinced something terrible was about to happen, only to realize the terrible thing already had.
It was astonishing how quickly grief could colonize a body.
She couldn’t scrub it off in the shower or outrun it. It had settled into the wiring beneath her skin, quietly rewriting instincts she’d trusted her entire life. Silence became suspicious. Even breathing sometimes felt like work.
The prescription was proof that whatever had entered her that afternoon had progressed far beyond heartbreak. A doctor had looked at her and seen something treatable. The shock of the impending divorce had lingered long enough to leave a trace in her nervous system and soil it, leaving behind disorder that wasn’t there previously.
The papers were still sitting somewhere in a drawer, she hadn’t signed a single one or read even a page. Yet somehow they were already changing her from the inside out. Truth be told, she physically couldn’t look at, touch or even be in the vicinity of the documents. Staff handled them that afternoon, locking them in a secure room because they seemed to be a trigger. Understandably so.
The woman beside her was buying children’s cough medicine and cartoon bandages. An older man stood quietly comparing two different bottles of vitamins before deciding on one. Somewhere near the greeting cards, a little girl begged her mother for a chocolate bar while the cashier laughed and told her she’d have to ask permission first. It was painfully, offensively ordinary. The world had gone on with its errands and grocery lists, with all the beautifully mundane rituals of ordinary life, as though her life hadn’t split neatly in half just fourteen days earlier.
(Name) stood among strangers holding the little numbered ticket she’d been handed at the counter and when her name was finally called, she walked forward on legs that didn’t quite feel like her own.
The pharmacist never looked up long enough to recognize her. He simply asked for her date of birth, confirmed her address, and then disappeared briefly before returning with a small amber bottle sealed inside a white paper bag. The exchange lasted less than two minutes. He explained the directions carefully, his voice slightly deadpan from saying the same sentences hundreds of times a day. Take one as needed. It may cause drowsiness. Avoid alcohol while taking this medication. Contact your physician if symptoms worsen. She nodded at all the appropriate moments, signed where he pointed, thanked him with a smile and accepted the bag with both hands.
As she turned toward the exit, her eyes drifted down to the bottle visible through the folded paper.
Twenty seven.
Twenty seven years old, and she was walking out of a pharmacy with medication because she could no longer convince her own body that it was safe. How pathetic is that? Because somewhere between her husband’s legal troubles, hospital visits, rehabilitation, to weeks upon weeks of silence, Lisa Maria, and an envelope full of legal documents meant to separate her from the love of her life, her hands shook for no reason at all. Sometimes she forgot to breathe until her lungs forced her to remember. The physician had called them panic attacks in the same exactly manner someone might use to diagnose seasonal allergies. He’d spoken gently, kindly even, explaining that her nervous system had been under extraordinary strain for a very long time. There was no shame in needing help, he’d said. Plenty of people needed help. She’d nodded then, too.
But there wasn’t a dosage for losing your husband.
There wasn’t a pill that could make her forget the sound of his laugh echoing through hallways he no longer walked. Nothing printed on that prescription label could explain how to wake up in a bed built for two people and remember, every single morning, that only one of the was laying in it. No pharmacist could fold that kind of grief into an amber bottle and slide it across a counter.
She placed the paper bag on the passenger seat beside her and drove home in silence.
That evening, after Aladdin had finally fallen asleep and the house settled into the stillness she had grown to despise, she wandered into the living room carrying a dusty cardboard box she’d pulled from the back of a closet. Inside were home videos she hadn’t touched in ages, each cassette labeled in her own pretty handwriting. Christmas. Aladdin’s birthday. Neverland. 1990. Valentine’s day. Paris. Wedding. Her fingers lingered over the last one before she carefully slid it into the VCR. The mechanical click sounded into the room, followed by the soft hiss of static before the image steadied into brilliant color.
There he was.
Happy. Smiling. Alive in a way that had nothing to do with breathing at all—it feels like watching a dream.
He turned toward the camera for only a second before looking back at her, his entire face brightening with that shy little smile she’d once believed she would spend the rest of her life watching. She saw herself laughing beside him, adjusting the sleeve of his tuxedo before he leaned down to whisper something that made her throw her head back with another laugh. The footage wobbled as the cameraman moved, catching fleeting moments no photographer ever could. His hand finding hers beneath the table. The sweet way he looked at her when he thought no one else was paying attention. The gentle brush of his thumb across her knuckles while guests applauded somewhere in the background.
On the coffee table sat three things.
The remote.
The small amber prescription bottle.
A bottle of vodka.
She stared at them as the television continued playing. Michael fed her a bite of wedding cake before laughing at something she couldn’t hear over the music. She remembered exactly how it had tasted. Sweet vanilla. Buttercream. The kiss they’d shared afterward, both of them giggling because they could still taste the frosting. She remembered believing with complete certainty that this was what her forever looked like.
Her thumb found the rewind button.
The tape whirred backwards.
She watched it again.
Then again.
Every replay felt less like remembering.. and more like searching. She thought that if she studied his face closely enough she’d find the exact frame where everything that came afterward had already been waiting. Some tiny hesitation. Some shadow behind his eyes. Some warning she’d somehow missed.
There wasn’t one.
Only a man hopelessly in love with his wife.
Only a woman who looked back at him as though nothing in the world could ever separate them.
The room grew darker as the evening wore on, lit only by the glow of the television. The prescription bottle opened, as well as the bottle of vodka. They sat side by side beneath the flickering light like two different promises, both offering relief in their own quiet, dangerous way. (Name) rested her elbows on her knees, her tired eyes fixed on the screen as tears slipped silently down her face.
She pressed rewind one more time.
Inside the television, Michael smiled at her as though he still couldn’t believe she’d said yes.
Outside of it, she couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at her that way at all.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ February, 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Spago Restaurant - West Hollywood, California.
It had taken nearly three weeks before anyone managed to convince (Name) to leave the house. Not for a recording session, an interview or for a rehearsal. Just lunch. Her manager had called it a ‘change of scenery’, speaking as though she were balanced on the outside of a twenty story window ledge, and they were all desperately pretending the conversation was about the weather. He’d gently suggested that four walls and perpetually drawn curtains weren’t doing her any favors anymore. Elizabeth had agreed immediately, squeezing her hand across the kitchen table and telling her that the world hadn’t ended just because it felt like it had. A few other members of her team quietly echoed the sentiment, though no one pushed very hard. They’d all learned over the past few weeks that this situation had made her extremely fragile. One wrong sentence and she’d retreat upstairs for the rest of the day, emerging only to check on Aladdin before disappearing behind another closed door. Eventually, more out of exhaustion than willingness, she’d nodded. Arguing required energy she simply didn’t have anymore.
Getting dressed felt very odd considering for the past few weeks, she’d only changed clothes out of basic necessity, and even then, it usually took gentle encouragement from one of the older women on the Neverland staff. She’d knock softly before letting herself in, lay out fresh clothes, and patiently coax (Name) through the motions of showering and getting dressed. The same woman reminded her to eat most days, lingering at the kitchen table until she’d managed at least half of whatever meal had been placed in front of her. Somewhere along the way, she’d stopped feeling like an employee and started feeling more like the maternal presence everyone assumed was needed due to the situation at hand.
(Name) stood in front of her closet for several minutes before reaching for an oversized cream sweater that used to fit comfortably, only to watch it slip a little loosely over her shoulders now. The sleeves swallowed part of her hands which was the normal fit but the neckline rested lower against her collarbone than she remembered. She caught sight of herself in the mirror for only a second before looking away again. Her cheekbones had become a bit more angular. The gentle fullness that had always softened her face had disappeared a bit, replaced by a hollowness she hadn’t noticed was there. Makeup covered the worst of the dark circles beneath her eyes, but it couldn’t disguise the fatigue settled deep behind them. She tucked loose strands of hair beneath a baseball cap, slipped on oversized sunglasses despite the gray afternoon sky, and reached for a scarf.
As she stepped downstairs, someone offered a gentle, well meaning, ”Miss! You’re getting out? You look nice.” Someone else remarked without thinking, “Oh! ..You’ve lost a little weight..” And the room fell awkwardly silent. (Name) only smiled politely, adjusted the strap of her handbag and pretended she hadn’t heard the comment. She would be back later she said.
The restaurant had been chosen carefully, tucked away from the busiest streets behind rows of old palm trees and expensive storefronts where celebrities occasionally managed an uninterrupted meal if they were lucky. It wasn’t impossible to find, just inconvenient enough that most photographers didn’t bother waiting outside on speculation alone. For a little while, the plan actually worked. Warm afternoon light spilling across white tablecloths through tall windows, silverware clinked softly against porcelain plates and conversations drifted lazily between nearby tables without anyone paying them much attention.
It felt ordinary, getting out like this. She.. she enjoyed it admittedly. Her team made a conscious effort to avoid the subjects hanging over everyone’s heads. They talked about work, albums other artists were releasing, Aladdin’s newest words, and whether he was going to inherit her stubbornness or her sweetness—perhaps even both, he’s a taurus after all. Elizabeth carried most of the conversation herself, launching into one of her wonderfully meandering stories that somehow involved three countries, two dogs, and an actor whose name she’d completely forgotten before arriving at an absurd punchline that made the entire table laugh. Against her own expectations, (Name) laughed too. It startled her more than anyone else. The sound felt rusty, like something her body remembered doing even if her heart hadn’t caught up yet.
For one fleeting hour, she almost believed she’d survive this.
Then somebody recognized her.
She never found out who it was. Perhaps another customer quietly excused themselves to make a phone call. Perhaps a waiter mentioned her name to someone outside. Perhaps word simply spread the way it always seemed to whenever famous people tried to exist in public. It hardly mattered anymore. Fame had long since taught her that privacy leaked away in tiny, ordinary moments exactly like this one until suddenly there was nothing left.
(Name) noticed the shift before anyone said a word. Her head of security, who until then had been standing comfortably near the entrance pretending not to watch the room, suddenly pressed two fingers against the earpiece hidden beneath his jacket. His expression tightened imperceptibly as he listened, eyes drifting toward the front windows where flashes of movement had begun gathering beyond the glass. Another member of security quietly stepped away from the wall to reposition himself closer to the table. Her manager stopped mid sentence, following their line of sight without turning his head too obviously. Even Elizabeth noticed, her smile fading as she reached instinctively for (Name)’s hand beneath the table, giving it one reassuring squeeze.
“They’re outside,” The head of security said quietly.
The words settled over the table like the forecast of an approaching storm everyone had secretly been hoping would pass them by. Conversation dissolved almost immediately. Chairs slid softly across the floor as everyone rose, years of navigating celebrity life taking over without discussion. (Name) lowered her gaze, adjusted her sunglasses with fingers that suddenly felt clumsy, and drew a slow breath that caught somewhere halfway inside her chest. The scarf was pulled a little higher. Her baseball cap lowered a little further. None of it would matter. It never really did. She fell naturally into the middle of the group as they began walking toward the entrance, surrounded by security without feeling particularly protected.
The restaurant door hadn’t even finished opening before the noise—her name hit her before she even saw the cameras.
It came from every direction at once, shouted over itself until it no longer sounded like her name at all, just noise. The moment her foot crossed the threshold, the sidewalk erupted into movement. Photographers surged forward as one body, camera shutters firing in relentless bursts that sounded almost mechanical, flashes exploding even beneath the overcast sky until the world dissolved into violent pulses of white. For a split second she couldn’t properly see where the curb ended or where her security team began. People jostled shoulders, stepping into one another’s paths in a frantic effort to get closer, lenses stretching over heads, microphones thrust forward like weapons. The air itself felt crowded.
“(Name)! Over here!”
“(Name), is it true Michael left you?”
“Were you blindsided by the divorce?”
“Is the marriage beyond saving?”
“Who’s getting custody of Aladdin?”
“Are the reports about your health true?”
“Did Michael cheat on you?”
“Do you still love him?”
The questions were invasive. One voice crashed into the next before she’d even understood the first, each reporter trying to shout just a little louder than everyone else, convinced theirs would be the question that finally cracked her open. Camera lenses crowded so close she could see her own distorted reflection staring back at her through polished glass, sallow beneath oversized sunglasses and thinner than she remembered. Someone stumbled against her shoulder. Another photographer leaned so far over the security barricade he nearly fell. Hands reached into her path holding tape recorders, notepads, microphones bearing television station logos.
Somewhere beside her, one of the security guards repeated, “Back up. Give her room. Back up,” in the same firm voice over and over until it blended into the rest of the chaos.
Nobody listened, but nobody ever did. There was money to be made from other people’s misery, and her nightmare had become one of the biggest stories in the world.
Her heartbreak had stopped belonging to her weeks ago. Every grocery store checkout aisle carried another magazine promising the “truth” behind the separation, each issue displaying a different photograph beneath another confident headline written by someone who had never once stepped inside their home. Anonymous friends appeared everywhere, speaking in quotations she’d never heard before, somehow claiming to know exactly what had been said behind closed bedroom doors, exactly how she’d cried, exactly why her marriage had failed.
Daytime television hosts dissected their relationship between celebrity gossip segments and cooking demonstrations, nodding thoughtfully as if they had been invited to the wedding themselves. Entertainment programs replayed years of interviews, slowing footage to half speed in search of glances that supposedly predicted the divorce all along. Fans filled call in shows arguing over which one of them deserved sympathy. Radio hosts joked about whose breakup album would sell more records. Newspapers printed diagrams of their relationship like timelines from a criminal investigation, reducing years of shared memories into neat columns of dates and speculation. Complete strangers debated custody arrangements over breakfast. Opinion columnists confidently explained why the marriage had collapsed despite never having spent a single minute inside it. Every person with a newspaper, a television, or a microphone suddenly believed they understood the most intimate years of her life better than she did.
Everyone had an answer, but no one had been there.
She kept walking because there was nothing else she knew how to do. Her shoulders curled inward beneath the oversized sweater, she thought that making herself physically smaller might somehow lessen the attention. One hand clung so tightly to the strap of her handbag that her fingers had begun to ache, while the other remained tucked close against her body, hidden beneath the loose knit of her sleeve. She didn’t lift her head. She couldn’t. Looking at them felt too.. it was just humiliating. So instead, she fixed her eyes on the black sedan waiting just beyond the crowd, wishing that they parked closer. Every step seemed to take forever.
The flashes refused to stop. They illuminated every new hollow beneath her cheekbones, every collarbone now visible beneath the sweater she’d chosen specifically because it hid how much weight she’d lost in such a short period of time—the difference was noticeable considering where she was before, to where she is now. Tomorrow those photographs would be everywhere. Side by side comparisons from six months earlier. Headlines asking whether she was eating enough. Television doctors offering diagnoses they’d invented from still images.
HEARTBROKEN STAR SPARKS HEALTH CONCERNS. FRIENDS FEAR SHE’S WASTING AWAY. THE PRICE OF DIVORCE?
They would speculate about stress, exhaustion, dieting, overwork. Nobody would write that she’d begun measuring her nights by how many drinks it took to fall asleep. Nobody would know about the little amber prescription bottle tucked inside the kitchen cabinet behind the coffee mugs, or how some evenings she’d stand in front of it with a bottle of vodka in one hand, trying to decide which one might finally quiet her mind. Nobody would know she’d stopped looking into mirrors for more than a few seconds because the woman staring back looked unrecognizable every single morning.
A security guard opened the car door just as the crowd pressed forward again. She slipped inside without speaking, her manager climbing in behind her before another photographer managed to wedge a camera between the narrowing gap. The door slammed shut with a heavy thud, muffling the shouting almost instantly. For one second, there was silence. She let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and leaned her head back against the leather seat, closing her eyes as if the darkness behind them might finally offer somewhere to hide.
Another flash burst through the tinted window.
Then another.
Even with the door closed, even with the engine starting, even as the car slowly pulled away from the curb, they were still taking pictures.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ Early March, 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ The Valley - Los Angeles, California.
The strangest part about looking for a house was that she had no idea what she was supposed to be looking for.
She knew how to stand beneath stage lights and deliver a performance perfectly timed down to the second. She knew how to walk into a room full of executives and hold her ground. She knew how to negotiate contracts, handle interviews, memorize choreography, and carry an entire career on her shoulders without letting anyone see how heavy it became. She had spent years making decisions that affected millions of people.
But standing inside a potential home with a realtor asking her what she wanted, she felt completely lost.
The woman showing her around was kind it was sickening. She had the bright, professional warmth of someone who had done this hundreds of times before, moving through each property with an enthusiasm that felt untouched by the fact that this was not an exciting new beginning for her. This was something else entirely.
“This room would be perfect for entertaining,” The realtor said, opening the doors to a wide living space with tall windows overlooking the backyard. “I can already picture family gatherings here. Holidays, birthdays…”
(Name) smiled politely.
She could picture them too.
That was the problem.
She could picture Aladdin running through the room. She could picture toys scattered across the floor, little shoes abandoned by the doorway, Christmas decorations covering every surface. She could picture a piano sitting somewhere near the windows, music filling the house in the evenings.
She could picture a life, but she just couldn’t picture herself living it.
The first house was beautiful.
So was the second.
The third had a kitchen larger than her first apartment and a backyard big enough for Aladdin to spend entire afternoons outside. The fourth had everything people dreamed about when they imagined a perfect home: marble floors, a sweeping staircase, a pool that reflected the sky like glass. A tuscan estate, she called it.
Every realtor’s dream.
Every magazine’s dream.
None of them were hers. Because she wasn’t really looking for a house, she was looking for something that didn’t exist—the life she had lost.
The realization came quietly, somewhere between one perfectly decorated room and another. She stood in a bedroom listening as the realtor explained closet space and bathroom renovations, but all she could think about was how, when she was twenty and signing the lease for her first apartment, Michael had been there.
He had known what questions to ask.
He had noticed things she hadn’t.
He checked the cabinets. The windows. The water pressure. The little details she never would have considered because she had been too young and too excited to care about anything except making the place feel beautiful.
He had laughed gently when she admitted she hadn’t even looked at the lease terms before signing. The whole time he had sat beside her, patiently explaining everything.
Now she was twenty seven, standing in a big empty house with a stack of paperwork, realizing she had no idea what she was supposed to be looking for. It unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.
For as long as she could remember, there had always been a man standing beside her when life asked for grown up decisions. First her father, patiently explaining mortgages, insurance, and contracts but she was too young to care about. Then Michael, who she’d fallen in love with. From then on, the practical parts of life had become shared things.
And neither man believed she was incapable of these things, but they loved taking care of her. And she’d loved letting them.
Now, for the first time in her adult life, no one was reading the fine print before she signed it. No one was pointing out what she’d overlooked or assuring her she was making the right decision. Every choice landed squarely in her lap, and she found herself staring at them longer than she should have because she’d never had to make quite so many of them alone.
It wasn’t dependence she was grieving. It was the absence of the person she’d always instinctively turned toward whenever life became too large to carry by herself. No one warned her that the hardest decisions wouldn’t be the ones in front of cameras. They wouldn’t be the interviews or the performances or the moments where millions of people watched her and expected her to be perfect.
It would be this; mortgages. Insurance. Paperwork.
Choosing where her son would sleep.
The small, ordinary things that somehow felt more terrifying than standing in front of thousands of screaming fans.
After the fourth house, the realtor finally turned to her with a hopeful smile. “Would you like to make an offer?”
(Name) looked around the room. It really was beautiful. Perfect, even. She could imagine Aladdin growing up here. She could imagine birthday parties in the backyard. Christmas mornings. Family dinners. A piano in the corner.
Everything.
Everything except herself.
Her fingers tightened slightly around the folder in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. The realtor’s expression shifted, waiting. (Name) looked once more around the room before lowering her gaze. “I think..” Her voice caught for just a moment. “I’d like to keep looking.”
And the heartbreaking part was that she didn’t know what she was waiting to find.
Because no house was going to feel like home when the person who had made it one was the very person she was trying to learn how to live without.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ Late March, 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
The closet was the worst.
She had avoided it for days, finding reasons to be anywhere else in the house whenever she walked past it. The kitchen needed organizing. Aladdin’s things needed sorting. There were phone calls she needed to make. Meetings. Interviews. A thousand little responsibilities that were easier than standing in front of the closet they had shared.
Because the closet didn’t look like their marriage that had ended. It looked almost exactly as they’d left it. As though they had simply stepped out for dinner and forgotten to come back.
His clothes were still there—jackets arranged by color because he’d insisted it somehow made getting dressed easier (a majority of his clothing was either red or black). A few empty hangers interrupted the line where assistants had quietly removed some of his things weeks earlier, but enough remained that her eyes continued filling in the gaps automatically. Her mind refused to accept absence. It kept correcting it. He’ll need that tomorrow. He always wears that one when it rains. That sweater belongs in the wash. It was astonishing how stubborn memory could be, continuing to perform little acts of love long after there was nowhere left to put them.
Those were the things that hurt the most.
She stood there for several minutes holding a sweater in her hands without realizing she had stopped moving. It still carried the faintest trace of him, his skin, his favorite perfume. It wasn’t strong enough that anyone else would notice—but she did. She had spent years knowing him in ways nobody else did. The smallest details had become part of her understanding of him. The way he smelled after a shower. The way his clothes felt softer after being washed too many times. The way he would leave things in places without realizing it because he always assumed he would come back to them.
Because he always had.
Until he didn’t.
She reached for one of his long sleeves almost without thinking. The fabric slipped easily between her fingers. Time had already begun doing what time always did, stealing little pieces first. But there was still something there. Something warm and familiar that immediately transported her to sleepy mornings where he’d wander into the kitchen wearing this exact shirt, his hair a complete mess, asking if she’d already made coffee before remembering he didn’t actually drink it. The memory arrived so vividly she had to close her eyes. When she opened them again, she caressed the material gently, honestly too tenderly. As if being gentle with it somehow meant she was being gentle with him. Even after all of this, she couldn’t help but to enately want to be careful with him.
She sat down on the floor beside the open boxes, surrounded by pieces of a life she had never imagined having to separate. Photographs. Letters. Small gifts. Things that had once represented years of love and now felt like evidence from another lifetime.
The strangest part was that she didn't know what she was supposed to take.
What belonged to her? What belonged to him?
At some point, there stopped being a difference. That was the entire point of marriage. You stopped keeping score. You stopped remembering who bought what, who brought what, who contributed which piece. Everything became theirs.
Packing was supposed to feel productive.
People packed because they were moving. Because they had accepted that one chapter had ended and another was waiting somewhere ahead of them. There was supposed to be a rhythm to it. Empty the drawers. Fold the clothes. Tape the boxes shut. Write a label. Carry them to the front door. Repeat until the room no longer belonged to you.
It wasn’t that simple with her.
By the afternoon, boxes had begun appearing throughout the bedroom in uneven little clusters. Some were half full. Others still sat open and untouched because she kept finding reasons not to decide what belonged inside them. Marriage had a funny way of blurring ownership until it barely existed. Nobody warned you about that part when you said your vows. They told you everything became ours and they neglected to mention what happened if one day someone asked you to separate it all again.
She knelt beside a lower cabinet near the back of the closet, reaching into the corner where they had spent years absentmindedly shoving things they didn’t know what to do with.
Old photographs. Ticket stubs. A disposable camera neither of them had ever developed. Then her fingers brushed against something soft.
She frowned and pulled it free.
It was a plush frog. A ridiculously oversized frog wearing a tiny sequined tuxedo and an equally ridiculous little top hat that sat crooked over one stitched eye. One arm had gone limp where the stuffing had shifted over the years, giving it the permanently exhausted appearance of someone who had simply accepted life was happening to them.
For a long moment she just stared at it. Then a giggle escaped her lips. Small. Breathless.
“Oh, my goodness..” She pressed her fingertips against her mouth, shaking her head as another quiet laugh slipped out before she could stop it.
She remembered.
They’d been wandering through a carnival years ago after insisting they were “just going to walk around.” He’d spotted the frog hanging from the top row of prizes and become completely determined to win it for her despite the teenage employee repeatedly explaining the game was nearly impossible.
Michael refused to believe him.
Twenty dollars later he’d won exactly nothing.
Forty dollars later he’d accused the game of being rigged.
Sixty dollars later she’d been laughing so hard she’d nearly fallen over.
Eventually, the poor teenager had sighed, looked around to make sure his manager wasn’t watching, quietly taken the frog down himself and handed it across the counter.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” He’d whispered.
Michael had accepted it with complete seriousness before turning to her as though he’d conquered Everest.
“For my beautiful lady,” He announced, presenting the frog with both hands.
She’d looked between him and the absurd stuffed animal. “You spent sixty dollars on this thing.”
“It was an investment.”
“In what?”
“Our future.”
Now she sat alone on the closet floor with the same ridiculous frog resting in her lap. The laughter disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. Her thumb absentmindedly brushed over the crooked little hat.
“You were so stupid, kind of looks like you too..” (Name) whispered affectionately with the kind of fondness reserved for memories that hurt because they had once been so wonderfully ordinary. She smiled through tears that had begun gathering without permission.
The smile trembled, then it broke as she folded forward slowly, hugging the ridiculous frog against her chest hoping that a hug might somehow fix the pieces of her that had been broken for months.
The gift itself was absurd.
Cheap.
Completely impractical.
By every reasonable standard, it should have been one of the easiest things in the room to throw away. Instead, she reached for an empty box, placed the frog gently inside by itself, and wrote only one word across the lid.
KEEP.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ April, 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ Ashford Mediation Group, Beverly Hills, California.
The drive there felt like purgatory, honestly. The engine hummed beneath them, steady and smooth as it carried the car through late morning traffics. Buildings drifted past the window in slow succession, interrupted every so often by a red light or a pedestrian crossing. Somewhere in the front, her manager kept his voice low over the phone, discussing arrival times, entrances, making sure the press hadn’t caught wind of the meeting.
Beside her, her attorney rested a leather portfolio across his lap, turning over neatly tabbed pages as he reviewed everything one final time. Custody. Financial agreements. Property. Confidentiality. His voice remained calm and almost comforting in its neutrality, pausing now and then to reassure her that nothing unexpected would happen today. They had prepared for this. They had been over every document until he could practically recite them from memory.
She should have been listening. Instead, the words dissolved somewhere between his mouth and her ears, losing their shape before they ever reached her. She answered where she thought she was supposed to, nodding faintly, murmuring quiet acknowledgments she wasn’t entirely aware of making, her eyes fixed on the stitching of the seat in front of her until it blurred into a single uninterrupted line. Her hands rested in her lap, fingers woven together so tightly the joints had begun to ache. She loosened them forcibly and a minute later they were locked together again without her realizing.
Outside, the world continued. A florist arranged fresh bouquets beneath a striped awning. Two businessmen laughed together over paper cups of coffee as they crossed the street. A young mother stopped to kneel in front of her little girl, zipping her jacket before taking her hand and disappearing around the corner. Everyone seemed to know exactly where they were headed. Everyone still belonged to someone or something. The thought settled somewhere beneath her ribs before she could stop it. Once upon a time, she would’ve been driving toward Michael. Toward home. Toward the man who reached for the door handle before the car had even come to a complete stop because he couldn’t seem to wait the extra few seconds. Now she was driving toward paperwork that would ask her to untangle years of her life into paragraphs and signatures.
A quiet pressure began blooming beneath her sternum. It was so faint at first she mistook it for hunger. She straightened in her seat and drew in a deeper breath, holding it for a second before letting it out slowly. It helped, until it didn’t. The feeling returned, just a little heavier this time, spreading through her chest like something patiently unfolding. She swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat and reached for the bottle of water beside her, taking two careful sips before placing it back exactly where she’d found it. The relief lasted only a moment before her coat suddenly felt heavier than it had when she’d put it on that morning. She slipped the top button loose then adjusted the scarf at her neck. The air conditioning whispered steadily through the vents, yet warmth had begun creeping beneath her collar, collecting behind her ears and along the back of her neck until she wondered if she was getting sick. She crossed one leg over the other. Uncrossed it. Pressed both feet firmly against the floor instead. Nothing seemed to settle the strange discomfort growing quietly inside her.
Her attorney had stopped speaking. “...Mrs. Jackson?”
“Of course.” He offered her an understanding smile, glancing back down at the papers. “I was just saying that, if at any point you need a break, Mrs. Jackson, we can—”
She blinked. “I’m sorry,” She said, her voice quieter than she’d intended. “Could you.. could you repeat that?”
For a second, she simply stared at her own hands.
“Don’t call me that, please.” The words came out and silence settled over the car. She hadn’t raised her voice. She hadn’t snapped, really. But the sentence landed with enough uncomfort that even her manager looked back over his shoulder.
Then, softer this time, embarrassed by how quickly the words had escaped her, she whispered, “Please.”
No one corrected her.
Her attorney gave a small nod, closed the folder for a moment, and apologized before continuing, avoiding the title altogether. She wanted to thank him, but the lump in her throat had grown too large to speak around. She hadn’t realized how much those two words still belonged to him until hearing someone else use them.
Mrs. Jackson.
A name she’d once worn with so much pride it hardly felt borrowed anymore. A name that had come to mean waking up beside him, dancing barefoot through the kitchen with a baby balanced on one hip, signing birthday cards together, whispered “I love yous” after midnight when the house had finally gone quiet. Now it sounded like someone describing a woman who no longer existed.
Not on a television screen.
The realization struck her so suddenly it stole the breath she’d only just managed to steady: in a matter of minutes, she was going to see him.
Not in photographs.
Not through lawyers.
Not through headlines.
Him.
The pressure beneath her ribs tightened and she inhaled, the breath stopped halfway down. She frowned and tried again, slower this time, but it still wasn’t enough. Her lungs worked. She knew they did. They simply refused to feel full. Without thinking, she lowered the window an inch, letting cool air drift against her face. It should have helped, but it didn’t. And she kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, willing the sensation to pass if she ignored it long enough. It had to pass. She wasn’t going to lose herself in the backseat of a car. Not before she’d even laid eyes on him. Not before she had to sit across from the man she’d loved since she was twenty years old and somehow pretend she knew how to discuss the end of him in legal terms.
The realization struck her all over again, fresh enough to steal the air from her lungs.
She wasn’t driving to see her husband.
She was driving to negotiate the end of him.
Her breathing changed before she realized it had.
It came shorter now, each inhale still stopping halfway down her chest like there simply wasn’t room for the rest of it. She swallowed once. Then again. The knot in her throat refused to move as more heat crept up the back of her neck despite the air conditioning humming quietly through the car, settling beneath her collar and behind her ears until she felt almost feverish.
She cracked the window some more but the rush of outside air hit her face wasn’t enough.
Her attorney noticed first, lowering the papers into his lap and studying her for a moment before speaking carefully. “Are you alright?”
The car slowed for another light and she stared straight ahead. The nausea arrived sudden without a kind warning—not the vague discomfort she’d been sitting with all morning but something imminent and violent. Her stomach lurched so suddenly she jerked forward in her seat, one hand flying instinctively to her mouth because she could physically hold herself together.
She nodded before he’d even finished asking, too quickly that movement made her dizzy. “I’m fine.” The lie came. She’d become frighteningly good at saying it these days.
“I..” She swallowed hard. “Could we..” Her voice disappeared. She tried again. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
The conversation in the front stopped immediately and her manager turned around so fast his seatbelt caught against his shoulder. “Pull over,” He told the driver.
The car eased toward the curb and before it had even come to a complete stop, she was already reaching for the handle with shaking hands.
The cool morning air hit her the second she stepped onto the sidewalk, but it did nothing to steady the awful rolling in her stomach. She bent forward, one hand braced against her knee, the other pressed flat against her chest somehow attempting to slow the frantic pounding beneath it.
Nothing came up. Only dry heaves.
Again.
Again.
Her body kept trying to rid itself of something that wasn’t there. Tears burned behind her eyes from the force of it. She hated this. Because she knew exactly why. She knew. It wasn’t the meeting. It wasn’t the lawyers. It wasn’t even the divorce.
It was him.
In a matter of minutes she would be in the same building as the man she’d spent the better part of six years loving with everything she had, and she had no idea which version of him would be waiting on the other side of that door.
The husband who used to kiss her forehead before leaving for rehearsals. Or the stranger who had disappeared without saying goodbye. For the first time since leaving the house that morning, she allowed herself to think the one thought she’d been avoiding.
What if I look at him.. and I don't recognize him anymore?
The possibility frightened her more than the divorce itself.
Her manager was beside her before she even realized the car door had opened. “Easy,” He murmured, one hand settling carefully between her shoulder blades. “Easy, sweetheart. Don’t fight it, alright? That’s it..”
She wanted to tell him she wasn’t, wanted to tell him she had stopped fighting weeks ago. Instead another dry heave bent her nearly in half, her fingers curling tighter against her knee as tears sprang unwillingly to her eyes. Still, nothing came. Nothing except the violent ache in her stomach and the humiliating sound of her own body insisting it had something left to give.
His hand never left her back. Slow, steady circles the same pace every time. He didn’t rush her. Didn’t tell her to breathe like people always did when they had no idea what breathing felt like anymore. He simply stayed there, letting her have.. whatever this was without making it feel like a spectacle.
The attorney lingered a respectful distance away, quietly telling the driver they’d need another few minutes. Traffic continued behind them. Cars rolled past. People walked by without sparing more than a curious glance. The world refused to stop.
“That's it,” Her manager said softly. “You’re alright.”
She laughed, or tried to. It came out broken, somewhere between a cough and a sob. “No,” She whispered hoarsely. “I’m really... really not.”
“I know.” Those two words nearly undid her. Because no one had said them. Everyone else had spent months asking if she was alright, telling her she’d get through it, reminding her how strong she was.
He simply acknowledged the truth.
She wasn’t.
Her breathing refused to settle. Every inhale felt jagged, stopping halfway before she had to pull another after it, her chest tightening with each attempt until it became difficult to tell whether she was breathing too much or not enough.
“I can’t..” She swallowed hard. “I don’t think I can do this.”
He waited. “I can’t look at him.” The words came quietly. So quietly she almost wasn’t sure she’d spoken them aloud.
“I know,” He repeated. “But you have to.”
“What if..” She stopped, squeezing her eyes shut. “What if he looks at me like I’m just..” She couldn’tfinish.
Just someone else.
Just another meeting.
Just another signature.
Just another chapter he’d already closed.
Her manager stepped a little closer, careful not to crowd her, his hand still resting reassuringly between her shoulders. “Listen to me.” He started, she kept staring at the pavement as he spoke. “You don’t have to be brave in there.”
She frowned. “I feel—“
“No.” His voice remained calm, unwavering. “You just have to get through today. That’s all anyone is asking of you.”
Fresh tears slipped down before she realized they had. “I don’t know who I’m walking in to see.”
His expression softened. “Yeah, I understand that. Trust me, I do..”
“The man I married wouldn’t..” Her voice broke. “He wouldn’t have let it get here.”
Silence settled between them.
After a long moment he reached into his pocket, withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief, and held it out without a word. She took it with trembling fingers.
“I keep thinking..” She whispered, dabbing uselessly at her face, “That maybe he’ll walk in and it’ll be him again.” She hated how childish it sounded. As though the husband she’d fallen asleep beside for years had simply gotten lost and might suddenly find his way back.
Her manager looked at her for a long moment before speaking. “You’re young.” Her eyes lifted. “But.. don’t walk in there expecting the past to meet you halfway.” He gently squeezed her shoulder. “You’ve already survived every day that brought you here.”
She let out a slow, trembling breath, the first one that felt as though it reached the bottom of her lungs.
“I’l walk in with you,” He said gently. “I’ll stay until I can’t. Your attorney will handle the rest. And if you need a break, you stand up. I don’t care who’s talking. I don’t care what's being discussed. You stand up, and we’ll take one.”
She nodded faintly. And no matter how desperately she wished the car would simply turn around and take her home, there was no road left that led back to the life she’d been trying so hard to keep.
He waited until the trembling in her hands had eased enough that she could uncurl her fingers.
“Come on,” He said quietly, offering his hand instead of reaching for her. “Let’s get you sitting down.”
She looked at it for a second before slipping her own into his. Her grip was weaker than usual, cold despite the warmth lingering beneath her skin. He steadied her as she climbed back into the car, one hand lightly supporting her elbow until she settled against the leather seat once more. Before closing the door, he leaned down just enough to meet her eyes.
“You don’t have to say anything in there until you’re ready—or anything at all for that matter.”
She nodded, the door clicked shut and no one spoke for the rest of the drive. The attorney quietly returned the papers to his portfolio, deciding against continuing whatever explanation he’d been giving before they stopped. Her manager remained turned slightly toward the window in the front seat, giving her the rare kindness of not watching her every few seconds to make sure she was still holding together. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was respectful, really.
She kept her eyes on the city as it slipped past. Every block carried them closer. Every red light felt shorter than the last. She found herself counting them without realizing she was doing it.
One.
Two.
Three.
Anything to keep from counting the minutes instead.
By the time the car slowed for the final turn, the nausea had settled into something quieter. It hadn’t gone away. It had simply become part of her, resting heavily beneath her ribs like a stone she’d accepted wasn’t moving anytime soon.
The building came into view through the windshield.
Large. Modern. Too much glass. It reflected the gray afternoon sky so perfectly it almost disappeared into it. The driver eased to a stop beneath the covered entrance and for a moment, no one moved.
Her manager glanced back. “We’re here.”
The words hung in the air as she stared through the windshield at the revolving glass doors ahead of them, watching strangers pass effortlessly through them. A man in a navy suit exited while adjusting his tie. A woman carrying a briefcase disappeared inside without slowing her pace. Her attorney stepped out first. Her manager followed, circling around to open her door before she had the chance.
When she didn’t move immediately, he crouched slightly beside the car. “You alright?”
She swallowed. “Yeah.” Another deep breath, this one reached a little farther just before she stepped onto the pavement. The cool air kissed her face, carrying with it the faint scent of rain that hadn’t quite arrived yet. She smoothed invisible wrinkles from the front of her coat and adjusted her heel.
Her manager gently rested a hand on the small of her back. Together, they crossed beneath the overhang and approached the entrance. The glass doors slid open with a mechanical hum, revealing a lobby that was painfully pristine. Marble floors reflected the overhead lights in muted pools across the room. Everything smelled like polished wood, fresh coffee, and expensive cleaning products. It was immaculate in the sort of way places often were when difficult conversations happened inside them every day.
The receptionist looked up almost immediately. “Good afternoon.”
Her attorney quietly introduced them, speaking in the same composed voice he’d maintained all morning. The receptionist nodded once after checking a schedule on her desk, offering a polite smile that stopped well short of familiar.
“They’re expecting you.”
Of course they were. She hadn’t.. considered the possibility that they could had already arrived. She was under the impression that they would have been there first and she could at least prepare herself before..
The thought tightened something in her chest again.
“This way.” The receptionist stepped out from behind the desk and led them across the lobby toward a bank of elevators tucked against the far wall. The walk wasn’t long, but it felt endless, their footsteps echoing softly against the marble with each measured step. No one spoke. The only sounds came from the gentle chime announcing the elevator’s arrival and the muted conversation of strangers somewhere deeper inside the building.
The doors slid open and they stepped inside, the receptionist pressing a button near the top of the panel.
As the doors closed, the lobby disappeared behind brushed steel, leaving only the gentle vibration of the elevator climbing floor by floor. She watched the numbers illuminate one after another above the door, each soft chime settling lower in her stomach than the last. When the elevator finally came to a stop, the receptionist led them down a corridor lined with frosted glass offices and framed artwork she couldn’t have described a second later. The hallway seemed impossibly quiet, the thick carpeting swallowing almost every footstep until the only thing she could hear with any clarity was the steady beating of her own heart.
They stopped outside a closed wooden door and the rreceptionist turned toward them, offering another small, professional smile.
“They’re ready for you.” Then she stepped aside.
The hallway fell silent.
(Name) couldn’t move.
At some point it stopped being hesitation. It stopped being indecision, grief, fear, or any emotion she could neatly identify and tuck away beneath a sensible name. It became something far older than that. It was instinctive. Something buried so deep inside the part of the human body that recognized danger long before the mind had time to reason with it. Every muscle seemed to arrive at the same conclusion without consulting her first. Don’t go in there. Don’t open that door. Turn around. Leave. Run if you have to. It wasn’t a thought she was having anymore. It was a command her body had already obeyed, planting her feet so firmly into the carpet that it almost felt as though the floor itself had grown around them.
The trembling began again, just the faintest vibration in her fingertips where they’d been laced together in front of her and subtle enough that no one walking past would’ve noticed unless they were looking for it. She wasn’t herself, even. Not until she felt the tiny, involuntary quiver travel into her knuckles. She instinctively pressed one hand over the other, squeezing hard enough to leave crescent shaped marks in her skin, hoping the pressure might somehow force the shaking to stop.
It didn’t—it spread. Slowly, with nowhere else to be. From her fingers into her wrists. From her wrists into her forearms. Tiny muscles fluttered beneath her skin without permission, a low, constant vibration that made her feel strangely disconnected from her own body. Her body had long since decided it was no longer taking instructions from her and she stared at her hands with detached confusion, willing them to be still.
They refused.
A careful breath caught somewhere halfway down her chest. She frowned. Tried again. Another shallow inhale. Another unfinished exhale.
It still felt like her lungs had abruptly forgotten how much air they were supposed to hold, every breath stopping just before it became satisfying, forcing another after it and another after that, until she couldn’t tell whether she was breathing too much or not nearly enough. A dull pressure settled beneath her sternum, expanding outward until it wrapped itself around her ribs like tightening wire. She swallowed hard against the dryness gathering in her throat, but even that simple movement felt strangely difficult, like something invisible had lodged itself there.
Then came the heat but not the ordinary warmth of nerves. It crept upward beneath the collar of her blouse in slow waves, spreading across her chest before climbing her neck with alarming speed. She shifted uncomfortably, fingers instinctively reaching toward the irritated skin just beneath her throat. It felt hot to the touch. Too hot.
She looked down.
Angry red blotches had already begun surfacing across her collarbone, blooming beneath her skin in uneven patches that spread almost as she watched them, climbing toward her neck like watercolor bleeding through paper. Another appeared just below her jaw, then another.
Stress hives.
She hadn’t broken out like this since she was nineteen, and she could only stare at them strangely fascinated by hrr own body was rejecting this.
Not even metaphorically but,
Literally.
Every system inside her had reached the same conclusion at once. Her pulse had accelerated. Her breathing had shortened. Her muscles had begun shaking. Her skin was erupting in protest. She felt like an animal standing at the edge of a forest fire, every instinct screaming to flee before she could even see the flames.
Run.
The word echoed somewhere deep inside her.
Run.
Her manager noticed before she managed to hide it. His eyes drifted from her face to the spreading rash creeping over her neck, then softened almost immediately with the concern of someone watching another person come apart in slow motion.
“..Hey.”
She didn’t answer but she wasn’t sure she could.
He stepped closer, careful not to crowd her, lowering his voice until it barely carried beyond the space between them. “Look at me, (Name).”
She tried.
God, she tried. But every time she lifted her head, her eyes found the door instead.
It seemed to pull at her attention with force, everything inside her understood that on the other side of it sat the dividing line between the life she’d had and the one she would be forced to live afterward.
“I can’t,” She whispered, voice distant.
“You can.”
She shook her head before she realized she’d moved. “No..” The word barely escaped her lips. “I can’t.”
Fresh tremors rippled through her arms. She tucked them tightly against herself, folding one over the other in a futile attempt to hide the shaking, but it only made it more obvious. Her shoulders had begun trembling too.
“I can’t go in there—I can’t even..” A breathless, broken laugh escaped her, so close to becoming a sob it frightened her. “I can’t even stop shaking.”
He reached up with careful hands, gently smoothing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was so grounding it nearly undid her. “Just stay with me for a second.”
She nodded and his voice remained slow. “Can you feel your feet?”
She blinked at him, confused. “..What?”
“Your feet.”
She frowned, attention reluctantly leaving the door. “..Yes.”
“The floor underneath them?”
Another swallow. “Yes..”
“Good.” His hand rested lightly against her upper arm. “You’re here.”
Fresh tears blurred her vision almost immediately. “I don’t want to be. I want to go home.” The confession escaped before she could stop it. Raw. Childlike. Entirely honest. “I just..” Her voice cracked so completely she had to press her lips together before trying again. “I want to go home.”
His expression shifted—a flicker. Gone as quickly as it appeared. Because they both understood the thing she’d just said was nonexistent. There wasn’t a “home” waiting for her anymore. Not the one she meant. Not the one built around shared mornings and baby giggles and a man whose absence had hollowed every room he’d once occupied. There was only whatever came next.
“I wish I could come in with you,” He admitted quietly.
Her head snapped toward him so quickly the movement made her dizzy. “What! You can’t?” The panic returned with astonishing speed. Her knees threatened to give beneath her.
“No. Sweetheart, I told you that.” He hated the answer as much as she did. “They’ve only approved legal representation.”
She stared at him. “No..”
“But I’m staying right here.”
“No..”
“You’ll walk back through these doors, and I’ll still be here.”
“No!” Her voice rose just enough to tremble around the edges. "Please.. please don’t make me go in there.”
For the first time all morning, he looked completely helpless.
Helpless.
If there had been any way to walk through that door instead of her, he would’ve done it without hesitation. She knew that, and he knew she knew it. Which somehow made standing there feel even lonelier. Before either of them could speak again, her attorney’s voice drifted gently down the hallway.
“(Name).”
Neither of them turned.
“It’s time.”
The hallway seemed to narrow around her and air felt heavier. Even the lights overhead appeared suddenly too bright. Her manager’s hand squeezed her arm once, a reminder that when she came back through those doors, someone would still be waiting to catch whatever pieces remained.
She closed her eyes and drew in the deepest breath her body was willing to give her but it still wasn’t enough. Then, with legs that felt borrowed from someone else and a heart that seemed determined to escape her chest before she reached the handle—she took the first step toward the door.
One moment she was standing in the hallway, every muscle in her body pleading with her to turn around, and the next the door had already begun to swing inward beneath the quiet push of a palm.
The room was larger than she’d imagined—too bright from the large floor to ceiling windows and so sterile. A long conference table stretched through the center, polished to the point it reflected the overhead lights in muted streaks across its surface. Leather chairs sat neatly arranged around it, folders already opened, glasses of water placed with almost mathematical precision. Everything had been prepared hours before she arrived, every seat assigned, every document waiting patiently for signatures that would dismantle a life.
She felt them before she saw them.
Eyes.
They settled over her the instant she crossed the threshold, not invasive, not intentionally cruel she thinks, but impossible to ignore all the same. His team was.. ridiculously large: Lawyers who paused mid conversation. Assistants quietly setting down pens. People who had been expecting her arrival and now watched it happen in real time, each carrying the uncomfortable awareness that they were about to witness something far more intimate than legal.
She kept her gaze lowered.
One step.
Then another.
The carpet swallowed the sound of her heels, leaving only the dull rush of blood filling her ears. Halfway across the room, another sensation reached her.
Familiar.
Warm.
The faint trace of cedarwood, bergamot, and something softer she had once associated so instinctively with home that she’d stopped noticing it years ago.
His cologne.
It hung lightly in the room, barely perceptible to anyone else. But to her, it was overwhelming. The smell struck with such force that her stomach lurched before she could brace for it. Every memory attached to it arrived all at once, uninvited. Jackets borrowed on cold nights. Sleepy embraces before dawn. The hollow of his neck beneath her cheek. She had spent years breathing it in without thought.
Now it made her feel violently ill.
She swallowed hard as the nausea climbed steadily into her throat.
Don’t look up.
The thought repeated itself with quiet desperation.
Don’t look.
If she looked too soon, she was afraid everything holding her upright would simply.. stop. So she fixed her eyes on the table instead. On the grain of the wood. On the edge of an unopened folder. On her own hands, clasped together tightly enough that the faint tremor running through them almost disappeared beneath the pressure.
Someone quietly pulled out a chair for her and she thanked them automatically, though she couldn’t have said who it was.
The leather creaked softly as she sat. Her knees felt a sense of reliving beneath the table, bouncing once before she forced them still. She rested both palms against her thighs, pressing down as though she could anchor herself.
A glass of her favorite juice had already been placed in front of her and she stared at it. The condensation gathered in tiny droplets along the outside, slowly slipping toward the polished wood beneath.
It was something to look at.
Something that wasn’t.. him.
Silence settled over the room for one lingering moment, heavy enough that even the quiet rustling of paper sounded intrusive.
Then a chair shifted, a folder opened and the mediator cleared his throat: “Thank you all for coming.” His voice was carefully emptied of emotion. “We’re here today to discuss the terms that remain outstanding and, if possible, reach an agreement that serves the best interests of everyone involved.”
The words floated somewhere above her. Professional. Orderly. Clean. She heard every one of them but none of them felt real. Because all she could think was how absurd it was that the end of seven years could fit inside a folder no thicker than an inch.
The attorney on Michael’s side spoke first, sliding one of the folders forward.
“On the matter of custody,” He began, voice even and courteous almost, “Our client is requesting a standard shared arrangement. Equal time. A fifty-fifty split, alternating weeks, with flexibility for travel schedules given both parties’ professional commitments.”
The words landed in the center of the table, balanced and reasonable on paper—designed to sound like cooperation.
She kept her eyes fixed on the edge of her glass.
Fifty-fifty? As though fathers simply disappeared for weeks at a time, served their wives divorce papers through attorneys, built new lives somewhere else, and then returned expecting to divide a child neatly down the middle. Like time with a child could be weighed out evenly, as though it was something that could be portioned and exchanged without consequence. She never thought her own child would be subject to this kind of thing—life was cruel.
He wanted equal time. Equal responsibility. Equal claim. After everything he’s done.
Her own attorney shifted beside her, glancing once in her direction before responding. “We’ve reviewed that proposal,” He said calmly, “And at this stage our client is not in agreement.”
A pause.
The room tightened slightly.
Then he continued. “Given the current circumstances, she is requesting primary custody, with structured and supervised visitation.”
There it was, out in the open. Her stomach twisted again slower this time, bracing for impact long after the words had already been spoken. But she still didn’t look up—didn’t trust herself to see him yet. She wondered what his expression was..
Across from her, pens stopped moving. Someone exhaled quietly, the kind of sound people make when they’re pretending not to react.
Michael’s attorney adjusted his posture. “Supervised visitation is a.. significant limitation,” Je said, carefully choosing each word, “Especially in cases where both parties have been primary caregivers. On what basis is that being requested?”
Her pulse ticked harder beneath her skin.
Her attorney didn’t look at her, only answering immediately. “Stability,” He said. “And continuity of care during a period of documented instability.”
Documented instability.
A clinical phrase for something that felt anything but clinical when it lived inside her.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was dense. Heavy with everything no one wanted to say directly in front of everyone else. She could feel it then, faintly, the shift in the room’s attention. Not hostility but something more complicated. Assessment. Quiet recalculation. The way people looked at decisions when they realized they were about to become precedent.
Her fingers tightened under the table again.
Fifty-fifty.
Supervised visits.
The phrases repeated in her mind without sound, colliding against each other until they stopped meaning anything at all except conflict.
Michael’s attorney spoke again, softer this time, “Our client has no intention of being removed from his child’s life. If anything, he is requesting increased consistency. Predictability. Equal access to daily care, schooling routines, and—”
“He’s not being removed,” Her attorney interrupted gently. A pause followed by: “He’s being structured.”
She felt the nausea return in a slow wave, not as sharp as before, but deeper. More settled. Something that sat under her ribs and refused to move.
Across the table, paper turned softly. Someone marked a note. Another cleared their throat. And the discussion continued anyway, the shape of their child’s life simply another item to be negotiated between professionals who had never once had to hold him when he cried.
The attorney on his side spoke first, sliding a neatly tabbed folder toward the center of the table with practiced ease.
Her attorney shifted almost imperceptibly beside her.
“As stated before, we reviewed the proposal,” He said. “My client cannot agree to that arrangement.” The room remained silent as he continued. “She is requesting sole physical custody, with supervised visitation until a consistent pattern of stability has been established.”
Across the table, Michael’s attorney folded his hands together. “Could you clarify the basis for supervised visitation?”
Her attorney answered without hesitation. “The events of the past year.”
“I’m going to need something more specific than that.”
“As documented,” Her attorney replied evenly, “Mr. Jackson entered treatment following prolonged substance dependency. There were also extended periods of physical absence from the child, interrupted communication, and the abrupt dissolution of the marriage.”
His attorney gave a small nod.
“We don’t dispute treatment. In fact, your client voluntarily sought it. Rehabilitation is generally viewed as evidence of recovery rather than evidence of parental unfitness, that isn’t a factor in this.”
Michael attorney spoke again. “Our position is that whatever difficulties existed between husband and wife should remain separate from the child’s relationship with his father.”
Husband and wife.
As though those were just words.
As though the marriage had ended because two people had simply grown apart.
As though she hadn’t spent months bathing him when he couldn’t stand long enough to bathe himself. Feeding him because he forgot to eat. Sleeping beside him through endless nights when every phone call brought another problem. Holding together a household, a career, a child, and a man who no longer had the strength to hold himself together.
As though she’d stayed through every unbearable moment only to be discarded the second he was strong enough to leave.
And now..
Now he wanted fifty fucking percent.
(Name) didn’t want to keep a father from his son. But somewhere in the midst of disappearing, serving her with divorce papers through strangers, and forcing every conversation to happen through attorneys, he had somehow convinced himself he was entitled to walk back into fatherhood like nothing had broken in between? The thought was so staggering she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to cry.. Or stand up and leave because she felt offended.
Her attorney let the silence settle for a moment before folding his hands neatly atop the folder in front of him.
“We appreciate the sentiment,” He said, his tone remaining unfailingly courteous. “But respectfully.. we find that position difficult to reconcile with the circumstances that brought us here.”
Across the table, no one interrupted.
He continued. “My client has been the child’s primary source of consistency throughout the better part of the last year. She has maintained his routines, his medical appointments, his education, his home, and his day-to-day care while simultaneously managing an unprecedented level of public scrutiny surrounding the dissolution of this marriage.”
He glanced briefly toward the documents. “During that same period, your client voluntarily entered treatment, ceased regular communication for an extended length of time, and elected to initiate divorce proceedings through legal counsel rather than direct communication with his wife with another woman in his life.”
His voice never rose. “Against that backdrop, requesting an immediate fifty-fifty custodial arrangement is, ridiculous and not a proposal we consider realistic.”
The discussion continued for another two hours.
Nothing changed. Every proposal was met with another counterproposal. Every compromise unraveled the moment someone followed it with, “However..” Custody schedules became calendars spread across polished wood. Holidays were divided before they had even happened. Birthdays were discussed in alternating years. Christmases became odd numbered and even numbered. Every sentence sounded perfectly reasonable on its own.
Together, they sounded grotesque.
The conversation had long since stopped being productive. It was two immovable objects politely colliding with one another over and over again, dressed up in professional language and careful tones.
Finally, her attorney closed his folder, “I don't believe we’re making meaningful progress.”
No one disagreed. Across the table, opposing counsel gave a small nod. “I think a brief recess would be appropriate.”
“Perhaps twenty minutes,” Another someone added. “Give everyone a chance to speak with their clients privately and reassess before continuing.”
There was a quiet chorus of agreement.
Pens were capped. Legal pads were gathered. Someone reached across the table to collect a stack of exhibits that had slowly migrated into the center during the discussion. Chairs eased backward with soft scrapes against the floor, the room immediately feeling larger now that everyone had permission to move.
(Name) didn’t Her hands remained folded tightly in her lap. Her eyes stayed fixed on the untouched glass of water in front of her, the same glass she’d been staring at for nearly two hours. She heard the rustle of jackets, the quiet exchange of voices, the metallic click of briefcases closing. The meeting was ending, at least for now.
Then, for the first time since she had walked through the door.. Michael spoke: “..One moment.”
The room stilled.
It wasn’t that his voice was loud. It was almost the opposite. It was quiet enough that everyone instinctively stopped moving to hear him.
“I have a request.” Every eye shifted toward him and he wasn't looking at the attorneys. He was looking at her. “If everyone is comfortable with it..” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “I’d like a few minutes alone with my wife.”
Silence settled over the room.
One attorney glanced toward another and (Name)’s attorney looked toward her, saying nothing as he wasn’t answering for her this time. He was waiting for her to speak while the request lingered between them.
Finally, opposing counsel spoke. “Well.. provided both parties consent, I don’t have an objection.”
Her attorney remained still for another moment before turning slightly toward her. “You don’t have to.”
She swallowed. Her throat felt painfully dry. “I know.”
"If you’d rather I stay, I stay.”
She closed her eyes briefly. This was the conversation she’d spent weeks dreading. It had been waiting for her whether there were lawyers in the room or not.
Slowly, she nodded. “It’s okay, Mark.”
Her attorney studied her face carefully, making sure she wasn’t agreeing out of pressure or obligation. Then he gave a small nod. “We’ll be right outside.”
One by one, the attorneys gathered their files and made their way toward the door. Their footsteps were quieter than before, everyone understood they were leaving behind something no legal training could prepare them to witness.
The door opened, then closed and the latch clicked softly.
And for the first time in months, there was no one left in the room except the two people whose names had been written across every page of the divorce file.
The silence that followed was worse than the situation at hand had been. At least that had given them something to hide behind: numbers, schedules, legal terms, the careful language of attorneys who could take something unbearably personal and reshape it into something that fit neatly inside a folder. Now there was nothing between them. No one interrupting. No one redirecting. No one stepping in when the weight of everything they had avoided finally settled into the room. For several moments, neither of them moved. (Name) remained exactly where she was, her posture still rigid from the hours she had spent forcing herself to stay composed. She didn’t need to look at him to know he was there, and that was the part she hated most. After months of distance, after everything that had happened, some part of her still recognized his presence before she ever saw him.
The quiet scrape of his chair shifting made her body react before her mind could. Her shoulders tensed, her fingers tightening together in her lap, her breath catching slightly. She wasn’t afraid of him, but some part of her was afraid of what would happen if she finally allowed herself to see him. The anger she had carried from a distance felt much easier to hold than the reality of having him sitting only a few feet away. Anger did not remember the good mornings, the private jokes, the years of knowing someone so completely that their absence felt like a missing piece of your own body.
“Can you..” His voice stopped.
An uncertain pause.
Her eyes remained fixed on the untouched glass in front of her, watching the faint reflection of the room distort across the surface.
“Can you look at me?”
The request was painfully simple. Almost too simple for everything that existed underneath it. Her fingers tightened further, but she didn’t answer. For a moment, neither did he. He didn’t push. He didn’t repeat himself. He simply waited.
That somehow made it harder.
“Please.” The word was quiet. Not a demand or even an expectation. A simple request of her.
She hated that he still had the ability to reach the parts of her that wanted to soften. She hated that one small word could pull at years of memories she had spent so long trying to bury beneath anger, paperwork, and silence. She had convinced herself that enough distance would make him easier to face, that time would turn him into someone she could look at without feeling everything at once.
But she was still sitting there, unable to lift her eyes. Because looking at him meant admitting he was real—that this was real. That the person who had once felt like home was sitting across from her, and she had no idea what to do with that anymore.
Her silence stretched for several seconds longer, but it wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind of silence that came when too many things were being held back at once, when every sentence she wanted to say had been swallowed before it could reach her mouth because none of them felt big enough to contain what she was actually feeling.
Her hands had started shaking again and she noticed it before he did. A faint tremor at first, barely visible beneath the table, her fingers twisting together. She pressed her thumb against the side of her hand, grounding herself, reminding herself that she was sitting in a room, that she was safe, that she was not back in those months of waiting for a phone call that never came.
It didn’t work, because the truth was she wasn't afraid of the room. She was afraid of the answers.
She finally lifted her eyes, but only for a moment. Long enough to see his face. Long enough for the anger and hurt she’d been carefully organizing for months to collide with the reality of him sitting there.
And then the question came out before she could stop it.
“Did you sleep with her?” Her expression changed the moment the question left her mouth, she looked exhaustion and wounded—the question itself had reached a place he had been desperately trying not to confront. For a moment, he simply stared at her, and when he finally spoke his voice was quiet enough that it almost disappeared beneath the weight of the room.
“(Name).. oh, God, please.” He looked down, his fingers shifting slightly against the edge of the table as he was searching for the right words and finding none of them. There was no defensiveness in him, no attempt to turn the question back on her. Somehow, that made it worse. She had prepared herself for anger. She had prepared herself for him to tell her she was being unfair or emotional or that she didn’t understand. She had prepared herself for a fight because a fight would have been easier than this careful, painful silence.
“Why are you asking me this?” The softness of it made something inside her crack. Her hands tightened together in her lap, feeling the frustration building beneath her ribs-she couldn’t.. she couldn’t fucking believe he didn’t understand why she needed to know. After months of unanswered questions, after watching her entire life collapse through headlines and whispers and conversations she wasn’t invited into, hearing him ask why felt unbearable.
“..Why am I asking you?” Her voice came out quieter at first, almost disbelieving. She looked at him for a moment, tears already gathering in her eyes, before shaking her head. “Why am I asking you?!”
“You know why I'm asking you, Michael!”
“(Name), please..”
“No!” The word came quickly, sharper than she intended. She swallowed, trying to steady herself, but the effort was useless. The control she had walked into the room with was gone, stripped away piece by piece until there was nothing left but the person underneath it.
“No, no, nonononono! Don’t do that!” She stood suddenly, a detached smile pulling at her lips. “I thought this was going to be an honest conversation! Don’t say my name like I’m the one being unreasonable!”
He went quiet and looked away as she pressed her lips together, she trying to keep herself from falling apart in front of him. It was almost humiliating how much she was still affected by him. How after everything, she was still sitting across from him hoping he would say something that made any of it make sense.
“I spent months trying to figure out what happened—look at me!” She snapped, her voice shaking as she watched him reluctantly look. “I spent months wondering if you were okay, wondering if you hated me, wondering if I did something wrong. I was trying to understand how we went from what we were to this, and then suddenly everyone else seemed to know things I didn’t!”
Her fingers curled against the table. “So yes, I am asking you.” She looked back at him. “Because I deserve to know!”
He inhaled quietly, but before he could respond, she continued.
“Tell me.” Her voice rose, the restraint finally snapping under the weight of everything she had been carrying. “Tell me!”
Her palm struck the table before she even realized she had moved. The sound startled even her, echoing through the empty conference room. Aggression and rage, yes. It was desperation. The kind that came from someone who had spent too long swallowing every question because she was afraid of what the answer might be.
“You at least owe me that much.”
The anger vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving only the grief underneath. Her shoulders shook, tears spilling freely now as she looked at him. “You owe me the truth.”
Michael didn’t say anything. Then his expression shifted, and when he finally answered, his voice was barely above a whisper.
“No.”
She blinked. “What?”
“No.” He shook his head slightly. “Nothing happened.”
The answer should have relieved her. It didn’t. Instead, it created an entirely new kind of confusion. She stared at him, almost unable to process the words. “Nothing?”
“Nothing happened between us.”
Her brows furrowed as she searched his face, waiting for the rest of the explanation. Waiting for the part that would make everything fit together again. But there wasn’t one.
A small, broken laugh escaped her. “What the fuck? Then what am I supposed to do with that, Michael?”
He didn’t answer. Because that was the question neither of them wanted to confront.
If nothing happened, then why?
Why had everything changed?
Why had she been left behind?
Why had another woman become the center of every conversation surrounding the end of their marriage?
Her breathing became uneven as she looked at him, her anger slowly shifting into something much more painful. “What does she have?”
His expression changed slightly. “(Name), please don’t do this right now..”
“Shut up!” She shook her head, tears continuing to fall. “What does she have?” She pressed. “What has she done for you that I haven’t!”
He looked away.
That movement broke something in her. “I was there! I was there!” Her voice cracked. “I was there when things were difficult! I was there when nobody else understood what was happening! I stayed when it was hard—I stayed when it wasn’t convenient! I stayed when I had every reason to walk away! I love you!”
She wiped at her face, but it did nothing. “Tell me what I didn't give you!” He remained silent. “Tell me what I wasn’t!” The room seemed to shrink around them. ”What did she have that I don't, Mikey? Please!”
Michael couldn’t look at her. And that silence was its own answer. Not the answer she had been expecting. Her expression slowly changed as another realization began settling into place. It wasn’t sudden but a quiet, horrible understanding that arrived piece by piece.
If nothing happened between them.. then something else had.
Something before.
Her voice lowered. “Were you were talking to her before all this? Is that why you were coming home late?” He went still as she stared at him, watching his reaction. “You were.”
A pause. “You had to have been.” The tears blurred her vision, but she didn’t look away. “Because people don’t just wake up one day and end up here.”
Her voice trembled. “She didn’t just appear outta nowhere.” And for the first time, the thought that had been circling her mind for months finally became something she could say aloud. “You—you were already letting her into your life while I was still trying to save ours! To fix you!”
He was quiet for so long that she felt the answer before he ever spoke it. She searched his face desperately for the instinctive denial that never came, for the immediate shake of his head that would let her believe she had spent months torturing herself over nothing. Instead, he lowered his eyes, his jaw tightening subtly as though the effort of choosing his next words had become physically painful. It was such a small movement, so insignificant to anyone else, but to her it felt catastrophic. She had spent the better part of eight weeks replaying every conversation, every silence, every headline, trying to identify the exact moment she’d stopped being enough. Now she was watching it happen in real time, watching the man who had once answered every fear before she could even voice it suddenly become incapable of giving her the one reassurance she needed most.
“Yes.” The word landed with almost no force at all and her expression didn’t change. He swallowed before continuing, unable to meet her eyes for more than a second at a time. “Yes.. we were spending time together. We were friends.” He said it carefully, almost cautiously like there was a version of those words that existed without causing harm. “It wasn’t..” He paused, rubbing absently at his thumb with the opposite hand. “It wasn’t anything you’re making it out to be, honestly.”
She stared at him for several long seconds, trying to reconcile what he’d just said with the reality she’d been living. Friends. Such an ordinary word. Such an innocent word. It almost made her laugh. Months of silence. Months of unanswered phone calls. Months of waking up alone, wondering whether her husband still remembered she existed, only to discover that while she’d been clinging to the ruins of their marriage, he’d been building a “friendship” with another woman. The same friendship he and her once shared seven years ago? Oh, she bets, Whether he believed it had been innocent no longer mattered. Innocent things didn’t grow in secret. Innocent things didn’dmt survive only because one person had been left completely in the dark.
“It wasn’t anything I’m making it out to be?” She repeated quietly, her voice trembling with anger and disbelief. “Michael, I’m your wife!” The last word nearly caught in her throat. “I was sitting at home wondering why you wouldn’t speak to me while you were talking to somebody else, and you’re telling me I'm making something out of nothing?” She laughed then, but it was a broken sound, one born entirely out of exhaustion. “Do you even hear yourself?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but she was already shaking her head.
“No, no, don’t explain it away. Just answer me.” She leaned forward slightly, “Are you planning to be with her?”
The question lingered between them.
He didn’t answer, of course.
He tried. She could see him trying. His lips parted, his chest rose with a slow breath, and for one impossible second she thought he was finally going to give her something, anything, that she could survive. Instead, nothing came. His eyes drifted away from hers again, settling somewhere over her shoulder, as though even the possibility of speaking the truth aloud was more than he could bear.
She felt the air leave her lungs.
“If the answer was no,” She whispered, “You would’ve said no—is that what you do, Michael? You fuck all your girl friends?”
Still nothing.
The room seemed to tilt around her. She could hear the faint hum of the air conditioner somewhere overhead, the muffled footsteps of people passing outside the conference room, the sound of her own heartbeat pounding so violently in her ears that it drowned out almost everything else. It was astonishing, she thought, how quickly a person’s entire world could be rearranged by someone refusing to answer a single question.
“Do you love her?” She hadn’t meant to ask it.
It escaped her the way all the worst truths did, before pride had the chance to stop them. There was no anger left in her voice now, only desperation. It was the question beneath every other question she’d asked since sitting down. Not whether he’d betrayed her. Not whether he’d lied. Simply whether there was still anything left of the man who had once loved her so completely she had built her entire life around it.
Michael couldn’t answer that one either. His eyes closed for the briefest moment, and when he opened them again, they still wouldn’t meet hers. “I..” He stopped, swallowing hard. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
(Name) simply stared at him, then something inside her gave way. A short, breathless laugh escaped her, so hollow it barely sounded human. She sat back in her chair as tears spilled unchecked down her face, looking at him not with hatred but with a kind of horrified disbelief, as though she no longer recognized the person sitting across from her.
“You don’t know?” She repeated, almost whispering. “After everything.. after seven years.. after everything I gave you, everything we survived together, you don’t know?” She shook her head slowly, wiping at tears that refused to stop falling. “You’re a psychopath.”
“I have spent so long convincing myself that I missed something. That I wasn’t enough. That maybe there was something she could give you that I couldn’t.” Her breathing had become ragged now, every sentence interrupted by the effort of trying not to break completely. “So tell me.” She looked at him then, really looked at him, her eyes red and glistening with grief. “What has she done for you that I haven’t? What does she have that I don’t? I stood beside you through everything. I loved you when the rest of the world decided you weren’t worth loving. I built my life around yours because I believed we were building something together.”
Her voice cracked so sharply she had to stop and swallow before continuing. “And now you’re sitting across from me telling me you don’t know if you love this bitch?”
The realization arrived almost imperceptibly, settling over her in slow, unbearable pieces. If nothing physical had happened, if he was telling the truth about that much, then there had still been something. Something that had begun long before the divorce papers arrived, long before the headlines, long before she had any reason to suspect another name belonged in the story of her marriage. She lowered her eyes for only a moment before lifting them again, and when she spoke this time, her voice had become frighteningly calm.
Neither of them spoke after that.
The silence that settled over the room no longer felt tense. It felt exhausted. There was nothing left to argue about, nothing left to explain. Every question she had carried into that building had either been answered or answered by omission, and somehow the omissions hurt more. She sat motionless in her chair, staring at nothing in particular as tears continued slipping down her face, too emotionally spent to wipe them away anymore. Across the table, he remained just as still, his hands folded together in front of him, his gaze lowered to the polished wood between them. Whatever words either of them might have found earlier had long since abandoned the room.
A soft knock broke the silence.
Neither of them responded.
Another knock followed, more tentative this time, before the conference room door opened just enough for one of the attorneys to lean his head inside.
“I’m sorry,” He said carefully, his eyes moving between the two of them almost immediately. It didn’t take legal training to recognize that whatever had happened during the recess had not gone well. “(Name).. Michael.. are we interrupting something?”
She blinked once, she’d forgotten where she was. The conference room slowly came back into focus. The legal folders. The glasses of water. The yellow legal pads scattered across the table. Her attorney stood just beyond the doorway with her manager beside him, both of them studying her face with immediate concern. She could almost watch the realization spread across their expressions as they took in her swollen eyes, the mascara beginning to gather beneath them despite every attempt she’d made to hold herself together.
Her manager instinctively took a half-step forward. “(Name)..”
She lifted a hand before he could come any closer.
It wasn’t to stop him. It was because she couldn’t bear for anyone to fuss over her right now. She drew a slow, uneven breath that caught halfway through her chest before finally managing to speak.
“..Could I..” Her voice disappeared as she swallowed hard and tried again, this time barely above a whisper. “Could I have.. just a few minutes?”
Everyone remained still.
She looked toward her attorney, unable to quite meet anyone’s eyes for more than a second. I just..” She pressed trembling fingertips against the corner of one eye, frustrated when another tear escaped anyway. “I need to.. get away from him.”
No one said anything immediately.
There wasn’t anything to say.
Her attorney gave a small nod first. “Of course.”
She pushed her chair back carefully, surprised that her legs still worked beneath her. They felt disconnected from the rest of her body, numb, and she had to steady herself against the edge of the conference table before taking her first step. No one tried to stop her as she crossed the room, though she could feel every pair of eyes following her. Her manager instinctively moved as though to accompany her, but she offered him the smallest shake of her head.
“I’ll be alright,” She lied quietly.
He knew it was a lie.
She knew he knew.
Still, he respected it.
The receptionist looked up from her desk just in time to see her emerge, immediately rising from her chair with the professionalism of someone accustomed to recognizing distress without drawing attention to it.
“The ladies' room is just around the corner,” She said gently, gesturing toward the end of the hall.
(Name) managed a faint nod. “Thank you.”
Her heels echoed softly against the marble floor as she walked away. She kept her chin lifted until she rounded the corner and disappeared from everyone’s view.
Only then did she let herself unravel.
The hotel suite was unnaturally quiet.
Michael hadn’t spoken once during the drive back. His attorney had attempted conversation exactly twice before recognizing the futility of it, and the remainder of the ride had passed in silence, broken only by the dull rhythm of tires against pavement and the occasional crackle of the radio that nobody bothered to turn off. By the time he let himself into the room, the exhaustion settling over him wasn’t physical. It lived somewhere much deeper, clinging stubbornly beneath his ribs. Lisa looked up from the sofa when she heard the door open, quietly closing the magazine resting in her lap the moment she saw his face.
“How’d it go?” she asked softly as he slipped his jacket from his shoulders without answering, hanging it carefully over the back of a chair before rubbing both hands over his face. Every muscle in his body felt tight.
“..I don’t wanna talk about it.” There was no irritation in his voice. Just fatigue. A kind of emptiness. She watched him for a moment before giving a small nod.
“Okay.” That was all. No questions. No, What happened? No, What did she say? No, attempt to coax the conversation out of him. She simply returned the magazine to her lap, allowing the silence to settle naturally between them. And somehow… that had become unhealthy for him.
Michael lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees as he stared absently at the carpet. He wasn’t thinking about the meeting anymore. Not entirely. He was thinking about everything that had happened before it, about the strange way memory had begun rearranging itself somewhere between the intervention and the weeks he spent in rehabilitation. Rationally, he knew the people around him had been trying to save his life. The doctors. His attorneys. His family. Even (Name). She had wanted him sober, healthy, present, alive. He knew that. He truly did. But memory was rarely interested in fairness. But looking back, he didn’t remember feeling protected. He remembered feeling cornered. Every concerned expression had become another reminder that something was wrong with him. Every difficult conversation became another decision someone else was making on his behalf. Doctors telling him what he needed. Lawyers explaining what was best. Friends watching him with careful eyes, silently evaluating whether today was a good day or a bad one. Even the woman he loved most had slowly become another voice asking him to stop, to change, to get help, to fight harder. She hadn’t been wrong. That wasn’t the point. Pain had a remarkable way of convincing people that love and pressure were the same thing, and by the time he left rehabilitation, he could no longer separate the two.
Then Lisa had called. She hadn’t asked whether he’d been taking his medication. She hadn’t questioned the decisions he’d made or reminded him what his doctors wanted. She never looked at him with that quiet mixture of hope and worry everyone else seemed unable to hide, as though they were all waiting for him to fall apart again. When he complained, she listened. When he sat in silence for minutes at a time, she never rushed to fill it. When he admitted he was tired, she didn’t tell him how to fix himself. She simply stayed. Around her, he didn’t feel like a patient. He didn’t feel like someone everyone was desperately trying to repair before he broke again. He didn’t feel like the center of another intervention. He felt like himself. Or at least, the version of himself he had been before every conversation became about what was wrong with him. He could breathe. The realization should have frightened him. It didn’t. Because nowhere in his mind had he labeled it betrayal.
When (Name) had looked across the conference table that afternoon, tears streaming down her face as she asked, Did you sleep with her? the answer had come effortlessly. No. Nothing happened. He believed it. He still believed it. There had been no affair. No kiss. No stolen night hidden from the world. Nothing physical had crossed the line his conscience had always considered unforgivable. To him, fidelity had always lived in actions that could be seen, touched, named. By that definition, he had remained faithful until the end. What he refused to examine were the things that couldn’t be photographed.
The phone calls that gradually became longer than the conversations he had with his own wife. The fears he confessed to another woman because they somehow felt easier to say aloud there. The loneliness. The frustration. The parts of himself that had once belonged inside his marriage but had quietly migrated somewhere else. He hadn’t chosen another woman in one catastrophic moment. He had simply stopped choosing the first one in hundreds of tiny, forgettable ones, each decision so insignificant on its own that none of them had felt capable of ending a marriage until they had all accumulated into exactly that.
His jaw tightened as her voice returned to him with startling clarity.
“What has she done for you that I haven’t?”
He closed his eyes.
Because there wasn’t an answer. Not an honest one.
Lisa hadn’t sacrificed more. She hadn’t stood beside him through years of scrutiny, impossible expectations, and relentless public judgment. She hadn’t watched him crumble and stayed anyway. She hadn’t built a home with him, celebrated birthdays with him, learned the invisible ways he unraveled when the world became too loud, or spent years believing in him when believing had become difficult. (Name) had done all of that. She had given him years. Lisa had given him relief. Those were not the same thing. Yet somewhere inside him, relief had quietly begun masquerading as understanding. It had become easier to sit beside someone who expected nothing from him than to face the woman whose expectations existed only because she had spent years believing he could survive. He had mistaken the absence of conflict for peace, the absence of accountability for acceptance, and by the time he understood the difference, it was too late to explain it without sounding like he was searching for excuses.
He leaned back against the headboard, staring blankly toward the ceiling as the room settled once again into silence. For the first time since leaving the conference room, he allowed himself to hear her final words exactly as she’d spoken them.
“You don’t even know if you love her.”
He wanted to tell himself she was wrong. He wanted to believe the distinction mattered. That friendship was friendship. That nothing physical had happened. That he hadn’t crossed the line she believed he had. But lying alone in the quiet, stripped of attorneys, explanations, and carefully chosen language, he found himself confronting a possibility he had spent months avoiding. Perhaps the cruelest betrayals were never the obvious ones. Perhaps they happened so gradually they were almost impossible to notice while they were occurring. Conversation by conversation. Confidence by confidence. One ordinary day after another, until the person who had once known you better than anyone else slowly became the last person you allowed inside your heart.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ June, 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ╰ㅤ 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.
It hadn’t been one thing that made her spiral. If it had been one thing, maybe she could’ve gotten through the night.
But walking into her first award show since the divorce and realizing every hallway, every dressing room, every stretch of red carpet carried memories she hadn’t asked to revisit, was a lot. It was seeing him again for the first time not as her husband, not even as someone she could still pretend belonged somewhere in her future, but as another woman’s husband. It was watching them move through the room together with the kind of love she remembered once belonging to her. Then came them taking the stage. The applause. The cameras. And when they kissed beneath the lights, the room erupted around them as if the entire world had collectively decided to celebrate the life she’d spent months grieving.
That was her melting point.
Her manicured nails fumbled with the tiny bottle in her clutch, the bathroom lights too bright as they glinted off the pill caps. The celebrity style mirror mocks her—this is supposed to be a night of rebirth for her, and yet here she is squeezing five little white lies into her palm like they’re candy. A shaky breath hitches in her throat as she dry swallows them one by one, tasting salt and dissolving on the back of her tongue.
She stares at herself in horror through the mirror because who would cry for someone else’s husband? He wasn’t hers anymore. Her reflection wavers when a knock sounds at the door: “Two minutes ‘til hair and makeup, Miss (Name)!” calls an assistant whose name tag she didn’t remember reading.
There was a point where she stopped feeling like she was in the room at all, like her attention had slipped a few inches behind her actual body and was now watching everything happen from slightly off angle, delayed just enough that nothing lined up cleanly anymore. Voices reached her, but they didn’t land where they were supposed to. They skimmed across the surface of her awareness and kept going.
Someone said her name and she thought she answered, but she wasn’t entirely sure she had.
Her hands were being touched, adjusted, moved into place. Nothing aggressive, just corrective like she was a product on a conveyor belt that needed alignment before being sent forward. The feeling that accompanied it wasn’t panic yet. It was something flatter and an uncomfortable absence of ownership, because her body was no longer something she was directly responsible for managing.
There was a mirror somewhere near her, and she caught herself in it without meaning to. The reflection looked correct in the way costumes look correct on mannequins, everything in place without necessarily belonging to anything living. She stared at it for a second too long, waiting for recognition to catch up, but it never came.
There was just a murmur of thought forming underneath everything else.
I don’t feel well enough to be perceived right now.
But there was no space to say it out loud, and even if there had been, it felt like the kind of statement that wouldn’t change anything. The show would still happen. The lights would still open. The audience would still exist on the other side of whatever threshold she was being pushed toward.
A voice near her said something about timing, something about cues, something about being ready, and she tried to attach meaning to it, but the words kept arriving too late, like subtitles out of sync with dialogue. She focused instead on breathing, because breathing was still something she could technically confirm was happening. In and out. In and out. A system she didn’t have to negotiate with. But even that started to feel slightly detached, like it was happening near her rather than inside her.
From somewhere beyond the curtain there was applause again. It didn’t feel like it belonged to her world anymore. It felt like it belonged to people who still had consistent access to themselves. She wondered, distantly, what that must be like. To be fully inside your own life while it was happening.
A curtain shifted.
Someone said her name again, closer this time, like they were trying to bring her back into range. She tried to respond properly. Tried to find the version of herself that was supposed to be here, ready, contained, professional, whatever word people used for being intact in public.
But she’s not there tonight. The fact is, she’s fucked up on medication no one even knows she’s taking.
The backstage corridor felt so congested, everything moved in a delay. Voices came through water. Hands touched her arm and didn’t fully register as contact until after they had already let go. Someone said her name more than once before she realized it was directed at her and not the general atmosphere of panic forming quietly around her.
She was sitting, or maybe she had been sitting and was no longer, it was hard to tell where one state ended and the next began. The dress was already on. Hair fixed. Makeup finished in a way that looked correct under stage lighting and slightly unfamiliar up close, but it belonged to someone she had seen before but didn’t fully recognize as herself. The award show monitor down the hall flickered with rehearsals, applause, other people’s certainty.
There were voices around her that had shifted from instruction to hesitation.
“She’s not—” Someone started.
“She can’t go out like that,” Someone else said, lower.
A hand adjusted something on her shoulder. Another voice asked if she could hear them. She could hear them. She just couldn’t decide what hearing meant anymore. Words arrived, stayed for a moment, then dissolved before they could attach themselves to meaning. Everything felt slightly out of sync with itself, her body had agreed to show up but her awareness had not signed the same contract.
Someone was talking about timing.
Someone else was talking about canceling.
Her name again, more urgent this time. She blinked slowly at the floor as if it might offer instructions. The thing was, no one was really looking at her like she was a person anymore. That was the first thought that came through clearly enough to hurt— a distant, clinical recognition that she had become a variable in a situation that needed to be resolved.
Another mirror caught her reflection when she turned her head slightly. It looked like her. That was the most confusing part. Everything was correct but nothing matched.
Someone said, “We can push it. We can stall—”
Another voice cut in, “No, she’s on next.”
And that was when the room changed shape again. A stage manager appeared at the edge of her vision, speaking carefully, like approaching something that might break or bite or simply stop responding if handled too quickly.
“You’re up in a minute.” … “Do you understand?”
She tried to answer again. The attempt happened somewhere between thought and speech and didn’t fully complete as either. Instead, she nodded, or thought she did, or maybe just moved her head in a way that could be interpreted as agreement.
The corridor tightened around that decision immediately.
Someone stepped closer, checking her posture, adjusting her position like she was something that needed alignment rather than reassurance. There were words about marks on stage, about timing cues, about breathing. None of it landed in sequence. It came in fragments that refused to assemble into instruction.
Then there was the sound of applause from beyond the curtain. Not for her but for whoever had just finished.
A hand touched her back lightly.
“You go when it opens,” Someone said. “Just follow the light.”
The stage manager looked at her for a long moment longer than necessary, like there was still time to reverse something if enough certainty was introduced quickly enough.
There wasn’t.
The curtain up ahead shifted.
And her body, whether she agreed with it or not, began to move.
Michael almost didn’t attend.
The invitation had been sitting on his desk for weeks, accepted more out of obligation than enthusiasm. Industry events had become exercises in endurance lately. Smile when expected. Shake hands. Congratulate people whose names blurred together before the conversation had even ended. He had become remarkably good at appearing present while feeling entirely elsewhere. Lisa sat beside him as the lights dimmed, the auditorium gradually sinking into darkness as conversations softened into scattered murmurs. Applause rippled through the crowd when someone stepped onto the stage to introduce the next act.
Then her name echoed through the theater, carried through the speakers with practiced enthusiasm. Michael felt his stomach tighten before she had even appeared. He hadn’t seen her since the mediation. Not really. Not outside the memories that seemed determined to replay themselves whenever the world became quiet enough for him to hear them. He still heard her voice sometimes with startling clarity, still heard the accusation she had leveled at him across that conference table.
You dont even know if you love her.
It had followed him home. Followed him to bed. Followed him into every quiet moment since. The curtains parted. She stepped into the spotlight. For one fleeting second, she looked exactly as she always had. Beautiful. Poised. Elegant. Untouchable. The kind of performer capable of commanding an arena simply by standing still. Then the music began, and almost immediately something felt wrong.
Not obvious. Not enough that anyone unfamiliar with her would have noticed. The audience certainly didn’t. To them she was mesmerizing. Magnetic. Yet Michael found himself sitting forward almost instantly. She missed a mark by half a step. Barely noticeable. The kind of mistake most people would never catch. But he did. Then she remained still during a transition where choreography should have carried her across the stage. Her eyes drifted beyond the audience for a fraction of a second too long, lingering somewhere far away before she seemed to remember where she was and continued. Even her smile appeared delayed, arriving a beat late before disappearing altogether. Around him, thousands of people watched in complete silence, captivated by what they believed was an extraordinarily emotional performance.
Michael knew better. This wasn’t artistry. This wasn’t a creative choice. Every movement felt detached from her body, it looked like she was remembering the cues rather than inhabiting it. There were moments where she seemed–drunk. This was not a part of the performance. The realization settled heavily in his chest as the song continued, growing more devastating with every passing verse. Her voice never faltered. If anything, it became stronger. But strength wasn’t what made it unbearable. It was the rawness beneath it. The feeling that every note carried something she had never managed to say aloud. For the first time since the divorce meeting, he wasn’t hearing lyrics. He was hearing everything she’d swallowed. Every unanswered phone call. Every night she’d spent waiting. Every apology he had never given her. Every question he’d never truly answered.
By the middle of the performance, unease had settled so deeply beneath his skin that it became impossible to ignore. He shifted forward in his seat without realizing he’d done it. Beside him, Lisa noticed immediately.
“You okay?” she asked quietly. He didn’t answer right away. His eyes remained fixed on the stage. Something was wrong. The sensation crawled through him with growing certainty.
“I’m gonna go backstage for a minute.” Lisa frowned slightly, glancing toward the stage before looking back at him.
“Michael..”
“I’ll be right back.” He was already standing, beneath reason and logic, an older instinct had begun sounding an alarm he couldn’t ignore. He had spent years beside her. Years learning the subtle signs most people never noticed. The shorter breaths. The thousand yard stare. The way she’d lock her knees when she was trying not to collapse. The tiny changes that happened before panic arrived. Before exhaustion arrived. Before she admitted she wasn’t okay. He knew them all. His body recognized them before his mind could fully process what he was seeing.
The applause erupted behind him as he slipped through the auditorium doors. The sound followed him down a maze of unfamiliar hallways lined with security personnel, production staff, equipment cases, and cables taped neatly across the floor. He walked quickly at first, then faster. The muffled sound of the performance echoed through the walls until, somewhere near the dressing room corridor, the music stopped altogether. Then came shouting. Panicked. Urgent. Sharp. The kind of voices people used when something had gone wrong and everyone was trying not to make it worse. Someone yelled for a medic. Another voice shouted for space. Footsteps thundered down the hallway as crew members rushed past carrying equipment, forcing him against the wall. Security began converging toward a dressing room farther ahead. Michael’s stomach dropped instantly. He didn’t think. He started moving faster. Then running. By the time he reached the doorway, a crowd had already formed. Security personnel. Production assistants. Crew members speaking rapidly into radios. Two medics knelt somewhere beyond the bodies he couldn’t see through. He caught only the briefest glimpse of her sequined fabric disappearing beneath someone’s shoulder before another person stepped into his line of sight.
“What happened?” he asked.
Nobody answered.
The hallway was chaos. People moving in every direction. Radios crackling. Equipment being carried inside.
“What happened?” he repeated, louder this time.
A production assistant glanced toward him only long enough to recognize who had spoken.
“She collapsed.”
The words struck him with almost physical force.
“What?”
“She passed out after she came offstage.”
For a moment everything else seemed to disappear. The hallway. The noise. The people. His feet were moving before he’d consciously decided to move.
“I need to see her.” He barely managed three steps before someone intercepted him. Her manager stepped directly into his path firmly enough to make it clear he wasn’t getting through.
“I’m sorry.”
Michael stared at him in disbelief. “I need to see her.”
“I can’t let you in.” The words sounded unreal. His voice cracked despite himself. “Please.”
For the briefest second, sympathy flickered across the other man’s face. Sympathy. Regret. Understanding. Then it vanished. “She doesn’t need this right now.”
The sentence landed harder than anything that had been said during the divorce meeting. Because for years, he had been the first person people called when something went wrong. The first person through the door. The one sitting beside hospital beds. The one holding her hand. The one making decisions. The one people automatically looked toward in a crisis. Now he wasn’t even allowed inside the room. His gaze drifted instinctively past her manager’s shoulder, searching desperately for some glimpse of her through the crowd moving around the doorway. He saw nothing. Only medics. Only crew members. Only a closed circle of people trying to help her. A circle that no longer included him. His hands hung uselessly at his sides. There was nothing to argue. No legal language to hide behind. No compromise to negotiate. No loophole to exploit. The divorce had quietly altered something he hadn’t fully understood until this exact moment. He still possessed every instinct that had once made him her husband. Every urge to protect her. To sit beside her. To make sure she was okay. But instincts and rights were not the same thing. He no longer had the right. After a long moment, his shoulders sagged.
He lowered his eyes. “..Okay.” The word barely escaped him. Then he turned and walked away, each step feeling disconnected from the last. Behind him, the dressing room door remained closed. The people inside continued working.
(tried a new writing style with the colors and adding some of michael’s pov in my writing!!! also just gonna be honest, idk what to write in the bio tags or whatever i don’t even know what it’s called LMAOO. not romanticizing bruises btw. and u guys can’t tell i have a thing for thighs right?)
⋆ 𖤓 ⋆˚࿔
“c’mon, y/n. a bet's a bet.” michael pouted, letting out a breathless giggle as you buried your face in your hands, groaning. he stood right in the middle of your living room, a proud smile plastered across his face.
you had lost a game of twister at his house the night before, your body tangling up until you collapsed right onto the plastic mat. michael, being the competitive person he was beneath all that sweetness, had spent the entire night dreaming up your punishment.
he didn't even have to tell you what it was, you could already tell by what he was wearing.
standing there in the living room, he was dressed in a dark, puffer jacket left open over a plaid flannel button down, with a cowboy hat resting perfectly over his dark curls. your eyes traced the ridiculously hot outfit before you let out a heavy sigh.
“you said you'd do whatever i wanted if i beat you..” he quietly reminded you, his voice softening, you could see the excitement in his eyes as he awaited your reaction. “so.. we're going riding, i wanna show you the horses! i think you'll.. like it, a lot.”
you rolled your eyes, but you couldn't help the helpless smile tugging at your lips as you turned and moved toward your bedroom. rummaging through the cluttered mess of your closet, you ignored the sensible jeans and looked straight for something you knew would be perfect. if he was going to force you out into the countryside, you were at least going to wear something you felt cute in.
your fingers landed on a pair of vintage denim cutoffs. they were high waisted, hugging tightly around the curves of your hips as the frayed hem cut high up your thighs, leaving the entire length of your legs exposed. you paired them with a plaid shirt, tucking the front into the waistband of the shorts before pulling on the brown leather cowboy boots michael had given you, which fit surprisingly well.
when you walked back out into the living room, michael was leaning against the back of your couch, spinning his cowboy hat around with his fingers. as the heavy heels of your boots clicked loudly against the floor, he looked up, and the playful grin instantly melted off his face.
“oh.” he breathed out, quickly looking away, and clearing his throat as he adjusted his sunglasses over his eyes. “um.. you look.. really nice, y/n.”
“are they okay to ride in?” you asked innocently, oblivious to michael's flustered reaction.
“y-yeah.” he stammered, a shy smile breaking through his nervousness as he finally forced himself to look back at you. his eyes dropping to your exposed thighs behind his dark lenses. “they're perfect.”
⛰︎ ོ ༄
the drive out to the ranch was quiet, the mountain air brushing softly against your face through the rolled down windows of the car. michael kept his sunglasses firmly in place, focusing his attention on the roads ahead, but his eyes occasionally darted over to where your thighs rested against the smooth leather seat.
every time you caught him looking in your direction, he would quickly adjust the radio or nervously clear his throat, making you laugh to yourself, thinking nothing of it.
by the time you arrived at the caribou ranch, you witnessed michael completely in his element. he whispered to the horses softly, stroking their noses with a gentle hand. “this is tango.” michael smiled, his voice full of warmth. “he's very gentle, y/n. i think he'll be perfect for you.”
it didn't take long before his massive hands made their way around your waist to lift you up onto the horse, the sensation of his touch making your breath hitch in your throat as he helped you mount onto the saddle. his fingers lingered for a second on your bare skin, resting just above the hem of your denim shorts before he cleared his throat and stepped back. “see? you're a natural.” he smiled.
the first hour of the trail ride was beautiful, you had to admit. michael was riding effortlessly ahead of you, his dark jacket framing his broad shoulders as he guided his horse through the trails.
but although he was leading in front of you, he kept looking back, checking on you every few minutes with caring eyes to make sure you were okay.
“this trails so.. bumpy.” you playfully groaned, shifting on the saddle as michael let out a loud laugh in response, fully enjoying watching you complain and struggle behind him.
tango then started moving slower as you sighed and watched michael get further and further ahead. “tango, please.” you pleaded, your impatience starting to grow as tango took his time, investigating nature with his nose.
suddenly, a sharp rustle spooked your horse, causing him to jolt to the side without warning. being inexperienced with horses, you thought the sudden movement was normal, so you tilted your weight back onto the saddle, panting.
but then, tango jolted again, which made your boot slip right out of the stirrup and your entire body shift out of balance. you furrowed your eyebrows, desperately trying to pull your weight back up the moving horse again. you succeeded only after your inner thigh slammed hard on the side of the saddle horn. “ow.. fuck.” you hissed out as you instinctively squeezed your eyes shut, your vision blurring from the sharp sting of pain as you gripped the reins tightly to try and make tango settle down.
“y/n!” michael yelled, his voice cracking with panic as he threw himself right off the saddle, abandoning the reins to let his horse wander off into the grass.
he only cared about you.
he hastily shoved his sunglasses straight into his pocket as he rushed over to your side, worry flickering over every feature of his face. “i’ve got you, okay?” he instantly reassured, his voice trembling as his massive hands reached up, holding your waist once again. he lifted you down from the horse, his touch laced with protectiveness as he held your back tightly with one hand while supporting the back of your thighs with his other.
“m-michael, it's.. fine. i can walk, let's go back.” you tried to say, feeling a wave of guilt for ruining something he had been looking forward to all day. but he wouldn't listen, shaking his head, his jaw tightening as he held you tighter against his chest. “no.. no.. you're hurt.”
he carried you straight toward the privacy of the ranch's cabin, his arms wrapping around your frame as he held you close, hoping the heavy warmth of his body would help ease your pain. with the heel of his boot, he kicked the front door open, carrying you through a narrow hallway and right into a bedroom, gently placing you down onto the edge of the mattress.
“stay right here.” michael said softly before pacing the room up and down. “need some ice.. the fridge.. ice..” you heard him whispering to himself before rushing out of the room, moving as if he was on a timer.
“so cute.” you whispered in the quiet room, a smile tugging at your lips as you heard him shuffling around the cabin's kitchen. you leaned back onto the bed, letting out a soft sigh as the deep throbbing in your upper thigh began to settle into an ache.
moments later, michael returned, holding a small ice pack wrapped in a thin cloth. he had already shed his heavy puffer jacket, leaving him in just the plaid flannel shirt, which clung beautifully to his broad shoulders and his lean frame.
he walked straight over to the edge of the bed where you sat and immediately dropped down onto his knees on the floor, positioning his body right between your legs. slowly, you opened them wider to give him more access to help the bruised part of your thigh.
you watched his jaw tighten instantly, michael's dark eyes tracking the slow movement, his gaze locking onto the sight of you lying back on the mattress, completely vulnerable right in front of him. he swallowed hard, a helpless sound escaping him as he stared at where your shorts rode up, his mind secretly racing with dirty thoughts. yet he battled himself, determination in his eyes to help you, desperately trying to focus on only aiding your wound.
“is... is it okay if i..?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly as he hinted for permission to use the ice pack on your skin.
“mhm.” you breathed out, your voice sounding a little too needy as he slowly moved his hand forward, placing the wrapped ice pack directly against the bruise blooming on your soft flesh.
the contrast of the freezing ice against your aching thigh made you let out a sharp whimper, michael wincing at the sound, his heart breaking at your discomfort. “m' sorry. i know it's cold.”
his free hand reached up instinctively, resting it on the uninjured skin of your opposite thigh to reassure you. “gonna take care of you, okay?”
you looked down innocently at him, your eyes slightly teary from the lingering sting of pain. “you promise?” you whimpered, your voice so fragile and trusting that it made his entire body lock up between your knees.
his heart began to race, and his eyes darkened, taking in your appearance once again. through the fabric of his tight jeans, he could feel himself growing hard, straining uncomfortably against his zipper as he mentally cursed himself.
“i-i promise.” he stammered out, his fingers twitching against your thigh as he paused for a moment before hanging his head low. “this.. is all my fault. i shouldn't have brought you out here... i-i shouldn't have let you wear those shorts.” he was apologizing profusely, but his eyes kept darting hungrily up to your face, watching the way your lips parted with every shallow breath you took.
“it's okay, michael. you're making me feel better.” you reassured, as he nodded slowly, forcing his focus back to the cool cloth in his hand.
then, you shifted slightly on the mattress, looking down at him again with tired eyes, completely unaware of the effect you were giving him. “can... can you massage my other thigh, please?”
michael's movements stuttered completely, the clothed ice pack pausing right against your skin as he glanced at his free hand that was already resting on your other thigh, now all he had to do was move it. “i... yeah. if it helps you.. i can do that.” he whispered with breathless submission.
the sensation was immediately overwhelming. you had the shock of the ice pack on one side, and the warmth of his hand kneading the inner part of your other thigh. you could feel yourself growing wet, warm arousal dampening your panties as his large hand caressed your thigh.
he was so focused, desperately trying to act the part of a perfect gentleman, shaking away the thoughts of your thighs wrapping around him as you fought the same ideas.
but the difference between the two of you was that you couldn't stand it, you needed more.
“michael.” you called out as eyes snapped up to meet yours, his breath catching in his throat at the vulnerability spread across your face. “you should.. take off my shorts..” you exhaled, biting your lip. “to help.”
michael's hand went still against your skin before nodding again, complying without needing a reason. his fingers moved up to the waistband of your shorts as his fingers fumbled with the metal button for a second before he popped it loose. michael gripped the fabric firmly and began to slide the denim down over the curves of your hips. his eyes tracking every single inch of bare skin he was uncovering until you were left in your panties.
“just.. just really hurts..” you faked a broken whimper, your fingers gripping the mattress sheets tightly.
“i don't want you to be in pain..” his voice dropped into a vulnerable tone as he glanced down at the straining erection he had been trying to suppress.
then suddenly, he was the one who couldn't take it anymore.
“i think.. i can make you feel better.” he breathed out, his voice thick with a desperate need.
“you are.” you forced a smile, oblivious to the mutual hunger that was threatening to tear him apart from the inside out.
“no, y/n..” he looked down, a wave of guilt crossing his features as if he was taking advantage of your ‘sweet innocence’, before building the courage to look back up. “wanna make you feel.. so much better..”
your chest heaved as the intensity in his dark eyes left you flustered. “.. yeah?” you exhaled, a small smirk forming on your face as you completely surrendered to him.
he began a slow trail of tender kisses right along the edge of the bruise on your thigh, as if he was trying to heal you with his lips. his large hands reached blindly for the edges of your panties, hooking his fingers over the fabric, his breath hitching as he slowly dragged them down your hips and off your legs.
“so beautiful, mama.” he whispered, his warm breath fanning across your skin as his lips trailed along your inner thighs, worshipping the sensitive skin one last time before he finally moved to meet your aching wetness.
the first touch of his tongue was warm, a satisfied groan slipping from his lips that vibrated directly against your most sensitive spot. the intense sensation of pleasure made you gasp, your fingers gripping tighter into the sheets as your hips lifted off the mattress instinctively.
“is.. is it helping?” he panted against you. he was so desperate to give you everything, to erase the pain of your bruise with nothing but pure pleasure. his eyes looked up through his lashes, shining with shy earnestness as he hung on your every breath, waiting for your answer.
“yes.. a-a lot..” you moaned out, your hands leaving the tangled sheets to grip his curls, your fingers pulling him gently to guide his face back against your weeping center. you were too addicted to the sensation, craving the wet slide of his tongue as if it was the only thing keeping you alive.
his large palms gripped the underside of your thighs, squeezing firmly to hold you steady as he picked up his pace. fuelled by your moans, he became relentless, his tongue sliding in and out of your walls with sweet precision that had your hips rolling against his mouth, helplessly trying to chase his rhythm. michael let out a muffled groan into your skin, already drunk on the taste of you, stroking his tongue as a passionate promise that he wasn't stopping until you came.
“michael…” you whined, your head tossing back as you felt yourself reaching your climax, your entire body tightening up under the onslaught of his tongue. feeling the sudden shift in your breathing, he buried his face further, his nose brushing intimately against you as he formed fast licks right over your aching clit, targeting the hypersensitive bean.
your legs began to tremble uncontrollably as he greedily drank all of you, drowning out your moans with the wet sounds of his lips and mouth devouring you with no mercy. the clench of your internal muscles gave you away, a rush of pleasure building so fast at your core that you had completely forgotten about your bruise.
“mi.. michael, i..” you cried out, your voice breaking into a loud moan as your body gave in to the rush of your release. you came hard, flooding his mouth with your sweet juices as your walls squeezed down ruthlessly around his tongue.
there was silence in the room for a few moments, broken only by the sound of your ragged breathing, before michael began softly stroking your legs to calm you down after doing so good. “do... do you feel better?” he whispered, his voice thick with a mix of awe and lingering desire. he slowly made his way back up the bed, crawling over your body to hover over you, his eyes searching your face with a tender anxiety as you nodded weakly, still catching your breath beneath him.
“mhm... thank you.” you bit your lip sheepishly before reaching up and wrapping your arms around his neck, pulling him down onto your chest. using any piece of strength you had left, you flipped him over, pinning him beneath you now.
as you shifted to straddle his waist, the sharp pain from your bruise caught you off guard, forcing a small, pained wince out of your lips.
“y/n, my sweet girl...” michael frowned, his large hands flying to your hips to steady you as he held you in place.
you squeezed your eyes shut for a second to let the sharp sting pass, a teasing smile playing on your lips. “i... i still wanna go riding...” you whispered as your hands slowly slid down the smooth fabric covering his chest.
“mama, your bruise...” he groaned, biting the inside of his cheek as his voice dropped into that deep, raspy register that honestly could've made you cum all over again. he wanted nothing more than to surrender to you, the thick length of his erection pulsing hard between your thighs as if it was begging you to ignore his warnings, but his protective instinct held him back, keeping his grip firm on your hips to stop you from hurting yourself further.
“i don't care.. just wanna make you feel good too, mikey.” you bit your lip, looking down at him through your lashes with a quiet intensity that showed just how certain you were.
michael's breath hitched, the raw devotion in your eyes shattering the last of his resistance as his gaze softened completely, giving a slow, defeated nod.
“okay..” he exhaled as his hands slid from your wrists down to cup the backs of your thighs. his warm palms squeezed firmly, lifting just enough of your weight to support you so you wouldn't strain your injury. “okay, just be careful, mm? lemme hold you.”
without hesitation, you undid his jeans and freed the thick, heavy length of him. he bounded free against your hand, pulsing with readiness that made your breath catch in your throat as you prepared to slide yourself over him.
leaning forward, you began to sink down slowly, but the sudden stretching movement pulled painfully against the bruised flesh of your thigh. it caused your muscles to tighten around him but before the pain could take over, the discomfort was completely swallowed by the dizzying fullness of him being so deep inside of you, stretching you to your limit as you took him in.
a shaky moan tore from deep inside his throat, his head tossing back helplessly against the pillow at the suffocating warmth and wetness of you. “fuck, mama.. so.. so tight..” he groaned out, as his hips giving an involuntary, desperate twitch upwards. his eyes squeezed shut, his entire body practically vibrating beneath you as he fought the urge to take over the pace. his hands squeezing the backs of your thighs, keeping you steady as he let out a shuddering breath. “riding me so... good.”
“oh, michael...” you whimpered, your voice cracking as a helpless moan escaped you, your fingers digging tightly into his shoulders.
michael's eyes snapped open, burning with a mix of desire and sudden panic as he watched the breathless twist of your expression.
“does it hurt? is it your thigh, baby?” he asked anxiously, his thumbs stroking the delicate skin under your thighs.
“no..” you panted, your hips trying to find a smooth rhythm above him. “just want... more.”
hearing those words and feeling the tight squeeze of you as you moved, made him lose his grip on his restraint. his hands slid up to grip your hips, his fingers digging deep into your skin as he took effortlessly took control of the rhythm.
he didn't let you grind or pace yourself anymore, and instead, let his powerful thighs take over, dictating a pace that lifted you up and down onto his thick length ruthlessly. with a low growl, he was thrusting in and out of you without holding back as his dark curls bounced wildly against his forehead with every upward thrust.
“michael.. m’ gonna cum..” you moaned, your head throwing back as your fingers dug into his shoulders, your nails biting into his skin.
“wanna.. feel it...” he said between pants, his gaze locked onto your face as he continued thrusting, burying himself to drive you to that point. your walls instantly clamped around him in tight pulses as a heavy climax washes through your entire body.
the sensation of your orgasm pushes michael to his own climax as he lets out a loud groan, his body slowly easing beneath yours as he releases himself deep inside of you. the feeling of the overwhelming warmth and pleasurable sensation made you collapse forward against his chest, your knees giving out completely as you sob his name into the warm crook of his neck.
michael waited until your breathing slowed before he gently rolled you over, keeping your injured leg carefully elevated as he pressed a long kiss to your forehead.
his fingers softly stroked your cheek, a tender smile forming on his lips. “i love you.” he whispered into the silent room, pulling the thick blanket up over both of your shoulders to tuck you close. “no more.. horse riding, okay? don't want you getting hurt again.”
you smiled up at him through the shadows, a breathless giggle escaping your lips as you leaned forward to kiss him softly on the lips.
“don't worry.. you'll be the only thing i ride, michael.”
𓆩ᥫ᭡𓆪: when y/n’s father experiences an attack endangering his daughter, he has no choice but to hire a bodyguard for her. (pt. 1)
𓆩ᥫ᭡𓆪: slow burn, suggestive, authority figure, accidental touch, size difference, forbidden interest, !brat (kinda) reader, !bodyguard michael. (no śmut in this part)
𓆩ᥫ᭡𓆪: wc is 5.8k!
𓆩ᥫ᭡𓆪: minors dni! 18+!
(not romanticizing the màfia. and also, michael’s personality in this is also far from realistic but let’s just let a girl dream, and he’s 25 in this ff & the reader is 20. i rlly wanted a dangerous era mj fic. ok enough yapping that’s it, thankuuu!)
𑣲⋆｡˚
you never needed to ask what your father did for a living and he didn't need to tell you because you already knew. it was in the way the maids averted their eyes when he walked into a room, the way the local police chiefs bowed their heads at family dinners, and the way the leather of his holsters creaked whenever he sat down at the dinner table.
growing up, you learned to adapt to the silent rules of the household. you simply existed as his prized possession, the one untouched thing in his violent world. he parented as well as he could (so he thought), buying you grand pianos, and surrounding you with luxury.
then came one afternoon, you had been sitting in the library, the keys of the grand piano solid beneath your fingertips, when the windows broke. it wasn't just as if someone had dropped a cup, it was a scream of gunfire echoing from the front courtyard, followed by the screeching of tires and the panicked shouting of your father's men. you remember the cold dread that flooded your body, paralyzing you on the piano bench. seconds later, the door had been kicked open, and your father's men had dragged you down into the basement safe room, the scent of gunpowder filling the hallways.
the attack was swift, a brutal reminder from a rival family that the don was not invincible. although you and your father survived unscathed, many of his men were injured and shaken up. the aftermath of the attack left the house wrapped in a paranoid silence, the freedom you once had of living your life, the trips into the city with your friends, even going to college to work towards your bachelor of music, was instantly revoked.
it was three days after the shooting when your father finally called you down to his study. he stood by the tall glass windows, his back to you as his hands clasped tightly behind him. “the men i have are loyal, but they are clumsy.” he spoke, his voice a low tone that always gave you goosebumps. “they look at the house, they look at me, but they do not look at you. after what happened, i cannot afford a single mistake. you're my biggest vulnerability.”
you swallowed hard, crossing your arms over your chest. “i don't need more men following me around, papa.”
“you misunderstand.” he said smoothly, stepping closer, his heavy gaze pinning you in place. “my men won't be following you anywhere. because until i say so, you will not be leaving this house.”
the air in the stifling office suddenly felt thin as his words washed over you, you had thought he would confine you here for no longer than a week, then you could go back to your life. “papa, you can't do that. what about my music degree? my friends? i have recitals and exams coming up. i can't just.. stop going to the college?”
“you don't gotta choice.” he snapped, turning around to face you with bloodshot, exhausted eyes. “a piece of paper is not worth my daughters life.”
you slumped your shoulders in defeat as the realisation that your father's life was intertwining horribly with yours washed over you. “i brought in someone from the outside, a specialist. and he's going to be your bodyguard from now on.” before you could voice another protest, your father signaled to the double doors. “come in.”
the doors swung open silently, and a man stepped into the room. in a house populated by bulky mobsters who wore their brutality like a badge, this man was somewhat different. he was striking, almost ethereal, wrapped in an aura of intense danger. he wore a tailored black suit that hugged a lean frame, yet the sharp set of his shoulders spoke of a hidden strength. a pristine white armband was fastened around his right sleeve, breaking up the darkness of his attire. but what drew your eye instantly were the jet black sunglasses hiding his eyes, even in the dim lighting of the study, the lenses were completely dark, making it impossible to tell exactly where he was looking.
“this is michael. mr. jackson to you.” your father said, stepping forward. “he comes with you everywhere in the house. if he tells you to move, you move. if he tells you to hide, you don't question him.”
michael didn't speak. he simply tilted his head down in a slow bow toward you, his taped fingers gently brushing against his suit. the gesture was polite but there was no warmth in it as his face remained an unreadable mask.
“m' not a little girl.” you muttered, the defiance returning as a bitter sting in the back of your throat. “i don't need a bodyguard.”
your father crossed his arms in frustration. “you’re right, you’re not a little girl which means you’re old enough to understand you do, in fact, need him.”
you let out a heavy sigh, you didn't want to fight it anymore, but you were already dreading the new, boring routine you were going to have to get used to. you just wanted your normal life back.
ᯓ𑣲
a week had passed, and the heavy feeling of having a permanent shadow slowly became predictable. you still weren't happy about being confined to the house, but at least michael wasn't like the other men. he didn't try anything with you, talk much, and he was somewhat respectful towards you and you liked that.
you had gotten used to the rhythm of his leather shoes a few paces behind your left shoulder, and you had even stopped flinching when you turned a corner and found him already standing there, waiting for you.
but the only con was his silence, it was starting to drive you crazy. his professional facade was so perfectly built, so unshakeable, that it felt less like living with a human being and more like being guarded by a very handsome ghost.
another morning passed as you sat at the long dining table for breakfast, but today you felt different, consumed by boredom, michael was the closest thing to a form of entertainment. you decided you were tired of the brick wall and you wanted to see a crack in it.
michael was in his usual spot by the arched windows, his arms crossed over the chest of his black suit, his dark sunglasses were firmly in place, his chin turning just an inch every few seconds as he scanned the quiet courtyard outside.
you picked up your spoon, swirling it lazily around your bowl, keeping your eyes fixed on his reflection in the glass window pane. “y'know, mr. jackson.” you started, your voice casual, cutting through the quiet clinking of your silverware. “my old man’s bodyguard used to fall asleep right in that chair.. by the door. he lasted about three days before papa found out.” you paused, waiting for a twitch, or even a laugh if you were lucky.
michael didn't move. his arms stayed crossed, his face an unreadable mask. “that's why he isn't here anymore.” he murmured flatly.
you leaned back in your chair, resting your chin in your hand, watching him closely. “don't you get tired of standing there, staring at.. nothing? why don’t you take the glasses off?”
michael slowly shifted his weight, turning away from the window to face the table. even with the lenses hiding his eyes, you could feel the firmness of his focus directed straight at you. “there's no need.” he said, his tone perfectly even, easily brushing off your attempt to tease him. “it’s standard.”
“riight. standard.” you repeated, a stubborn smile tugging at the corner of your lips, satisfied with his response, even if it was small. you stood up from the table, leaving your half eaten breakfast behind, and walked right up to him.
you stopped just a foot away, forcing yourself to hold your ground against the radiating presence of him. you looked up, staring directly at your own reflection in his dark sunglasses. “what standard if it's just us?” you asked, your voice softening just a little. “i won’t tell my old man if you act like a real person for five minutes.”
for a split second, you thought you saw his strict mouth soften, the sharp line of his jaw shifting as if he were holding back a response. but then, he simply tilted his head down. “i said there’s no need.” michael replied, his voice firm. “if you're finished with your breakfast, we should go to the library for your practice.”
you let out a frustrated breath, rolling your eyes at the cold figure standing in front of you. “fine.” you muttered, turning on your heel toward the door. “c’mon then, shadow.”
⋆.˚༄
the library was completely silent except for the soft rustle of your skirt as you sat down on the leather piano bench. you adjusted your posture, looking over at the corner by the tall bookshelves where michael had already taken his post.
you ran your fingers lightly over the cool keys, hitting a few notes before intentionally letting one of the higher keys stick, making a dull thud instead of a clear sound. you stopped playing, staring down at the keys for a second before turning your head slightly towards his corner.
“mr. jackson?” you called out quietly. “something's wrong with one of the keys up here.. can you come look at it?”
for a long moment, michael didn't move. you thought for sure he was going to see right through your lazy attempt to flirt, but then, his arms slowly uncrossed and he took a few slow steps, walking directly toward the piano.
he walked up to the where you were sitting, stepping directly into your space until he was standing right behind your shoulder, towering over you. “which one?” he asked, his voice was a low rasp right near your ear. it was a careless tone, but the feeling of him behind right behind you made you bit your lip.
“this one.” you mumbled, reaching out to press the key again. and as you did, you purposefully leaned back just an inch, the fabric of your shirt brushing lightly against the waist of his black slacks. you tilted your head up, looking straight up at him with wide eyes, your gaze locking once again in his dark sunglasses. “see? it won't ring out.”
slowly, he reached his taped hand forward, his long fingers hovering away from yours as he pressed the exact same key down. it clicked with a firm motion, and the note rang out perfectly clear throughout the room. he shifted his weight back, pulling his sunglasses down with his free hand just so his eyes could lock directly onto yours. “the key is fine.” michael replied, but you were too lost in his brown eyes he had finally shown you to hear him. noticing your stare, he pushed his glasses back up into place, clenching his jaw in frustration for wasting his time. “turn back around and play what you're supposed to play.”
᭝ ᨳଓ ՟
after that moment in the library, you were convinced he had no feelings at all. he was just a hot robot in a nice suit, completely unaffected by you. suffering with the boredom of your never ending routine with a brick wall, you felt like you were going to lose your mind.
then, the heavy landline phone on your nightstand cut through the silence with a loud ring. you snatched the receiver before the michael could come back from the kitchen, pulling the long cord tightly around the corner of your bed. “hello?” you said.
“girl, oh my god. where have you been? i haven't seen you in any classes.” your best friend, jada, gasped, sounding like she couldn't believe you had picked up. “actually, you can tell me when you get here. my parents are out, y'know what that means.. m’ throwing a party. soooo?” she dragged out the word, hinting at you the obvious offer.
your heart skipped a beat, a rush of adrenaline flooding your chest. “jadaaa, don't tempt me. y'know how hard it is to get out of this house?”
“c'mon, just leave. you're grown enough.” jada begged, her voice full of desperate pleading. “please? i haven't seen you in weeks. i miss you.”
you bit your lip, looking over at your bedroom door. you were terrified of getting caught, but the thought of spending another night trapped in this silence, staring at the walls while michael stood outside your room like a statue, made you sick. this was your chance of feeling normal again for just one night.
you took a deep breath, tightening your grip on the plastic receiver. “kay' jada. i'll be there, pick me up in ten?”
“aaahhh, yes! see you soon mama.” she squealed, using her favourite nickname for you, as you rested the heavy receiver back onto its cradle, your heart racing as the line clicked dead. but before you could even take a step away from the nightstand, the bedroom door swung open.
michael walked in, not even knocking, his eyes already fixed on you as he scanned the room, diverting to the telephone, then shifting up to the flustered look on your face combined with your uneasy breathing.
“who was that?” he asked, his voice was back to that professional tone he always used. you swallowed the lump in your throat, forcing your expression to go completely blank as you stepped away from the bed. “nobody. just a wrong number.”
you knew you had to throw him off to get yourself alone, to give him an excuse so personal that a strictly professional man wouldn't dare push for details. “owww..” you groaned, lowering your hand to hold your stomach and plastering a pained expression on your face. “god.. just having really, really bad cramps right now, could you just.. leave me alone for the rest of the night?”
he furrowed his eyebrows, biting his cheek in hesitation before complying, deciding to believe you (or so, you thought). “okay.” michael nodded gently. “i'll be outside your door..” he cleared his throat. “lemme know if you need-“
“i won't, thanks.” your nerves getting the best of you as you responded dryly, shutting the door as soon as he stepped outside. the moment you heard his footsteps settle into his post directly outside your bedroom door, you jumped into action. your hands were slightly shaking as you pulled your outfit from the back of the closet, deciding on a black dress you hadn't gotten to wear yet, i mean how could you with so many people always in your face? you grabbed an oversized winter coat, buttoning it all the way up to your chin to completely mask the fabric underneath.
you knew you couldn't use your own door, not with michael standing like a hawk right on the other side of it. so you moved silently to the large window overlooking the side gardens, unlocking the latch with a faint click and pushing the glass open.
an oak tree grew right against your window, its sturdy limbs reaching out just a few feet below your ledge. holding your breath, you swung your legs over as you shimmied down the rough bark, scraping your palms raw, until your shoes hit the soft grass.
you didn't head for the main gate, you knew your father's men were posted there, their cigarettes glowing in the dark like warning lights. instead, you stuck to the shadows, sprinting toward the side fence at the edge of the property where the woods were densest.
the fence you knew you had to climb over was a barrier of rusted bricks and you didn’t hesitate to haul yourself over, landing in a breathless heap on the other side. you rushed to your feet and sprinted through the overgrown bushes until you reached the narrow access road. jada's car was idling in the dark as you ran to it with no time to waste. laughing freely to yourself you realised you had actually done it, you had successfully escaped your house, and of course, mr. jackson.
˖⋆࿐໋
jada's house was packed with familiar classmates from college, filled with the thick scent of sweet smoke, cups of punch, and the warm vibe of a house party. for the first hour, you were just floating on the thrill of being a normal human again, dancing and laughing until your body ached.
but then, someone handed you something to smoke. you didn't even ask what it was; you just wanted to drown out the memory of that suffocating mansion, and, the suffocating presence of your bodyguard.
thirty minutes later, the world completely shifted. it felt like your consciousness had detached from your body, drifting straight up to the ceiling. you were viewing your life from above, looking down at your own body standing in the middle of the crowded room. it was a strange, third person reality, you could suddenly hear everything with clarity, it was as if you had spidey senses. you could hear a cup dropping in the kitchen, the specific base of the stereo speakers, and the low hum of three different conversations across the room all at once.
you looked at the floor, genuinely convinced that if you just bent your knees and jumped, you wouldn't land but instead, keep ascending right through the roof into the night sky with the stars.
leaning your shoulder heavily against the wall near the front living room window, you let your head tilt back against the glass, watching the crowded room swirl around you in slow motion. lazily, your eyes drifted towards the outside, looking past the reflection of the flashing party lights out into the front yard.
your eyes suddenly widened, standing right outside in the dark, under the glow of the streetlamp, was a tall, familiar silhouette. the sharp cut of his black suit blazer and the white armband was unmistakable and even from the distance, you could see the dark sunglasses fixed perfectly on his face, his head turned completely in your direction.
a hysterical bubble of laughter escaped your throat, the sound swallowed up by the heavy bass of the music. there's no way, you thought, giggling softly to yourself as you rubbed your eyes. you were completely out of your mind, you were definitely hallucinating him, your brain was just playing tricks on you because you felt guilty about sneaking out. “you're not real.” you whispered to the glass, laughing again as you watched the shadow outside remain entirely still.
wanting to prove to your high brain that the illusion would disappear if you got closer, you forced your uncooperative legs to move, covering your body with the coat you had brought to battle the night air. pushing the front door open and stepped out onto the porch, you stumbled down the porch steps, your shoes sinking slightly into the grass as you drifted across the lawn toward the silhouette. although, the closer you got, the more it didn't fade.
you stopped just a couple of feet away from him as you stared up into his dark sunglasses, your dazed smile slowly faltering as the heavy reality began to settle in, michael didn't move at all as you stumbled up to him.
of course, michael wasn't dumb. he knew it was too coincidental for you to develop a sudden craving for privacy the moment you hung up the phone. he had played along, stepping out into the hall, walking away before silently walking back to your door. he waited, timing your movements, and the second he heard the soft creak of the window and the rustle of leaves, he knew you were up to no good.
he didn't need to chase you through the window or watch you fumble with the fence. he knew every path, every blind spot, and every pathetic attempt you'd made at a shortcut. while you were busy panicking and rushing , he had calmly walked to the garage, started his sedan, and followed the road at a crawl, his headlights off.
he'd let your best friend drive you towards her house, wanting to get out of the car immediately but reluctantly resisting as he observed your genuine laughter being reconnected with your friends. the moment he saw you in the window with smoke coming out of your mouth, he stepped outside and now, here he was, standing right in front of you.
“was it worth it?” michael asked in a low tone you had never heard before. he stepped into your space, and for the first time, the frame of him truly registered. he towered over you, making you feel small and suddenly aware of how tall he was. “so much effort just to end up right back to me, hm?” his gaze was heavy with disappointment as he stared down at you.
being this close to him, hearing him talk, and really talk to you, instead of just barking orders or plain response, turned you on. the combination of being high, the adrenaline, and the intimidating reality of his height made your head swim. you felt dizzy, not just from the substances, but from the way he was looking at you.
you tilted your head back, your lashes fluttering as you squinted, trying to focus on his face. “are you...” you blinked, a confused frown tugging at your lips as you reached out a hand to press your palm against his chest, just to see if he was solid. “are you real?”
michael let out a harsh scoff that sounded like a warning. he looked at your hand blankly before holding it in his, his grip firm and grounding. he didn't wait for you to find your footing as he hauled you towards his car with an efficiency that left no room for resistance. you stumbled along, your mind spinning, feeling like a doll being dragged back into the darkness.
“mr.. wait..” you mumbled, your voice slurring slightly as you looked down at your feet, genuinely feeling like you were hovering six inches above the ground while he dragged you along. “you're gonna make me.. fly.”
“get in the car.” michael commanded, gently pushing your body into the passenger seat. the moment you tumbled inside, he slammed the heavy door shut, the solid thud echoing down the quiet street. it didn’t take long before he slid into the driver's seat beside you, killing the interior light and twisting the key in the ignition.
the engine roared to life, a low growl that vibrated straight through you as he pulled away from the curb and navigated the dark suburban streets. you were staring out the passenger window, watching the streetlamps blur into long into specs of yellow light, still convinced your soul was hovering somewhere near the sunroof.
“was a night out worth your life?” michael started, his eyes fixed sharply on the road ahead, his hands gripping the wheel with frustration. “sneaking out was one thing but getting high? why did you have to do somethin’ like that, y/n?”
you didn't answer. the weight of his words couldn't reach you through the hazy high. as the car took a sharp turn, you leaned heavily against the passenger door, a soft, unbothered giggle slipping from your lips.
“are you listening to me?” michael asked, his jaw clenching tight as he shot a dark glance at you. “i asked you a question.”
you let out a big sigh. “god. yes, it was worth it.” you groaned as you slumped against the cool glass of the window, waving a heavy hand toward the passing streetlights. “you should've... should've came. been everybody's bodyguard...”
michael let out a mocking scoff, the sound echoing sharply in the confined space of the car. “been everybody's bodyguard.” he repeated bitterly. he casted a brief glance in your direction, his gaze sweeping over your state with pure judgment. “why would i waste my time doing that when i have enough trouble looking after you?”
you remained silent as he shifted gears with a sharp flick of his wrist, the engine roaring as the car lurched forward. “are you going to pull somethin' like this again?”
you just hummed, letting your head lay against the glass as you looked at him through half open eyes. “maybe.” you slurred, a lazy smile pulling at your lips. “i have to find some kinda way to have fun, since you're so... boring.”
you huffed and fumbled blindly along the armrest when suddenly, your fingers found the switch, and with a whir, the passenger window rolled down.
“y/n.” michael's voice was sharp, warning you before you did something stupid but before he could stop you, you slipped the shoulder strap of your seatbelt off and shoved your upper body out into the open air. the wind rushed against your face, as you threw your head back, a laugh escaping from your lips as the dark streetlights blurred past you.
he cursed under his breath, smoothly decelerated the car while his left hand locked the steering wheel steady. “get back inside.” he commanded.
“just stop.. stop ruining my high.” you rolled your eyes, ignoring his order as you squirmed further out the window to catch the cold air, completely oblivious to the danger.
michael's right hand shot across the centre console, trying to catch you. his taped fingers clamped down on the thick fabric of your coat, but fueled by the sensation of fresh air hitting your face, you batted his arm away. you thrashed against his grip, and between his need to steer his car and your fighting, the fabric of your coat slipped right out of his grasp. refusing to take his eyes off the road, his hand dropped blindly, desperately searching for a solid hold of you.
instead of your coat, his fingers met your warm skin. his hand slid up, his wide palm gripping down hard on the sensitive flesh of your inner thigh, making you let out a gasp at the rough grip. using his hand on your thigh as leverage, he yanked you towards him, dragging your thrashing body straight into the car. you tumbled ungracefully onto the passenger seat with a quiet huff. the forceful movement caused your heavy coat to fall open completely, leaving you sprawled back against the seat with your exposed legs on full display.
he glanced at you and paused for a moment, realizing his large hand was still resting right where it had landed, gripping the inside of your thigh, his thumb brushing dangerously close to your panties. instantly, he ripped his hand away as if you had been the one to hurt him, his profile hardening as he snapped his gaze strictly back to the windshield. he reached over again without looking, catching the edge of your coat and pulling it closed over your lap to hide you from his view. “put your seatbelt on properly.” he ordered. “and don't ever fight me while m’ driving again.”
he slowed the car as you approached the heavy gates of your house, the headlights washing over the guards stationed out front who scrambled to open them. he drove up the long driveway, the gravel crunching beneath the tires, before bringing the sedan to a smooth stop in front of the main house. he put the car in park and cut the engine, plunging the car into a heavy silence as he unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to fully face you, leaning over the center console.
his massive frame swallowed up all the remaining space in the car, cornering you against the door. “after tonight, you're never stepping foot outside the house without my permission. you will never pull a stunt like this again. do you understand me?”
you blinked up at him, completely unbothered by the dark threat hanging in the air. the intense glare, the proximity of his broad chest, it all just washed right over your floating brain. “whatever, michael.” you sighed softly, a careless smile pulling at the corners of your mouth.
michael froze, hearing his name leave your mouth for the first time. you didn't look at him, but you could hear the hitch of his breath as he leaned back, his eyes widening slightly. the professional composure cracked, leaving him suddenly rigid in a completely different way.
he cleared his throat, his jaw locking tight again as he quickly broke eye contact, staring strictly at the dark windshield. “get out of the car.” he ordered, his voice suddenly thick.
“m'kay.” you hummed, moving with agonising slowness, you fumbled blindly for the door handle. it took a few clumsy tries before it clicked, the heavy door swinging open into the cool night air as you dragged yourself out.
michael didn't let you stumble, he moved to your side and kept a firm grip on your arm, guiding your swaying frame through the narrow entrance and up the back staircase, completely bypassing the main house. his boots made silent thuds against the wooden steps, declaring his presence.
he pushed your bedroom door open, stepping inside and pulling you into the centre of the room before shutting the door with a solid click. the moment he let go of your arm, your legs gave out a little, making you sway deeply to the side. to balance yourself, you drifted right back into his space, your hands reaching out to grab his black suit. you leaned your body against his chest, your head tilting back as you smiled up at his dark sunglasses with glazed eyes.
“why are you always so.. strict?” you asked, your voice a slow slur as you playfully tugged on his suit, your fingers tracing the smooth fabric. “i'd pay to watch you get high.” you laughed in his face.
the warmth of your body pressing against his chest made his heart race in the dead silence of the room. “sit down on the bed.” michael commanded, grabbing your wrists to guide your body away from his. he tried to grip your shoulders to steady your clumsy frame, but his fingers caught the edge of your oversized winter coat, making it slip right off your shoulders, pooling down around your elbows.
michael's eyes snapped down, and his entire posture locked up entirely. in the moonlight filtering through the window, he saw all of what you were wearing underneath, not just your legs this time. the massive coat had been hiding a short dress that hugged every single curve of your body, leaving a breathless amount your skin he had never seen before.
you just giggled softly, completely unbothered by his sudden freezing. leaning your weight forward again, you bit your lip. “can you sit on it with me?”
michael let out a low groan as he squeezed his eyes shut for a second, rolling his shoulders back as he clearly battled with his own restraint. his hands, still gripping your wrists, tightened convulsively for a second before he forced himself to loosen his hold as he let go of you abruptly.
“stop.” he rasped, his voice sounding raw. he turned his back on you, pacing a line towards your bedroom door before stopping and staring at it, mentally fighting his thoughts. he stood there for a moment, before turning around to face you again.
“get on the bed and stay there.” he commanded, his tone hardening into the familiar authority of the man you were supposed to fear.
“and what if i don't? hm?” you purred, your voice dropping into a low challenge as you moved closer to him. “you gonna make me?”
michael stiffened, his eyes tracking your clumsy steps toward him as he took off his sunglasses. the muscle in his jaw jumped and you saw a flicker of genuine hesitation cross his features. he was trapped between his duty to control the situation and the very obvious reality that he didn't want to put his hands on you right now, not while you were looking at him like that, wearing that, and definitely not while you were high.
he took a measured breath as he forced himself to hold his ground rather than step back. “if you listen..” he started, his dark eyes locking onto yours, slightly pleading. “and you go to sleep without another word... i will leave your father out of this.”
realising he had caught your attention, he continued. “he will never know you left this house. but you have to stop playing games, and you have to lay down. now.”
of course, he wasn't going to tell your father anyways, it would get him more in trouble than you, but you were too high to realise that. you stared up at him for a long moment, watching the tension in his broad shoulders. the adrenaline from the night was wearing off, and the high was starting to pull you down into a heavy exhaustion, making his offer sound pretty good.
“fine.” you mumbled as you finally turned away from him and shuffled across the carpet, climbing onto the edge of the mattress and flopping backward onto the pillows with a dramatic sigh. you kicked off your shoes, curling up under the heavy blankets.
“but only because m’ tired.” you slurred softly, your eyes already fluttering shut. “not because you told me to, michael.”
michael just closed his eyes, letting out a long exhale of pure relief as he watched you finally settle into the bed, moving to sit in the armchair across from you. “good.” he hummed, throwing his head back and rummaging his hands through his hair. he slowly realised being a bodyguard for someone so reckless and so comfortable with calling him by his first name was going to send him to an early grave long before any of your father's enemies ever got the chance. he let out another slow breath, the heavy silence of the bedroom settling as he prepared himself for a very long night of watching you sleep.
can i pls request some more michael angst 🙏🙏🙏 you write it so well. maybe like forbidden love type stuff 😣😣😣
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫˚˖𓍢ִ໋❀
CELEBRITY READER X THRILLER ERA MICHAEL JACKSON!
⋮ ⌗ ┆ in 1972, the tabloids call you rivals. by 1984, you're trading chart-topping albums and fighting for the top spot just to ignore the way he tastes like a sickeningly sweet surrender behind closed doors. Michael is sick of fighting you off. Too bad you don’t have enough of a backbone to take it further. Or do you?
Warning/tags: enemy’s to lovers, language, no use of y/n, pet names, suggestive, oral (fem receiving), ANGST, kissing, HAPPY ENDING YAY! Michael is lowkey an ass but so is reader LMFAO
- if you have any request (anons are on!) please send them!
Your voice was the most angelic, formidable talent a girl could ever possess. From a very young age, navigating the flashing bulbs of local talent shows and regional pageants, you discovered you had a gift that could command a room before you even hit the chorus. Industry scouts and predatory managers wanted to get their hands on you before anyone else could catch the scent. It was a whirlwind rise from the bottom to the absolute top. With careful maneuvering, a protective family, and a label who finally saw your worth, you landed a major contract with Motown Records in the spring of 1972. Your debut single immediately conquered the Billboard charts. The nation absolutely adored you.
Too bad someone was always on your tail. A permanent shadow: Michael Jackson.
The Jackson 5 were no strangers to you; you’d danced to their records in your living room, admiring how effortlessly beautiful the brothers sounded. Specifically Michael. But that innocent admiration twisted into a quiet, simmering resentment as you grew older and the press relentlessly pitted the two of you against each other. “The battle of the child prodigies,” the magazines called it.
You knew better than to listen to the noise, but a persistent plague of teenage insecurity always threatened to crash over your sound mind. To survive the pressure, you decided to cultivate a targeted distaste for Michael Jackson. It was an exhausting stance to maintain because the boy was practically everywhere. On billboard advertisements, chewing gum wrappers, the covers of Right On! magazine, variety hours, and every single radio station across the dial. You stood your ground, refusing to succumb to the absolute mania surrounding him.
But if you thought this was a completely one-sided, silent feud born entirely in your own head, you were dead wrong. Michael knew exactly who you were. For him, the awareness didn't start with the tabloids; it began with his father’s sharp tongue during a grueling rehearsal afternoon.
The summer heat was stifling inside the West Hollywood studio, and Joseph Jackson was on Michael’s neck like a hawk. He was critiquing every step of the routine, bringing his boot down with a heavy, intimidating thud to mark the tempo. Usually, Michael did everything in his power to keep his head down and perfect the steps, but he was completely running on empty. Joseph had kept him up until dawn practicing a single routine because Michael had missed a cue, only stopping when Katherine finally came down the stairs to scold her husband for pushing the boy to exhaustion.
“Five minutes. Water break,” Joe growled, tossing a fresh copy of the afternoon newspaper onto the laminate coffee table before sinking into the vinyl sofa.
Michael breathed a silent prayer of gratitude, retreating to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. When he walked back into the living room, his brothers were huddled together, murmuring in low, exhausted tones. Michael sat on the edge of a chair, his eyes instinctively tracking his father’s face, a habit born from a constant need to gauge the volatile atmosphere of the room.
Joe’s expression remained stony until his eyes scanned a prominent entertainment headline. A dark, irritated grunt escaped his chest. He snapped his fingers sharply toward Michael.
“Boy. Get over here and look at this junk.”
Michael’s stomach instantly twisted into its familiar, anxious knot. Moving quickly, he crossed the room to stand beside his father’s chair. His eyes locked onto the bold, aggressive print:
THE FEMALE MICHAEL? Meet Motown's Newest Chart-Topping Superstar!
The headline felt loud, heavy, and strangely intimidating. A sudden, unfamiliar tightness bloomed in Michael's chest. But as his eyes drifted down to the promotional photograph accompanying the article, his breath hitched.
You were absolutely breathtaking. Your smile radiated pure sunshine through the grainy newsprint, your eyes bright and full of an undeniable confidence. He couldn't tear his eyes away from your face until Joe suddenly rolled up the newspaper and struck him across the back of the head with it.
“Stop staring like a deer in the headlights, Michael! Get back in position!” Joe barked, standing up. “They’re trying to build up some local girl to steal your spotlight. I ain't having some nobody out-sing my boys.”
Michael stumbled back into the formation, his head spinning. For the rest of the grueling rehearsal, he couldn't shake the memory of that radiant smile. And that ridiculous headline kept echoing in his mind, making his heart race for reasons he couldn't quite comprehend.
The strange tension returned a week later when Joe called the brothers into a strict circle. They had been booked for a high-profile charity gala at the Century Plaza Hotel, a performance that required a special collaboration.
“You’re doing a duet,” Joe announced, his eyes locking directly onto Michael. “The organizers want Motown's two top young acts together. They want her harmonies mixing with yours. You got three weeks to learn the arrangement, perfect the blocking, and look like best friends on that stage.”
While his brothers nodded neutrally, Michael felt a sudden wave of nerves crash over him. For the next three weeks, his thoughts were entirely consumed by a single question: I wonder what she’s like?
On your side of town, the news landed with an entirely different kind of explosion.
It was late evening, and you were famished after spending ten consecutive hours locked in a recording booth trying to perfect a B-side track. You had finally convinced your manager to order some takeout, and the two of you were sitting on the studio's velvet sofa, open cartons of chow mein between you. But the silence in the room had grown heavy, almost defensive. You noticed she was barely touching her food.
“Alright, out with it,” you said, setting your chopsticks down. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing at all,” she replied smoothly, though she didn't look up from her plate.
“Don't give me that. You’re never this quiet unless a contract fell through, a gig got canceled, or I have an early morning press call. What happened?”
“It’s really fine, don't worry about it,” she mumbled, her eyes darting toward the mixing console.
You let out a dramatic gasp, crossing your arms. “You can’t maintain eye contact when you’re keeping a secret. Just tell me.”
With a heavy sigh, she rubbed her temples. “Fine. It’s about the charity gala next month. The executive committee wants you to do a featured duet with the Jackson 5. Specifically, a prolonged medley with Michael. The label thinks the vocal contrast will be a goldmine for publicity.”
You dropped your fork onto the table, a loud groan of frustration escaping your lips. “I am not sharing a microphone with that boy.”
“It is one single night,” your manager countered, rolling her eyes. “You aren't filming a whole television special with them. Most rising stars would give anything to be paired with a Jackson.”
“It’s the principle of it!” you argued, your voice rising in pitch. “The press already spends every week comparing our ranges and our chart positions. Why can’t we just perform our own separate sets? Why do I have to be tied to his hip?”
“Because the network couldn't choose between the two of you, and they know a joint performance will drive the ratings through the roof. It's strictly business.”
You stabbed a piece of broccoli with unnecessary force. “Fine. But do not expect me to be the best of friends with him. It is purely professional.”
Yet, as you stared down at your dinner, a sudden thrill of nerves hit your chest. You had heard his voice on the radio a thousand times, pure, crystal-clear, and undeniably beautiful. You spent the entire drive home wondering exactly what he would say to you when you finally met face-to-face.
The three weeks of rehearsal that followed were an absolute masterclass in teenage stubbornness. With two incredibly fiercely competitive personalities shoved into one rehearsal studio, the room simply wasn't big enough for the both of you.
The trouble began on day one with the introductions. Your manager brought you into the studio, and you greeted the older Jackson brothers with warm, professional handshakes. But when you finally stepped up to Michael, he was a trembling ball of awkward, teenage energy. Attempting to be polite, he stepped forward and awkwardly pulled you into a sudden embrace.
You had spent years being taught by your family to maintain strict boundaries with strangers in the industry. Startled by the sudden physical contact, your instincts took over, and you firmly pushed him back by his shoulders.
Michael stumbled back, a look of profound, mortified shock washing over his features. Your face instantly burned with immediate regret.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,” you stammered, stepping forward to instinctively smooth down the lapel of his button-down shirt. “I’m just... I’m not a very touchy person when I first meet people, and you caught me completely off guard—”
“It’s fine,” Michael interrupted, his tone instantly dropping into a freezing, defensive coldness.
He stepped out of your reach, turning his back completely to join his brothers at the piano. You stood there, your hands hovering in the empty air, your jaw slightly slack.
“What a shmuck,” you muttered under your breath, ignoring the way your heart was hammering against your ribs.
Strike one.
The next clash erupted during the selection. The musical director had suggested a soulful, slowed-down rendition of Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid.” You absolutely adored the melody, but Michael immediately chimed in with a sharp objection.
“Can we do something with some actual energy?” he asked, letting out a soft, dismissive chuckle through his nose. “Something upbeat?”
You whirled around to face him, your arms crossing tightly over your chest. “And what exactly is wrong with this arrangement? It’s elegant. It perfectly suits a formal charity gala.”
Sensing the challenge, Michael turned his entire body to face you, stepping close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from him. He folded his arms, a mocking smile playing on his lips. “Maybe if you want to bore the entire audience to death. How about Marvin and Tammi’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’? That actually gets people on their feet.”
“It is a charity function, Michael, not a stadium concert,” you said, your tone dripping with aristocratic disdain.
“I’m well aware of what kind of show it is, sweetheart,” he replied, his voice terrifyingly calm, a smooth velvet that made your cheeks go warm despite your anger. “I’m just saying we should give them something memorable. Why be predictable?”
You rolled your eyes dramatically. “News flash, slow songs are still in, Michael. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the classics.”
His deep, expressive eyes stared you down for a long, agonizing beat, his mind clearly working through his next move. Suddenly, a smug smirk broke across his face. “How about we let the guys and your manager vote on it?”
Your frustration boiled over. You had completely forgotten that you weren't the only two people in the room. You both turned to your manager and the rest of the Jackson brothers, who were all looking incredibly uncomfortable.
“Well?” you both demanded in unison.
Jackie cleared his throat, shifting his weight. “Look, I love Sinatra, but Mike’s right. People are paying a lot of money to be there; they want to dance. The uptempo track feels better.”
One by one, the remaining brothers murmured their agreement. You watched in absolute horror as your own manager gave a small, apologetic shrug of concession. Michael’s smile turned insufferably triumphant, and you had never wanted to punch a look off someone’s face more in your entire life.
Strike two.
The final straw came during the vocal tracking rehearsals. Michael was a perfectionist to a fault, but that week, his own vocals were straining under the weight of his exhausting schedule. Every time his voice cracked slightly on a high note or a run didn't land perfectly, he immediately pinned the blame on you.
“You’re rushing the tempo,” he would snap. Or, “You’re stepping on my line, you need to listen to my cue.”
In reality, it was the exact opposite. You called him out on his mistakes instantly, refusing to let him slide. But the more you challenged him, the stranger his behavior became. He began physically retreating from you during the numbers.
At first, it was subtle. You would be focusing on your sheet music, but when you turned to deliver a line directly to him, he would be standing three feet further back than he had been a minute prior.
“What are you doing?” you asked, lowering your microphone. “Why are you backing up?”
“I’m perfectly fine. Just keep singing,” he replied, his face a mask of absolute stoicism.
You shook your head and started the verse over. When you reached the pre-chorus, you turned around again. This time, he had retreated so far he was practically hovering near the studio’s back exit. He raised a hand, giving you a half-hearted thumbs-up.
“Try it again,” he called out, his voice muffled by the distance. “I can’t quite hear the blend.”
“Are you serious right now?” you yelled across the room. “I can’t hear you either!”
“He said try it again! Dang, Mike, move back to the mic bro!” Marlon shouted from the couch, shaking his head.
You sent a quick, grateful smile to Marlon before turning a furious glare back to the lead singer. “Michael, bring your ass back up here right now.”
He walked back to the microphone with agonizing slowness, his eyes fixed on the floor. When he finally stood in front of you, you stared at him with complete bewilderment. “Why do you keep running away from me?”
Michael merely shrugged, refusing to meet your eyes. Before you could press him further, he tapped his headphones. “By the way, you were completely sharp on that last bar. Let’s take it from the top.”
You had never been tempted to commit violence until that exact second.
Strike three.
By the time the night of the gala arrived, you were convinced that Michael Jackson was the most insufferable, aggravating diva to ever walk the earth. During lunch breaks, you had tried to initiate standard small talk to ease the tension, but he would only offer muttered, one-word responses before sliding his sunglasses on. Eventually, you stopped trying altogether, choosing to spend your time joking around with his brothers instead. Yet, every time you laughed at a joke Marlon made, you could feel a burning, intense pair of eyes drilling into the side of your head from across the room.
But when the dressing room doors opened on the night of the event, the hostility vanished in a single, breathless instant.
You emerged wearing a breathtaking, floor-length silk gown that perfectly accentuated your silhouette, your hair styled in a flawless, sophisticated updo. When Michael caught sight of you, he froze mid-sentence, his jaw dropping slightly. You weren't faring any better; he looked devastatingly handsome in a tailored, slim-fit tuxedo, his afro perfectly picked and his skin glowing under the backstage lights.
You both looked away shyly, the fierce bravado suddenly crumbling.
“You... you don’t look horrible,” Michael murmured, a faint, boyish smile breaking through his nerves.
You let out a soft laugh, playfully nudging his arm with your elbow. “You’re not too bad yourself, Jackson.”
Before the moment could linger, your manager snapped her fingers. “Places, everyone! You’re on in two.”
The performance itself was an absolute triumph. You had to admit, the moment the band struck up that driving, uptempo rhythm, the entire ballroom erupted. The energy in the room was electric. Moving together under the stage lights, your voices blended into a flawless, soaring harmony that left the crowd completely spellbound.
For those four minutes, the bickering melted away. Michael looked at you as if you had personally hung the stars in the sky, his eyes wide, bright, and filled with a profound, undeniable admiration. When the final note rang out, the room dissolved into deafening cheers. A press photographer rushed the lip of the stage, gesturing frantically for a photo.
Without thinking, Michael slid a firm, warm hand around your waist, pulling your back flush against his chest. Your hands instinctively found a home against the lapels of his suit jacket. The blinding flash of the camera bulb captured that split second of perfect, breathless unity.
At fourteen years old, you had no idea that at twenty-four, you would be staring at that exact photograph with a heart full of absolute ache.
1984.
Sometimes you looked back at that old photograph with a profound sense of melancholy. You had been so innocent then, so utterly blind to how complicated the world could get.
After that charity gala, you had both returned to your respective futures, and for years, the public narrative was one of bitter, unyielding rivalry. You dropped solo albums that fought tooth and nail for dominance on the charts. But behind closed doors, a far more dangerous game had developed. The intense friction that had defined your youth had mutated into a fierce, intoxicating passion. You were now a secret fixture in his life, pulled into his hotel rooms after hours or his room, or even the studio, a beautiful, addictive vice to satisfy desires neither of you could admit to the world.
The public thought the rivalry was born of pure hatred. They didn't know that the legendary chart battle between his world-conquering Thriller and your own critically acclaimed, multi-platinum album was heightened by a foolish, stubborn wager made in the heat of a Sunday night argument.
The worse the arguments, the better the sex.
On this particular night, you were draped across the silk sheets of his master bed, your breath hitching as Michael worshiped your body with an agonizing, starved intensity. His hands were pinned beneath your thighs, his lips moving against the sensitive skin of your inner track with a fierce, possessive hunger that had your mind completely spinning.
But even now, the competitive fire refused to die down. Your thoughts drifted back to the argument you’d had on the carpet less than an hour prior. He had boastfully claimed that your new record wouldn't stand a chance against the sheer cultural weight of Thriller. He had mocked your choice of producers; you had fired back by mocking his perfectionism.
“I bet... I bet my record takes more Grammys than yours,” you panted, a breathless, desperate moan escaping your lips as his tongue traced a devastatingly slow line upward.
Michael froze. He slowly lifted his head, his dark curls damp against his forehead, a look of profound, mock-offended amusement on his face. He let out that familiar, low chuckle through his nose.
“Oh, really? You’re hilarious, baby,” he murmured, his voice a gravelly, post-coital purr. He made a move to sink back down between your legs, dismissive of your challenge.
Annoyed by his condescension, you reached down and firmly tangled your fingers in his thick, dark curls, pulling his head back up so he had to look you in the eye. Your expression was dead serious.
Michael’s eyes darkened at the sudden show of dominance. He leaned up, pressing a trail of burning, open-mouthed kisses along your lower abdomen, his breath hot against your skin. “Enlighten me ma. You really think you’re pulling more sales than me when I drop this shit?”
That low, arrogant tone sent a sharp, undeniable pulse straight to your core.
“Mikey, you act like the press doesn't call me the Queen of Pop right alongside your little title,” you countered, your fingers softening as you gently traced the perfect coils of his hair. “Let’s make it a real wager. The one who takes home the most trophies gets absolute bragging rights for a full calendar year. And the loser has to submit to whatever the winner wants. No arguments.”
A playful, dangerous glint entered Michael’s eyes as he processed the terms. He stared deep into your eyes, studying the defiance etched into your beautiful features.
“Fine,” he whispered, his voice dripping with sudden, intense determination. “But you’re going to regret this, baby.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because I am going to absolutely rock your world when I show you who stays on top,” he growled.
Before you could fire back another witty retort, Michael flattened his tongue directly against your clit and went to work with an absolute, ruthless fervor. A loud, uninhibited wail tore from your throat. Your hands gripped his shoulders, your fingernails digging deep into the expensive fabric of his shirt as he drove you over the edge.
“Mikey—fuck, yes, right there,” you sobbed, your eyes rolling to the back of your head. He was terrifyingly skilled, his tongue moving with an administrative precision that completely wiped your mind clean of any thoughts of charts or sales.
You tugged on his hair as a low, guttural groan escaped his own chest, the deep vibrations of his throat sending waves of electricity straight through you. Just as you were about to reach your peak, he slipped two fingers deep inside you, his thumb maintaining a relentless, agonizing rhythm on your swollen center.
“Cum for me, baby,” he muttered against your skin, his voice a commanding, ragged whisper. “I know you want to. Give it to me, you’ve been such a good girl...”
The orgasm crashed over you like a tidal wave, a loud, breathless scream echoing off the high ceilings of the bedroom as your body convulsed around his fingers. Michael held you firmly through the intense waves, his lips lingering gently against your thigh until the trembling finally subsided.
Slowly, he slid up your body, pulling you tightly against his chest as the room descended into a heavy, comfortable silence. But Michael could never let the quiet linger for long.
Cupping his face, you look up into his deep, expressive eyes. He just held you, his thumbs tracing the line of your jaw, his gaze softening into something so intensely vulnerable it made your throat ache.
“You know...” he began softly, his voice tracing a nervous, vulnerable line in the dark. “We could always just go to the awards ceremony together. End the mystery.”
You let out a heavy sigh, the warmth in your chest instantly souring into irritation. “Michael, we’ve talked about this a hundred times. We can’t.”
“Why not?” he pressed, his arms tightening around you.
“Because it would destroy the branding we’ve spent years building,” you said softly, turning your head to look at him. “Your father would lose his mind if he saw us together, and my management would have an absolute stroke. My whole image is built on being the untouchable, alluring girl next door. If I walk in on the arm of the biggest star on the planet, I immediately get swallowed up by your shadow. I become a footnote in your story.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” Michael muttered, his eyes narrowing. “We don't even have official dates yet. Joe doesn't control my personal life anymore, and your manager shouldn't be dictating your’s either. I’m tired of the sneaking around.”
As much as a part of you screamed to give in, the deeply ingrained fear of losing everything you had fought for held you back. You had trusted your management team since you were fourteen years old; they had made you a superstar. How could you throw their strategy away for a secret romance?
Michael watched the rejection form on your face. With a bitter sigh, he abruptly pulled away, leaving a cold, empty space on the mattress where his warmth had just been. He slid out of bed and began gathering his clothes from the floor, pulling his shirt on in tense, aggressive movements.
“Mike, where are you going?” you asked, pulling the silk sheet up to cover your chest.
“Home.”
“Are you seriously angry with me right now?” you asked, your voice softening with a rare vulnerability.
He stopped fastening his cuffs, standing at the edge of the bed as he stared down at you. When he spoke, the velvet honey of his voice was completely gone, replaced by a sharp, venomous bite.
“You know what? Going with you would probably be the worst thing for my image anyway.”
Your jaw tightened, a flash of hot anger piercing through your chest. “Excuse me? Where the hell is this coming from?”
Michael snapped his belt into place, letting out a harsh, sarcastic chuckle. “I mean, why would I want to walk the red carpet with a girl who doesn't even have a backbone? You let your managers walk all over your personal life, you follow their little rulebook like a child, and then you let the guy you claim you ‘can't stand’ fuck you like this almost every single week. Your priorities are completely backward.”
You bolted upright in bed, your eyes flashing with absolute rage. “It takes two to tango, Jackson! Don't you dare sit there and act like an innocent bystander in this arrangement!”
You threw the sheets aside, quickly pulling on your undergarments before stepping out of bed to confront him directly by the door. “And I have plenty of spine. You’re just not worth fighting for.”
Michael scoffed, stepping into your personal space until he was looking directly down at you, his brow furrowed in deep, profound hurt. He raised a hand, his index finger firmly jabbing against the center of your chest.
“I’m not worth fighting for? Think about everything I do to see you. Think about the risks I take. We’ve been fighting against each other since we were fourteen years old. If that doesn't mean a single thing to you, then you’re just lying to yourself. Like you’ve been doing for years.”
The words struck you like a physical blow. You stared at him, your throat tight, completely unable to find a counter-argument because, deep down, you knew he was entirely right.
The heavy, suffocating silence stretched between you.
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I thought,” Michael whispered bitterly.
He grabbed his keys from the dresser, turned on his heel, and strode out of the room. A second later, the heavy thud of the front door slamming shut echoed through the empty house.
For the first time in your entire life, you collapsed back onto the bed and cried over Michael Jackson.
The months that followed were an absolute blur of obsessive work. Driven by the unresolved pain of that night, you both poured every ounce of your souls into your respective crafts. You pushed your vocal tracking to its absolute limit, ensuring every lyric bled with raw emotion, while Michael locked himself in the studio to finalize the editing of his groundbreaking short films.
The tabloid press went into an absolute feeding frenzy, comparing every single single, outfit, and chart position. It grew so exhausting that during an exceptionally frustrating studio session, you dialed his private line. The moment he answered, you simply spat, “Stop copying my shit!” and slammed the receiver down before he could utter a word.
Michael stared at the dead receiver, a slow, hot flush creeping up his neck. But despite the anger, hearing your voice had sent a familiar, electric thrill straight down his spine. He couldn't help but watch your music videos on VHS loops for hours in his studio, falsely claiming to his crew that he was merely “studying the competitive choreography.” In reality, he was completely spellbound by the raw, fiery command you held over the screen. He missed you so much it physically ached. This fierce public chase was the only way he could feel close to you. He had even penned a secret, baseline track about your tumultuous dynamic, She’s Trouble. a song he knew could never see the light of day from her.
The final breaking point came when you intentionally aligned your album's premiere date with his. He was so upset but he couldn’t focus on that now, he had an early screening of thriller to present. Of course he invited you and you took the invitation with haste.
You arrived at the premiere gala looking like an absolute vision. You wore a custom-tailored designer gown that hugged every curve, your hair cascading in voluminous, perfect curls, your makeup highlighting the sharp, fierce confidence in your eyes. The paparazzi line went absolutely hysterical the moment you stepped onto the carpet.
After completing your interviews, you were standing near the VIP lounge chatting with Janet when a gentle, familiar tap landed on your shoulder.
You turned around to find Michael standing there in his iconic red leather jacket. A breathtaking, soft smile broke across his face as he immediately stepped forward and pulled you into a tight, lingering embrace.
Before you could pull away, his lips brushed the shell of your ear, his voice a low, teasing whisper. “You look absolutely beautiful, baby. Did you dress up like this just for me?”
A familiar shiver ran down your spine, but the memory of his parting words still burned. You pulled back, rolling your eyes with an icy, sultry smirk. “Don't flatter yourself, Michael. I could show up to this room in sweatpants and everyone would still be all over me.”
You turned and walked away with a slow, deliberate swing of your hips. You knew his eyes followed you through the crowded room, and you relished the torment it caused him.
The screening was a historic masterpiece; you sat in the dark theater, your chest tightening as you realized Thriller was going to completely redefine the music industry forever. It was a terrifying reminder that you needed to go bigger, bolder, and more aggressive if you wanted to survive the wake of his success.
And you did. Your subsequent music video took the world by storm, sending sales through the roof. The press immediately began egging on the commercial warfare. During a chaotic press conference, a reporter shouted over the noise, “Do you think your record is going to surpass Michael’s historic sales?”
You paused, slowly lowering your sunglasses to look directly into the camera lens with a brilliant, teasing smile. “Let’s just say Michael’s had an incredible run. But records are made to be broken. I’d tell him myself, but I think he’s already sweating the charts.”
You walked away, leaving the press room in absolute chaos. Deep down, you prayed that public jab would finally provoke him to call you late at night to come put it on you. Make you eat those arrogant words against your mattress.
But Michael possessed an iron will. He saw the broadcast, his fingers tightening around his glass until it nearly shattered, but he refused to pick up the phone. He wasn't going to lose the game. He would wait for the ultimate war: the 56th Annual Academy Awards.
The night of the Grammys was an absolute thunderstorm of glamour and high stakes. The Shrine Auditorium was vibrating with pure, electric anticipation. Your management team was hovering over you like security guards, celebrating the massive, historical night you were poised to have.
You looked like absolute royalty in a custom, off-the-shoulder midnight-blue Armani gown entirely encrusted with dark sequins that caught the light often. Your hair was styled in massive, dramatic Hollywood curls, your skin flawless under the continuous bombardment of camera flashes.
To satisfy your label's publicity strategy, you had brought an attractive, rising young Hollywood actor as your official date. He was handsome enough, but the entire arrangement felt strictly transactional, a plastic, hollow smile for the cameras while his hand rested awkwardly on your waist.
Then, you saw Michael.
He looked devastatingly beautiful, a triumphant king arriving to claim his throne. He wore a structured, navy blue military hussar jacket completely covered in sparkling sequins, anchored by massive gold epaulets on the shoulders, a broad gold sash draped diagonally across his chest, and intricate gold braiding on the cuffs. He wore his signature single crystal glove, and on his arm was the gorgeous Brooke Shields.
A sharp, suffocating knot of pure jealousy tightened in your throat. You forced a radiant, plastic smile onto your face as they approached your section.
“You look absolutely stunning, both of you,” you said, your voice dripping with sweet, professional poison.
After exchanging polite pleasantries, you tried to engage in standard small talk, but you quickly realized Michael wasn't listening to a single word you were saying. Though he was nodding politely to Brooke, his eyes were fixed like twin lasers onto the young actor standing beside you. Your date was talking to another interviewer so he had not noticed Michael. He was staring absolute daggers into the man’s forehead.
Brooke remained entirely oblivious to the silent warfare, happily complimenting your gown. Suddenly, Michael cut right through the conversation, his voice dangerously low.
“Who is this?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the actor's face.
You wrapped your arm tightly through your date’s elbow, offering a brilliant, competitive grin. “Oh, where are my manners? Michael, Brooke, this is my date for the evening.”
The actor eagerly extended his hand, gushing about how profound an honor it was to meet Michael. Michael shifted gears instantly, donning his smooth, philanthropic public persona. He shook the man’s hand, offering a polite, entirely fabricated compliment about his latest feature film. The young actor practically beamed with pride, completely blind to the fact that Michael looked like he wanted to physically tear him away from your side.
Before the tension could explode, the house lights blinked, signaling that the telecast was about to begin.
The rest of the night descended into a dizzying, historic blur. You and Michael traded wins across every major category, the presenters alternating your names in a relentless sequence that had the entire auditorium on their feet. By the final stretch of the evening, you were tied at a staggering seven Grammys each.
Everything came down to the final, prestigious category of the night: Album of the Year.
You sat in your row, your fingers tightly crossed in your lap, your heart hammering against your ribs as the presenter opened the envelope.
“And the Grammy goes to... Thriller, Michael Jackson!”
The room exploded into an absolute frenzy. While a tiny pang of disappointment hit your chest, a far larger wave of genuine pride washed over you. Thriller was an undeniable masterpiece. You stood up, clapping enthusiastically as Michael made his way up the steps to the stage alongside Quincy Jones.
He accepted the trophy, delivering a beautiful, humble speech thanking his family, his label, and his fans. You assumed he was wrapping up, preparing to settle back into your seat, when Michael suddenly took off his aviator sunglasses. His dark eyes scanned the front rows until they locked directly onto yours.
A small, wicked smirk played at the corner of his lips.
“This album wouldn't be half as passionate without our constant, late-night... debates,” Michael said into the microphone, his voice echoing perfectly through the auditorium. “Thanks for the creative fuel, applehead. This award is ours, but the bragging rights are officially mine for the year. So, thank you to my dearest rival, for keeping me so thoroughly... inspired. I couldn’t have done it without you, sweetheart.”
The audience let out a collective, gasping laugh, the celebrity rows turning around to look at you as the television cameras instantly panned to your face. Your jaw dropped slightly at his sheer audacity, but your veteran training took over in a split second. You looked at him and brought your hands together to form a perfect heart, and blew a sarcastic, stunning kiss straight up to the stage.
That beautiful, brilliant bastard.
When the main event finally concluded and the backstage corridors cleared of the heavy press crews, you managed to slip away from your management team. You walked down the quiet hallway leading to his private dressing room, clapping your hands together in a slow, rhythmic tempo to announce your arrival.
Michael whirled around from the vanity mirror, his eight trophies glittering on the table beside him.
“Well, I guess that officially makes me the loser of the wager,” you said, a soft, genuine smile breaking across your face as you stepped into the room. “Congratulations, Mike. You earned every single one of them.”
The fierce, competitive wall he had maintained for months completely crumbled. A massive, brilliant smile illuminated his features, and he stepped forward, wrapping his arms securely around your waist to pull you into a fierce, desperate hug. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his chest rising and falling as you both just stood there, finally basking in the quiet safety of each other's company.
“Thank you,” he whispered against your skin, his voice thick with genuine emotion. “It really does mean the world coming from you. Jokes on that stage aside... I meant every word. This record wouldn't exist without you pushing me to be better every single day. Even when we weren't talking.”
Michael pulled back slightly, his large, gentle hands coming up to tenderly cup your face. He leaned down, pressing a soft, lingering kiss against your cheek that sent a wave of familiar warmth radiating straight to your heart.
“Cupping his face, you look up into his deep, expressive eyes. “Well... what exactly is your idea of what you want to do to me?”
Michael didn’t answer right away. “Go out with me,” he pleaded softly, his voice a gentle, trembling whisper. “Please.”
You stepped back slightly, staring at him in complete disbelief. You couldn’t believe he still wouldn’t let this go, that even after everything, he was still pushing against the invisible walls built around you both.
“Come with me instead,” he urged, reaching for your hand again. “Just a drive. No cameras, no press, no labels. Just us.”
Your chest tightened until it physically hurt. God, you wanted to say yes more than you wanted your next breath. It was the third time in the years you’d known each other that he had cornered you like this, completely dropping the fierce, competitive industry masks you both wore in public to offer you something incredibly real. But the terrifying weight of your reality crashed right back over your sound mind.
You swallowed the heavy lump in your throat, forcing a cold, detached look into your eyes that didn't belong there.
“I can’t, Michael,” you said softly, taking a deliberate step back to put a clear, professional distance between your bodies.
Michael’s hopeful smile faltered. A flash of genuine, devastating hurt crossed his features before he quickly tried to mask it. Your voice trembled slightly, but you forced it to harden, anchoring yourself to the script your management had drilled into your head.
“Michael, think about it. Just look around us. My manager explicitly warned me in the dressing room tonight after your little stage stunt. Your team is thinking the exact same thing, even if they haven't had the guts to say it to your face. An open relationship wouldn't be good for my image. And it certainly wouldn't be good for yours.”
“My image?” Michael scoffed softly, shaking his head in absolute disbelief as he took a step back. “I don't give a damn about the image when it comes to—”
“Well, I have to!” you snapped, the agonizing frustration of the forbidden boundary finally boiling over into the quiet room. “We are supposed to be rivals, Michael! The public absolutely thrives on the drama. If they see us together, the entire illusion breaks. Your fans will think I’m just using you for your status, and my label will think I’m losing my edge. We belong to two completely different worlds right now, and they simply cannot cross.”
Michael stared at you, his jaw tightening into a hard, rigid line. The raw vulnerability vanished from his eyes, replaced instantly by that proud, stubborn persona he used to shield himself from the world. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his dark aviator sunglasses, and slipped them over his eyes, effectively hiding himself from you once again.
“Is that really what this is to you?” he asked, his voice suddenly dropping into a cool, professional, and terrifyingly distant register. “Just a matter of PR and record labels? Baby, we give ourselves to each other. Everything. And you care about your fucking management?”
You stared at him in utter shock. The word tasted heavy and foreign coming from his mouth. he’s never cursed so vulgar.
Michael looked down at you for one long, agonizing second through the dark lenses. Then, he gave a slow, curt nod of absolute resignation.
“Understood,” he said quietly. “Goodnight, then.”
He turned on his heel and strode out of the dressing room. His silhouette disappeared down the dimly lit hallway, leaving you standing entirely alone in the quiet, freezing backstage corridor, wishing more than anything that fame hadn't written the rules for you both.
You couldn't even pretend to enjoy the rest of your night. The celebratory atmosphere of the evening felt like a mockery. Your manager, your security, your peers—everyone kept asking if you were going to attend the exclusive afterparties, but you just moved through the crowds briefly, offering a short, hollow response: “No.”
You went straight home. Kicking off your expensive heels, you collapsed into a chair at your kitchen table, still wrapped in the midnight-blue Armani gown. You felt completely pathetic. You felt like the biggest, most cowardly person alive. You had never meant to let this secret, complicated relationship get so far out of hand; you should have just stayed strangers from the very beginning. You should have kept your distance and listened to the warnings.
“I don't have a backbone,” you whispered aloud to the empty room, your voice cracking in the silence.
You put your head in your hands and finally broke down, the frustrating, suffocating pressure of the past few months finally breaking through your defenses. It was all your fault. You never followed what your heart actually wanted; you always let someone else pull the strings and control your life.
As you wiped your eyes, a small glint of silver caught the corner of your vision. Sitting on the counter was the small, framed picture from 1972. The first photograph you and Michael had ever taken together. Your eyes grew misty all over again as you traced the younger versions of yourselves. Back then, you had thought those three weeks of rehearsal were the absolute worst days of your life, but you hadn't appreciated who you were spending them with.
Beyond all the superficial arguing, Michael had actually tried to reach out to you by the end of that week. He had pulled those silly little pranks just to irritate your manager or his brothers, trying to make you smile. He had genuinely tried to guide you through the industry. You had taken every single piece of his kindness for granted, and you absolutely hated yourself for it.
You couldn't let it end like this. You had to make things right.
Slipping out of the heavy gown, you threw on some casual clothes, grabbed your keys, and drove yourself straight to his Encino estate. When you pulled up to the security gate, you told Bill to let you in. He recognized your face immediately and obeyed without a word.
Praying that Michael was locked away in his private recording studio rather than the main house, you hurried down the stone path and knocked firmly on the heavy wooden door. You stood there waiting in the cool night air, your heart hammering against your ribs. For a long moment, there was nothing but silence. Then, his muffled voice drifted through the door.
“Please leave. I’m awfully busy as of now.”
The tone sounded so deeply depressed it made your chest ache. You let out a soft sigh, leaning closer to the wood. “Michael... it’s me. Please let me in. I just want to talk.”
You stood out there for two agonizing minutes, the silence stretching so long you were just about to turn around and walk back to your car in defeat. Suddenly, you heard the sharp click of the lock.
The door swung open. Michael stood in the entryway, the bright studio lights catching his face. His eyes were bloodshot and heavily rimmed with red.
“What do you want?” he asked coldly, his posture rigid.
Your hands started to tremble a little, your throat tightening before you could speak. “I just want to talk. Please. If that isn't too much to ask.”
Your voice was completely pleading, stripped of any competitive edge. Michael stared at you, the wires in his brain clearly working overtime as he weighed his decision. He looked off to the side, letting out a heavy breath, before turning around and walking back into the depths of the studio.
“Come in.”
Your shoulders instantly relaxed, a massive wave of relief washing over you. Walking in slowly, you gently closed the heavy door behind you, praying this conversation would find a way to fix what you had broken.
Michael crossed the room and sank into the oversized leather chair near the massive soundboard. You walked over to the velvet couch, making yourself comfortable on the edge of the cushions. Looking around the space, you noticed his journal pages and loose sheets of lyric paper were scattered all over the floor around his feet. Inside the vocal booth, his headphones were still hanging carelessly on the hook. You guessed that he must have been writing a song while you were busy wallowing in your own despair at home.
The funny thing was, he had been doing the exact same thing. Michael secretly prayed you wouldn't notice the fresh, damp tear stains blurring the ink on some of those papers.
You let the silence linger in the heavy, air-conditioned room for a moment, gathering your courage before you finally spoke.
“Michael.”
“Yes?”
The single word hung suspended in the quiet air.
“I’m sorry.”
Michael didn’t look up to meet your eyes. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the soundboard, his long fingers mindlessly tracing the metallic edge of a volume fader. He looked so incredibly small in that massive chair, the broad, invincible shoulders that had dominated the Grammy stage just hours ago now completely slumped under the dim studio lights.
“You’re sorry,” he repeated. It wasn't a question. His voice was a flat, exhausted whisper that cut far deeper than any shout ever could have. “For which part? The business part? Or the part where you looked me in the eye and told me all I was to you was a PR strategy?”
“For all of it,” you choked out, your voice completely fracturing. You leaned forward on the couch, desperately wishing you could reach across the vast chasm between you. “Michael, please look at me. You were right. You were entirely right tonight. I... I don't have a backbone.”
That made him pause. His fingers stopped their restless movement on the board. Slowly, he turned his head, his bloodshot eyes locking onto yours through the dark curls falling over his face. He looked incredibly guarded, waiting for the catch.
“I let my manager get entirely inside my head,” you confessed, the hot tears finally spilling over your lashes and tracking down your cheeks. “I let them dictate my life, my career, and my heart. I was so terrified of losing what I fought to build, so scared of the labels and the press, that I let them turn me into a absolute coward. But sitting at my kitchen table tonight, looking at that old photo of us from '72... I realized I’ve been taking you for granted since the literal moment we met. Back when the world told us we were supposed to hate each other, you were the only one who actually guided me. You pranked our managers just to make me smile. And I threw all of that away because I was too weak to stand up for us.”
Michael’s jaw clenched tightly, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. He looked down at the scattered papers on the floor, the ones smeared with his own fresh tears.
“We’re supposed to be enemies,” he murmured, his voice cracking with a terrifying, raw vulnerability. “That’s what sells records, right?”
“Screw what sells,” you sobbed, the raw ache in your chest finally breaking through every last defense you owned. It was a sickeningly sweet, agonizing sort of pain to finally lay it all bare in front of him. “I don't care about the charts anymore. I don't care about the public narrative. I hate the rivalry, Michael. I hate pretending I don’t care about you when the absolute truth is... the truth is I am utterly consumed by you.”
You stood up from the couch, your legs trembling beneath you, and took a tentative step toward his chair. This time, he didn't pull away or retreat. He just watched you approach, his chest heaving under his red button-down shirt.
“I miss you even when we’re standing in the exact same room,” you whispered, wiping a stray tear from your chin. “I think about the charity gala all the time. Remember how much fun we actually had? Behind the scenes, we were supposedly cutthroat, but on that stage... when we performed together, it was the only time in my life I felt truly alive. And when we’re alone, behind closed doors... when it’s just our bodies and no labels...” You paused, a breathless, aching laugh escaping your lips. “It’s the only time I ever feel safe. I’ve been so incredibly stupid. I’m so, so sorry, Michael.”
Michael stared up at you, the icy, proud mask he’d worn backstage completely shattering into pieces. A single, heavy tear leaked from his eye, tracking slowly down his cheek. He stood up from the leather chair, moving slowly, as if he couldn't quite believe you were real, or that you were finally delivering the exact words he’d been dying to hear for years.
“You mean it?” he whispered, his voice trembling like a frightened child's. “No more business between us?”
“Never again,” you promised, stepping directly into his personal space. “I’ll fight for you. I’ll fight anyone for you from now on.”
Michael let out a shaky, broken breath. Before you could utter another syllable, his hand shot out, his long, slender fingers tangling firmly into the back of your hair, pulling you sharply and completely against his chest.
The collision of your bodies was pure electricity, a frantic, explosive release of months of pent-up denial, longing, and suppressed passion. When his lips met yours, it wasn't the tentative, careful kiss of a secret lover. It was possessive, bruising, and deeply desperate. He tasted like the bitter edge of heartbreak mixed with the sickeningly sweet relief of absolute surrender.
You let out a soft gasp against his mouth, and Michael instantly took the invitation. His tongue slid past your lips, deep and demanding, claiming you in a way that made your knees go completely weak beneath you. He groaned deep into the kiss, a low, rumbling sound from the back of his throat that vibrated straight through your own chest. His other hand gripped your waist, his fingers digging firmly into your hip through your clothes, pulling you so flush against his thighs that you could feel the frantic, rapid thudding of his heart beating in perfect sync against your own.
The kiss shifted, slowing down, moving from a space of desperate panic to an intoxicating, deeply detailed worship. Michael’s lips were impossibly soft as he tilted your head back to angle the kiss deeper, drinking you in as if he had been starving in a desert for a lifetime. He nipped gently at your bottom lip, soothing the tiny sting with the slow swipe of his tongue, making you whimper helplessly against his mouth.
His touch softened to a tender caress, his hand sliding from your hair down to gently cradle your jaw, his thumb wiping away the damp trail of your tears while his lips continued to slide perfectly against yours, slow and heavy with promise. Every stroke of his tongue, every breathless inhale you shared in the dark space between your mouths, felt like an absolute sealing of a pact. The world could scream, the managers could threaten, but in the dim light of the studio, tangled securely in his arms, the enemy had completely won, and you had never felt more free.
When you finally broke away for air, both of your faces were flushed, your lips glossy from the intensity. You stood there, staring at each other in the quiet studio, your breathing ragged.
A slow, boyish smirk began to play on Michael's lips. “So... did I officially get my prize?”
You rolled your eyes playfully, letting out a soft laugh before leaning back in to give him another sweet, lingering kiss. “Yes, Michael. You did win. You won everything.”
Your eyes grew hooded as you looked up at him. He looked absolutely beautiful, a lovesick, triumphant smile gracing his features.
“I have another request, if you don't mind,” he murmured, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous register.
He leaned back down, pressing a trail of burning kisses along the side of your neck. He began to gently nip at the ultra-sensitive spot right where your shoulder met your throat, making you let out a soft, whiny whimper as your hands gripped his waist.
“What is it?” you breathed, your mind already starting to haze over.
Michael paused, his breath hot against your skin as he whispered against your ear, “Are you going to reward me in a different way for winning?”
Before you could even answer, his hands found the hem of your shirt, sliding up the bare skin of your waist with an unmistakable, fierce hunger. You wrapped your legs around his waist as he lifted you effortlessly onto the wide expanse of the mixing console, scattering a few loose lyric sheets to the floor.
There were no managers here. There were no charts, no public eye, and no corporate strategies. As Michael leaned down to claim your lips once more, his hands tracing the lines of your body with absolute, unrestricted freedom, you realized that losing the wager was the best thing that had ever happened to you. Under the dim, warm lights of the studio, you finally gave him everything he had been fighting for. This time, you weren't running away.
♫: when y/n receives a call from quincy for a song collaboration with her ex, michael jackson, the lyrics trigger flashbacks of their past relationship. (pt. 1)
(heh.. part 2? just a short lil one bc i wanted to try out that white border thingy majiggy, hope it isn’t too confusing. <33)
˖ ݁♬⋆.˚𝄞.
your name was everywhere. it started with a breakout single that took over the charts, but within two years, it had evolved into a cultural shift.
you weren't just topping the charts; you were redefining them. every music video you released became a trend, every live performance was praised, and sold out stadiums had practically become your second home.
the media couldn't get enough. the critics, who were usually impossible to please, finally agreed on a title that stuck to you:
ᴛʜᴇ Qᴜᴇᴇɴ ᴏꜰ ᴘᴏᴘ.
it was a heavy title to wear at your age, but you wore it effortlessly, dominating the industry with every move.
but with every queen, there's a king, and the world only recognised one.
michael jackson. you hadn't thought of the name in years. but with his overwhelming fame, it was inevitable you were going to be reminded of him. so imagine your surprise when your producer, quincy jones, called you to ask you to duet with him.
“look, daughter. i need you down at westlake studios right now.” quincy's voice spoke through the receiver, booming with late night energy that always signaled a burst of creativity. “i've got a track that is basically screaming for you. smelly is already in the booth tracking his parts-“
“no.” you cut in instantly, the word slipping past your lips before you could even think to stop it as your fingers tightened around the phone. “no, q. find someone else. i'm not doing it.”
quincy paused on the line, completely caught off guard by your sudden pushback, oblivious to the panic he had just caused. “excuse me? since when is it like you to turn down a masterpiece? you two are the biggest pop stars on my roster. i'm not taking no for an answer. baby, come here now.”
as the line went dead, you let out a heavy sigh, slowly lowering the phone against the kitchen counter. you groaned as an overwhelming rush of memories infiltrated your mind.
you and michael had been each other's entire world during his thriller era. you were more of an underrated icon in the background, still trying to find your footing in the industry, while he was transitioning into a global superstar.
it had been a quiet secret. you two had shared everything together; he was your first kiss, your first love, and the first person you had ever given your body to. you had been his first real taste of it, too.
but it quickly became so much more than just innocent romance. it was intensely physical, a raw pull that you both became completely consumed by. since you were each other's very first time, the realisation of that connection turned into a sexual addiction.
behind those locked doors, the world outside vanished, replaced by an insatiable need for each other's body. you couldn't keep your hands off one another. every stolen hour was spent tangled together, learning the curves of each other's bodies, driving each other crazy in a cycle of desire that neither of you knew how to break.
but then, the world became too loud. the suffocating security, the paparazzi, and the weight of both of your careers had slowly choked the life out of the relationship. with broken hearts, you had mutually agreed to let each other go, prioritising your own careers over love.
you hadn't looked him in the eyes since the day you walked out of his life. and now, he was fully in his bad era, and the thought of facing him made you weak in your knees. but you couldn't say no to quincy, not when your career was tied to his commands.
reluctantly, you grabbed your things and stepped out into the night air. affirming yourself that “it would be just fine” as you slipped into the back of your private car. your personal driver quietly put the vehicle in drive, the city lights blurring outside the window as the car smoothly glided through the streets, heading straight toward the man you never thought you'd talk to again.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖༘⋆𐦍⊹₊ ⋆｡˚
the heavy scent of quincy's cologne, and studio air hit you instantly. the room was bathed in the familiar lighting of westlake, but the energy inside was powerful, vibrating with the presence of the two men sitting inside.
quincy was spun around in his producer's chair, a thick pair of headphones resting around his neck as he boomed with laughter. but your eyes skipped right past him, immediately locking onto the figure sitting on the sofa behind the mixing console.
michael.
he looked entirely different from the boy you had loved. his hair was longer, styled in beautiful curls that framed his face perfectly, and his jawline looked sharper under the lights. he seemed more confident. he was dressed in a black button down shirt, a pair of sunglasses plastered on his face.
as the door clicked shut behind you, michael's laughter faded. he lowered his glasses, his dark eyes snapping over to you, and for a second, the calm composure he was wearing broke.
“there she is!” quincy clapped his hands together, his voice shattering the tense silence that had stretched across the room. “the queen herself. come on in, daughter.”
you forced your fake smile to stay perfectly in place, praying your voice wouldn't betray how nervous you were. “hey, q.” you said smoothly, stepping further into the room and keeping your posture relaxed. you turned your gaze to the couch, your heart racing as you looked right at him. “hey, michael.”
michael cleared his throat, slowly standing up from the sofa. he offered a soft smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, his voice low when he spoke.
“hey.” he smiled, his eyes searching your face, scanning the perfect mask you had put on. “it's... it's really good to see you.”
“likewise.” you lied smoothly, the fake smile never wavering as you crossed your arms, trying to keep yourself from fidgeting under his intense stare.
“alright, alright, enough with the introductions.” quincy cut in, oblivious to the suffocating tension that had settled over the room. he rolled his chair back toward the mixing board, flipping a few switches and clicking a button on the intercom. “we're burning daylight, and i've got a hit to finish. michael just wrapped some parts. i need your voice on it.”
quincy handed you a sheet of lined paper covered in michael's messy handwriting. just looking at the font of his writing made a sharp pang of nostalgia hit you.
“the song is called morning dew.” quincy explained, turning up the monitors.
your heart stopped. you glanced up from the paper, your eyes automatically darting back to michael. he was already watching you, his hands stuffed into his pockets, an unreadable expression on his face. of all the names in the world, you thought, a wave of irony washing over you.
“go ahead and step into the booth with him.” quincy ordered, waving his hand toward the double paned glass. “let's do a quick run through y/n, so you can read the mood..”
michael didn't say a word. he just gave a polite nod and turned to walk toward the isolation booth. you swallowed hard, your throat suddenly feeling dry as you looked down at the lyric sheet in your hands, the words staring back at you in his distinct handwriting.
forcing your legs to move, you followed him inside the booth, the soundproof door confining the two of you alone together.
michael walked up to the dual microphone setup, adjusting his headphones slightly before turning his dark eyes back to you.
“you look beautiful.” he complimented, his voice slightly shy, the bad persona seemed to soften for just a split second, a hint of the boy you used to love peeking through. “i want to say.. congratulations on... everything”
“thanks.” you managed to say, your voice tight as you adjusted your own headphones, intentionally avoiding his eyes. you couldn't look at him, not when he was looking at you like that. “congrats to you, too. the new album is.. good.”
before he could reply, quincy's voice cut through the monitors. “alllright kids, let's roll it from the top of the verse. daughter, give me that first line.”
the track began to play, a burning beat filling your ears as you looked down at the sheet music, tracking the lyrics. you stepped up to the microphone, cleared your throat, and delivered the opening line.
“as we sip champagne watching purple rain...”
the words came out perfectly on pitch, your tone professional, but flat and hollow. you sang it like you were reading a book, the fact that you were in your ex's presence was making you detached from the music.
the track abruptly cut out, the silence in your headphones deafening. quincy leaned forward over the console, pressing the talkback button. his brows were furrowed as he stared at you through the glass. “whoa, whoa, stop. what was that?” he shook his head, looking completely baffled.
“y/n, you're singing like a robot. where is the passion? this song is about love. i need you to feel it, baby. stop overthinking and let it out.”
you swallowed hard, your cheeks burning slightly. you didn't dare look to your left, where michael was standing inches away, silently watching your every move. you tightly gripped the edge of the music stand, nodding at quincy through the glass. “sorry. run it again.”
you took a deep breath, forcing yourself to forget michael was there just enough to let the music in. when the track restarted, you leaned into the mic, letting your natural warm voice take over. you sailed through the first two verses smoothly, your voice blending flawlessly with the sultry beat, making quincy nod in approval behind the mixing board.
but then the chorus hit, and it was time for the overlay. suddenly, michael stepped closer to his microphone, his presence completely engulfing the small booth. the distance between you vanished as the music swelled, and his voice cut into your headphones.
“girl, you’re sexy in the mornin'..” you both sang, his dark eyes locking directly onto yours, burning right through the calm facade you were trying so hard to keep up. “you know you turn me on, babe.”
your heart leapt into your throat, avoiding his eyes as your voices intertwined perfectly, tracking the melody in flawless harmony.
“you know the sun rise for you..” he sang, his tone dipping into something soft and intimate, a genuine ache bleeding into the words.
“for you..” you ad-libbed right after him.
“give me that mornin' dew..” you both sang together, the blend of your vocals completely undeniable. it was a perfect match, a reminder of exactly why quincy had put you two together, and why you had been so attracted to each other years ago.
“you know that i want it.” you both continued, the low register of his voice vibrating in your ears, his eyes darkening as the lyrics grew heavier.
“i want you moanin' every mornin'...” you both sang, his voice dropping into a honest tone that turned you on.
hearing those words leave his lips ignited something inside of you, instantly melting your heart. it hit your composure, a reminder of how easily he could still pull your strings, and your mind completely drifted off to when he in fact, made you moan every morning..
“again?” you teased, a sleepy laugh escaping your lips as the morning sun filtered through the cracks of the curtains. you were tangled in the messy white sheets, your skin still warm from the night before as michael suddenly rolled over and pulled your hips against his. you giggled softly as his hands found your waist, tugging you closer until there was no space left between you.
“c’mere then, ma.” michael whispered against your ear, his voice thick with sleep and desire. he trailed lazy kisses down your neck, his fingers tightening on your skin as he pulled you under him once more, turning your quiet giggles into loud moans before the day had even begun.
the track abruptly looped into a quiet transition, but you were still frozen, your heart racing as your mind raced to catch up with the present.
“y/n? whatcha thinking about over there, daughter?” quincy's amused voice cut through the monitors, snatching you right out of your thoughts.
your cheeks instantly flared a deep red as you cleared your dry throat. “mm.. q, sorry. i was just... just feeling the music.”
next to you, michael let out a soft chuckle that only made you more flustered. when you risked a tiny glance at him, you saw him lost in his own mind as well, his fingers nervously drumming against his thigh. he knew exactly what you were thinking about.
quincy shrugged, continuing to play the track as you both prepared for the next line.
“you know the sun rise for you..” you sang back, your voice a bit unstable under the weight of his stare, the raw tension in the booth becoming almost too hot to handle.
“give me that mornin' dew.” you both finished in a breathless harmony, the final note lingering in the air.
the track faded into the pre-recorded chorus, your blended voices pouring through the headphones in a seamless wave of sound. through the double paned glass, you could see quincy losing his mind, he was throwing his head back in approval, and grooving in his chair.
before the chorus could even finish winding down, quincy slapped the talkback button. “yes! that is what i'm talking about! the chemistry is perfect, y'all!” he barked out a laugh, completely oblivious to how hard your heart racing.
“we ain’t done yet though. y/n, stay right there. the beat is looping back. i need you to take this next part just on your own. michael, back off the mic and let her ride it.”
michael gave a slow nod, stepping back just half a pace, but he didn't take his eyes off you. his chest rose and fell in time with yours, waiting to see what you would do.
the beat dropped into a deeper groove, stripping away the heavy layers to leave the track completely open for you. you looked down at the lyric sheet, your eyes widening slightly as you read the next lines. they were extremely explicit, dripping with a raw sensuality that felt too dangerous to sing with michael standing in the same room as you.
you hesitantly leaned into the microphone, praying your voice wouldn't get weak on you. “ah, i get so excited when i feel you touch my thighs..” you sang, squeezing your eyes shut.
“my hands are cold, ma. can you warm them up for me?” michael asked, his voice a low octave as he held onto the steering wheel of his car. you nodded weakly, your breath catching in your throat as his large palm made contact with your skin, sliding slowly up from your knee. his hand was extremely cold, creating a slow path up your inner thigh. you whimpered, parting your legs slightly as his fingers moved higher, sliding underneath the hem of your skirt until he felt the soft fabric of your panties. “you're so wet for me, baby..” he groaned softly, his long fingers hooking into the lace, pressing against your the direct wetness as you let out a small moan.
from the corner of your eye, you saw michael's jaw tighten, his eyes locking onto yours as if he could see the exact memory playing in your head.
“baby, slow down 'cause i'ma be late for my ride.” you continued, holding the notes effortlessly, even though your mind was elsewhere.
you were on top of michael after begging him to let you be in control, the sudden shift of roles making your heart race as you sank down onto him. you were riding him passionately, the heat between you consuming the room. his large hands locked firmly onto your waist, his thumbs digging deep into your hips to guide your movements. he threw his head back against the pillows, a low groan ripping from his throat as you rode him harder, second guessing your decision to be on top from how deep it felt inside of you. “michael.. i..” you panted, biting your lip as you tried your best to handle the overwhelming sensation between your legs. “keep going, mama. you can take it.” he reassured, his voice thick with hunger as you slid up and down him in a rhythm that left the both of you completely breathless.
“i'm feelin' faded out my mind... a little morning dew..” you closed your eyes, the lyrics completely mirroring the sensations rushing through your body.
“there's a river inside that flows from our love... you can tap in but don't, don't tap out, oh.”
“don't stop, michael. please, don't stop.” you had whispered against his lips, unraveled as you chased your climax. he growled softly, flipping you onto your back without breaking the connection. his curls were sweaty as he pinned your wrists above your head, his body burying into yours with desperate thrusts. “you're taking me.. so well, baby.” he breathed heavily, a needy sound escaping him with every push. he kept pounding into you, driving you closer and closer to your orgasm, his muscles tensing as he held himself deep inside you.
“it's a slip in the slide, that front to back love. right there baby, don't tap out, tap out.”
“right there, michael, please.” you begged, your back arching off the mattress, your voice breaking as he hit that sweet spot perfectly. “there? hm? you like that?” he asked, a dark smirk tracing his lips as he held your legs up high. he let out a loud moan as he thrust heavier and deeper into you, hitting the spot over and over again. “god, always so tight for me, mama.” he choked out until your body collapsed around him, his lips instantly kissing your forehead to tell you how good you did.
the final note lingered in the air as you opened your eyes and realised michael was staring right at you through the light of the booth. he knew. he had remembered every single second of it, too. the same question ran through both of your minds, maybe y’all should run it back?
(my BEST attempt at second person, i’m a bit rusty.)
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･
growing up right next door to the jackson family meant your childhood was a mixture of brotherly love and music. long before the sold out shows, the screaming crowds, and the chaotic fame took over, it was just you and them.
out of all the brothers, michael was always the one you were closest to. you were the one who could tell exactly what he was thinking just by the way his shoulders slumped after rehearsals, you were the one he ran to when the pressure got too heavy, hiding away at your house just to talk about things that had nothing to do with his life.
you had seen every single phase of him. you knew the boy who used to belt out motown hits with a voice bigger than his body, and you knew the awkward teenager who used to hide in his bedroom to write.
but looking across your living room floor right now, it was getting harder and harder to just see him as the boy next door. michael seemed more grown now, (even though y’all were the same age) sitting cross legged on your carpet, carefully unfolding a brand new plastic twister mat.
while he was distracted, smoothing out the bright dots, you took a moment to just observe him. your eyes traced the beautiful shape and texture of his afro, and then your gaze dropped down at his hands next. michael always had big hands and you couldn't help but wonder how those massive hands would feel wrapped around your body.
“m’ telling you, m’ gonna win!” michael said, his voice cutting through your thoughts. it was that familiar melody, sounding so sweet and pure. he glanced up through his afro, a playful spark in his eyes. “been practising alot, you don't stand a chance.”
you leaned back on your hands, a slow smirk spreading across your face as you locked eyes with him. “okay, show me what you got then, michael..” you tilted your head, letting your gaze drop down to his jeans, then slowly back up to the silk button down shirt left casually open at his chest, letting him see exactly where you were looking.
michael's cheeks instantly turned a deep shade of red under your heavy gaze. he let out a breathless little giggle, brushing it off as he quickly looked down at the spinner to hide his sudden shyness.
“c’mon.. let's... spin the wheel..” he stammered, clearing his throat, trying to seem unfazed as he gave the arrow a hard flick. the plastic clicked loudly, spinning round and round before landing on a section.
michael looked at it, a small grin tugging at the corner of his lips. “right foot, blue.” he called out, stepping onto the mat first. he moved with grace, his leg extending out as he firmly planted it on the closest blue circle.
you reached over, your fingers flicking the spinner next. it landed on left hand, red. leaning forward, you chose the red dot that required you to stretch directly in his space.
as you placed your palm down, your arm brushed lightly against his shin. you felt him freeze for a split second, his breathing hitching slightly at the sudden contact. you tilted your head up, looking at him from your low position on the mat.
“your turn.” you smiled, watching the way his chest rose and fell beneath his open silk shirt.
he nodded, his large hand coming down to spin the wheel again. the arrow landed on right hand, red.
michael hesitated for a second, his eyes locking onto yours with nervousness. he shifted his weight, his palm coming down onto the red circle. because of the angle, his chest was suddenly hovering inches away from yours.
he was trapped right above you, trying his best to keep his balance without letting his body touch yours, but the size of him made it almost impossible.
the view of you from his position changed everything for him. michael's gaze, which usually darted away whenever things got too intimate, suddenly found itself stuck to your body.
from this angle, he couldn't help but notice the way the light in your living room caught the soft curves of your figure. he swallowed hard, his eyes darkening further as he observed the enticing plump of your ass that your shorts didn't even try to hide.
“michael?” you asked, the volume of your voice snapping him out of his thoughts and making him shudder. “you wanna wear my shorts or somethin'? why you looking there?” you giggled, teasing him slightly.
he let out a breathless laugh, his eyes snapping back up to yours. “m’ not.. i-i wasn't looking at your.. shorts.” he stuttered, trying to object, but his deep voice cracked slightly under the weight of his attraction.
“mm, you sure you weren’t?” you raised an eyebrow, rolling your eyes, deciding to play it off. it didn't take long before his gaze drifted back down to your shorts again.
“you're.. you're just trying to distract me so you can win.” michael whispered, his voice dropping into a slightly deeper register that turned you on.
you shifted your weight, making the plastic mat crinkle loudly beneath you. the movement brought your hips closer to his, almost brushing against the front of his jeans.
“well.. is it working?” you asked innocently, tilting your head. michael's gaze dropped immediately to your lips when you asked that question.
“u-uh...” he cleared his throat, a helpless sound that betrayed how badly he actually wanted hide his feelings.
sensing his shy nature, you backed down. “you know what..? you win this round, i give up.” you sighed heavily as you moved to pull yourself up, settling back onto your knees right in front of him.
you lifted your head up slightly, looking at him through your eyelashes with a look that was pure temptation. you weren't forcing yourself onto him, but you were laying out every single piece of bait, knowing exactly what it did to his shyness.
michael completely froze. from his perspective, looking down at you on your knees, his mind went dirty, thinking about how you could be in that position right between his legs, with your big doe eyes staring up at him as you..
“don't look at me.. like that.” he breathed out, his voice attempting to be strict but coming out more weaker than intended.
instead of looking away, you let out a little hum, leaning closer. “look at you like what, michael?” you furrowed your eyebrows, keeping your tone completely innocent while your eyes stayed locked onto his lips.
he swallowed hard, a visible blush creeping up his neck and darkening his cheeks. “you're... you're teasing me.” he slowly sat down with his legs crossed, still staring at you on your knees.
“no i'm not?” you answered softly, shrugging as you tugged at the knee part of his jeans. “i’m just sitting.. normally.”
watching his timid reaction, you cleared your throat. “here. why don't we start a new round?” you said with a little chuckle, breaking the heavy tension just enough to let him breathe.
you reached over and gave the cardboard arrow a sharp flick. the plastic clicked rapidly before landing on right hand, green. you leaned backwards carefully, and placed your palm on a green dot, turning so that you were facing him.
“my turn.. to spin.” he stammered as he reached blindly for the board, his eyes glued to the smooth skin of your thighs right in front of him. he gave the arrow a weak flick as it spun and landed on left knee, yellow. (why is there no yellow!)
there was a yellow dot he could go to, and it was the one directly between your knees. michael looked at the dot, then looked up at you, his large eyes begging for mercy. to make the move, he would have to bring his knee right into your space, settling it between your thighs.
“i.. i don't think i can do that one.” he whispered, a nervous smile tugging at his lips as his hands twitched against the mat. “i have to do another. you're blocking the dot.”
“m’ not blocking it.” you replied innocently, shifting your knees wider, parting them slightly to reveal the bright yellow circle beneath you. the movement made your shorts pull tighter against your hips, exposing the soft curve of your inner thighs. “see? there's plenty of room for you, michael.”
michael blinked, quickly burying his face in his large hands for a second to hide how red his cheeks were. “you’re so bad.” he groaned through his fingers, his muffled voice full of sweet shyness.
“don't complain if i fall then..” he whispered as he lifted his leg, carefully bringing his knee forward to plant it right onto the yellow dot, but because he was so focused on trying not to brush against you, his balance betrayed him horribly.
the slick plastic of the twister mat slid an inch to the side and michael's knee slipped completely. instead of him falling on top of you, his hands instinctively reached out to grab you for support, pulling you towards him as he fell backwards, his back hitting the floor with a thump.
with a soft gasp, you landed on his lap, your thighs settling perfectly over his waist. michael was frozen, his chest panting as his massive hands rested awkwardly on your waist.
he instantly blushed having you sit right in his lap, his eyes wide and completely flustered as he stared up at you.
“god, michael..” you let out a shaky breath. “i didn't know you were this bold.” you gulped nervously, clinging to humour as you joked softly, letting out a little chuckle.
michael let out an overwhelmed squeak, his eyes widening. “i-i didn't mean to.. it was an accident.” he stuttered defensively, his voice cracking completely into a desperate whisper as his fingers twitched against your waist, debating whether he should push you off or keep you right there.
but as he moved nervously beneath you, trying to find his words, you felt something hard pressing firmly against your centre. through the fabric of his jeans, right against your thigh, was the sensation of a growing erection. your eyes widened slightly as you tilted your head and looked down between your bodies, your gaze locking onto the noticeable bulge straining against his jeans.
when he realised where your eyes were, he let out an embarrassed noise, instinctively trying to cover his crotch with one of his hands. “d-don't look.” he whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut for a brief second, his eyelashes fluttering wildly. “oh my god, please don't look...”
“m’ sorry y/n, it’s b-because..” he rushed out, trying to defend himself. “you kept... you kept doing that thing with your shorts, and looking at me like..”
hearing those words roll out of his mouth made your own breath hitch. the playful smirk melted right off your face, and heat rushed up your face. your teasing hadn't just embarrassed him, you had turned him on to the point of an erection. “so.. it's because.. of me, michael?”
michael's eyes snapped open at your question, he looked completely embarrassed to be put on the spot, his bottom lip trembling slightly as he tried to find the right words. “i told you...” he exhaled, a helpless sound. “i told you to stop teasing...”
even with your heart racing at the closeness, you still couldn't help but view him as the innocent boy you'd known forever. you figured he was just experiencing a typical boy thing, completely oblivious to the heavier desire growing inside of him.
with a nervous chuckle to ease your own sudden flustered expression, you let your hands rest gently on his shoulders. “well, what are you going to do about it, hm?” you asked, glancing at his noticeable bulge.
“i... i can't do anything about it.” he stammered as he completely lost his grip on any remaining composure. his large hands, still resting awkwardly on your waist, twitched nervously, wanting so badly to hide his face. “i have to go.. to the.. to the bathroom.”
looking at him like this, so flustered and melting under your gaze, just proved exactly what you had always believed about him. he was just innocent michael. you figured he was too shy to ever actually do anything with you, too gentle to ever take action, even if his body was clearly screaming otherwise.
purposely playing into that innocence, you leaned closer, letting your weight settle deeper against his thighs. “why?” you asked, your fingers lightly tracing the collar of his open silk shirt. “just do.. whatever you need to do, right here.”
you genuinely expected him to blush and tell you to “stop it”, or clumsily try to get you off his lap. yet instead, his jaw clenched, as he stared right through you from beneath his afro. “you think i can just...” he sighed. “do you know? what you're asking me.. to do?”
you just smiled softly, you figured his warning was just his sweet nature talking. after all, this was your childhood friend, and you knew him very well. right? he was too gentle to ever break out of his shell.
“yes, michael..” you replied softly, your voice completely innocent as you rolled your eyes. “m’ telling you. you can do.. anything you need to do.. here.”
michael remained still, his entire body contemplating over your words as they sunk in. he stared at you intensely as if he were trying to process the fact you had given him permission to fulfill his very desires. “a-anything?” he whispered.
you swallowed hard, your own cheeks burning as you gave him a slow nod, still underestimating what was brewing inside of him.
that nod was his breaking point. the sweet boy next door was gone, consumed by your invitation. a low breath escaped his parted lips, and before you could even register the shift in his energy, his massive hands moved from your waist.
his fingers slid down, his palms cupping the smooth skin of your thighs with warmth that made you gasp. his touch was laced burning hunger as his fingers caressed the soft flesh of your thighs, making you whimper. michael shifted his weight with grace, effortlessly rolling you over onto your back against the plastic mat.
the movement left you completely breathless, your eyes widening in genuine shock as his tall frame followed you down, looming directly over you. within a second, he was hovering right over you, pinning you flat against the carpet as his eyes burned down into yours.
“i can do anything i want?” he repeated, his voice dropping into a raspy register right against your ear.
his lips met the soft skin of your neck, delivering a series of gentle kisses. the contrast of his sweet personality against the way he was pinning you down made your mind spin.
did you really know your childhood best friend?
you were completely trapped beneath his large frame, the undeniable hardness of his erection pressing between your thighs with every breath he took. his fingers slid slowly up from your thighs, tracing the curve of your waist before rising hesitantly toward the bottom of your shirt.
you felt the warmth of his palms as they settled right under your breasts, his thumbs brushing lightly against the fabric. he paused there for a second as if he was still trying to process that you were actually letting him do this.
“anythin’, y/n?” he breathed out again, his eyes snapping back up to lock onto yours, heavy with desire.
you could only manage a small nod, your voice entirely trapped in your throat. the weight of his body above yours, paired with the heat of his large palms resting right beneath your breasts, had completely taken away all your playful confidence. you were the flustered one now.
his fingers hooked into the hem of your shirt, and with a swift motion, he pulled the fabric up, sliding it up your stomach and over your head. his eyes tracking the movement of your chest before dropping heavily to the full plump of your breasts.
a visible shade of dark red darkened his cheeks, but he didn't look away. the sweet boy who used to hide his face in his hands was completely gone, and in his place was a man looking down at you with pure hunger.
he gently cupped your breasts. the feeling of his massive hands against your bare skin made your eyes flutter shut, a soft whine escaping your lips. michael let out a low sound in return for the noise you made, his thumbs slowly brushing over the sensitive tips. his lips continued to press kisses against your skin while his hands squeezed and shaped your breasts, basically worshiping them.
he grounded his lower half, pressing the hard erection against the centre of your thighs. a loud groan tore from his throat as he began to slowly rub himself against you, dry humping you through the heavy fabric of his jeans.
every slow, heavy push of his hips sent a sensation of heat straight through you, pinning you effortlessly to the floor. you could feel exactly how hard he was, straining against his zipper with every desperate thrust, completely consuming you in his sudden desire.
“michael...” you gasped out, your voice trembling as you tilted your chin up to find his eyes. he paused his movements for a moment as he looked down at you.
“i think.. i think..” he whispered, his own face burning as he looked right into your eyes, seeing all your previous teasing drained from you and replaced by the mutual desire. “i need more.”
hearing those exact words come out of his mouth made you wet with anticipation. it was no longer than a few seconds before the tip of his length brushed directly against you, and an overwhelmed moan escaped his lips at the sensation of your wetness.
but as he felt himself right at your entrance, he paused, his arms shaking as he supported his weight over you, looking down at you with wide eyes. “is that okay? if i have.. more?” he whispered, his voice cracking completely into a naive plea as he realised he was completely inexperienced. “i just.. i don’t know how to..”
your heart swelled at the raw honesty in his voice, your own inexperience making you just as nervous, but the heat between your thighs completely took over.
you reached up, your hands framing his burning cheeks. “just do it, michael.” you exhaled, lost in the moment. “it’s okay.”
hearing your approval, he instinctively pushed forward, his full length inside you in one heavy thrust.
“fuck...” you gasped out, the curse word ripping from your throat as your fingers dug into his shoulders, your eyes squeezing shut at the overwhelming stretch of him filling you completely.
the profanity hung in the air, and even in the moment of pleasure, michael's face instantly burned a deeper shade of red at the dirty word. he wasn't used to cursing at all, and hearing that word fall from your lips only turned him on more.
a whimper escaped him as his large hands gripped your hips, holding you to the crinkling twister mat. because he was entirely inexperienced, he didn't know how to ease into it or pace himself. instead, he immediately began to move to what felt right, moving deeper as he chased the intense pleasure.
“ma, it feels so good.” he whined breathlessly, burying his face right into the crook of your neck, his chest heaving against your bare breasts as he thrust into you with power. “do.. do you feel good too?”
your hands gripped his shoulders tightly, your fingernails digging slightly into his shirt as another push of his hips made your head roll back against the mat.
“yes... it f-feels good.” you gasped out, your voice trembling as you tried to catch your breath beneath him. you felt the entirety of his length burying itself deep inside you with every movement. “but... but michael, is it supposed to be so.. so deep?”
hearing the vulnerability made michael let out a low groan. the active realisation that he was filling you up, and stretching you out like this sent a wave of realisation.
“m’ sorry..” he whimpered breathlessly, his chest heaving as he tried to control the rhythm of his hips. he pulled back just an inch to look down at you, his large eyes lost in the sensation.
“you're just so tight, mama. feels so tight around me.” with a needy whine, he tried to restrict himself, burying only half of length inside you, a desperate noise escaping his lips when he felt your warmth again.
the shallower movement was a different kind of torture, sending a sweet sensation straight to your core as he carefully withdrew and pushed back in. michael's eyes fluttered shut as he tried to pace himself, his teeth sinking into his lower lip to keep from crying out. every slow roll of his hips made him tremble, his muscles aching from holding back.
noticing his restriction, you reached out to spread your legs wider, hinting at him to go deeper. “it's okay, michael..” you moaned, your voice weak but determined as you looked up into his dark eyes, giving him your full permission to lose control. “i think.. i-i can take it now.”
hearing your words, a helpless groan tore from his throat. you let out a broken moan, your legs instinctively wrapping around his waist to try and cope with the deep length of him as he drove back inside. the sudden tightening of your legs around his hips made michael lose it. he let out heavy pants, his head snapping back as his body shuddered.
“oh god... mama.. i’m gonna-“ he stammered, his voice cracking into a desperate pitch as he lost what little control he had left, chasing the climax that was rushing over him.
his pace hit your own sensitive centre in just the right way, your toes curled tightly and your eyes rolled back. an intense feeling of pleasure went straight through you.
“me.. me too, michael..“ you bit your lip, your voice breaking as your own orgasm crashed over you completely. your inner muscles clamped down around him in a spasm, pulsing against his length.
hearing you cry out his name and feeling your body squeeze him so hard broke the last of his control. with a loud moan, michael arched his back, pulsing his release deep inside you as your bodies laid in a shared orgasm.
“y/n...” he whispered breathlessly, the reality of what just happened beginning to wash over him. the raw energy that had taken over him just moments ago began to dissolve, and the sweet boy slowly started to peek back through.
his afro was beautifully messy, his eyes filled with vulnerability as he searched your face. a sudden look of panic flickered in his eyes, his bottom lip trembling as he realised how much he had lost control. “sorry..” he apologised softly. “i just-i really didn't know what to do..and you felt so good, mama. did i hurt you? are you okay?”
you let out a shaky breath, a gentle smile tugging at the corners of your lips as you looked up at his worried face. the lingering sensation of your orgasm was still making your body tingle, and seeing him look so panicked and sweet after being so unexpectedly rough was almost endearing.
you reached up, your hands sliding slowly from his shoulders to cup his burning cheeks, your thumbs brushing over his cheekbones to soothe him. “it's okay. you didn't hurt me, i promise. it felt... it felt good.”
hearing your reassurance, the panic in his dark eyes instantly melted into relief. a soft sigh escaped his lips as his long fingers tangled into your hair, holding you close as if you were something fragile.
“really?” he asked against your skin, a genuine smile finally breaking across his face. “you're not just saying that to.. make me feel better? because... because i really didn't know what i was doing. i just.. couldn't handle how.. warm you felt.”
you couldn't help but let out a nervous giggle at his honesty. you shifted your hips a tiny bit underneath him. the movement made his breath catch in his throat, his eyes instantly widening as you both felt the warmth of your bodies still joined together on the mat.
you bit your lower lip, a nervous yet playful spark returning to your eyes as you wrapped your arms securely around his neck, hiding your burning face in his shoulder for a quick second before looking back up at him.
“why.. why don't you try again?” you asked, your voice a little shaky and flustered as you whispered right against his lips. “you know, just to.. to practise being a little more gentle?”
“y/n...” he whined out, his voice cracking with desperate desire as a shy smile tugged at his lips. “oh my god... you're gonna kill me, mama.”
Tags; nsfw, religious guilt, sub!reader(blk), softdom!mike, manipulative mike (if you squint), smut, slight age gap, inexperienced reader, first time!
Sunday, September 7, 1980.
Today, you wore a pink blouse with a black skirt, skin color tights, black mary janes, and a gold cross necklace. It was teetering the line between summer and fall, just hot enough to wear short sleeves but cool enough for an extra layer. The morning started off cool, blue, and breezy.
Your mother decided to stay after church today to help with some volunteering. Usually, when you have to stay a little longer, you go and mingle with mates your age or do some Bible study in the church library. Your younger sister, whom you’re five years older than, decided to spend some extra time with the youth group.
One of the youth group instructors, Michael, was a few years your senior. He was poised, confident, dreamy, sharp, and mysterious.
However, you feel a little guilty for fancying him in the house of worship. Attraction is normal, but sometimes your gaze lingered a little longer than what you considered appropriate for church.
You can’t help but notice how huge and veiny his hands are when he’s straightening up stuff, or how his adams apple moves in his throat when he laughs, or how his church clothes hug him perfectly. Today, he’s wearing a white button up with grey slacks, black loafers, and a gold bangle on his wrist.
Your families mingled with one another at times, sharing warm glances and good graces. His family was huge. It was mindblowing compared to your household with just one sister.
Sometimes you get caught up in one of those overly long church conversations– where you two would exchange glances and small conversation every once in a while.
You decide to occupy one of the Bible study rooms while you wait for your sister and mother. Usually, you’d go over verses, take notes, and apply them to your daily life. The room was very quiet most times, and if you were lucky, you landed a study session on your own.
You couldn't help but hover over 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5,
“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God.”
The passion of lust. You wondered what that could possibly mean. Does it mean that lust is passionate? Does it mean that passion automatically makes you lustful, sinful?
As you sit to yourself analyzing the passages, your mother approaches you softly.
“Y/N, why don’t you go help Michael in the fellowship hall? He’s setting up for an event coming up this week.”
There’s no way your mother is asking you to go help the guy you can barely look at without crumbling. Assuming he’s in there with other people, you reply,
“Sure, mother, I’ll help. It’ll probably get done faster with a few more people.”
You try to appear calm, but in actuality you just want to beg to go home, or even come up with an excuse to go find your sister. What is this, judgement day?
You nod toward your mother and head to the bathroom before joining Michael in the fellowship hall. You go to the mirror and fix up your hair, which has been pressed down with a hotcomb, falling against your armpit.
“Okay, Y/N. You can do this, you look great. It’s just Church. It’s just Church.”
You take a deep breath and head down the hall. You reach the door of the fellowship hall and peek through the window. There he is. One of his shirt buttons is open because it's a little hot on this side of the building.
The way his brown skin illuminated under the bright, buzzing light was almost unsettling. Your eyes fixed on his chest going up and down with every breath he took.
You quickly snap your head back and try to gain some couth. You take one more deep breath before you hesitantly push the door open.
He stops and turns around immediately, his eyes locked with yours. And you, of course, stand there like a dumbass not knowing how to move your mouth.
“Hey, y/n, right? Whatchu’ you doin in here? I’m just setting up some stuff for Wednesday’s service.”
“Well-uh-I… my mom sent me here to help you. I figured it would get done faster if I helped you all,” You stutter. Way to play it cool.
Michael chuckles warmly, “Well, actually, there is no all. It’s just me. I guess two is better than one, huh?”
Your eyes widen at the news. You knew that you’d have to be in his space, but all alone? This is torture. Yet, you wanted nothing more than to be around him even though you barely know him.
“Oh. I didn’t know it’d just be us two.” You smile.
“Yeah, I guess you’re stuck with me. Don’t seem so excited.” He teased-----
Little did he know, being stuck with him was paradise. Torturous paradise, that is. He was so much taller than you, and a bit more mature. He felt like a guiding light in a world full of ambiguity. It intimidated you a little, but it made him ten times more attractive.
You set your Holy Bible down on a chair next to you, as you’re doing so, you accidentally knock over one of the cheap table decorations. As you bend over to pick it up, Michael can’t help but notice the ride of your skirt. It’s a “modest” length, but it's just short enough to allow his mind to wander.
“Sorry, sorry.” You blush. Great. You’ve been in the same room as him for approximately forty-five seconds and you’re already making a fool out of yourself. Of course.
“It’s alright. That stuff’s cheap as dirt. Wanna help me clean tables? You can do that while I go bring in the heavier stuff from the closet.”
“O-okay. Yeah, sure!” You respond eagerly.
Michael’s eyes lit up at your response. He liked how eager you were to help him and found your obvious shyness endearing. And that pink blouse complimented your complexion so well.
You begin spraying tables down, the cleanliness of them feeling like an oxymoron considering the temptation that lies only a few feet away from you. Michael continues moving heavier boxes around the area, flashing reassuring smiles here and there.
While you were in the middle of scrubbing a table, he accidentally bumped into you from behind as he was setting something down.
Your eyes shot open and your breath hitched. You didn’t know exactly what came over you, but that three second contact following made your chest feel unbearably hot.
“Oh!” You exclaimed, feeling a bit taken aback by the sudden thrust.
“Sorry–sorry. You gotta watch where you’re bending.” He smiled. You noticed that he suddenly dropped the box he was holding from chest level to waist level, though you didn’t think much of it and reassured him that it wasn’t a big deal.
Trying to find any way to distract him from the sinful thoughts circling his mind, he decides to start a conversation.
“You uh, you enjoyed the sermon today?”
“Yeah, I did. It was interesting,” you reply, “I um.. I care a lot about that kind of stuff. Y’know, staying pure.”
The pastor preached about adultery, fornication, things of that nature. You’d never had sex before, but you occasionally did explore yourself down there.
And, well, let's just say your mind has wandered during.
In a way, it almost felt like he was pointing his finger directly at you. A dirty sinner.
“Staying pure?” He chuckled, “That’s what you think you’re doing?”
Your cheeks begin to turn red as you start to play with your necklace. “Well, yeah. I’ve never had, y’know, relations..” You pause, “I-I’m not married. It would be wrong.”
“Besides, I’ve never really had a boyfriend anyway,” you blurt out, “My mom was always kinda strict about that stuff.”
He reacts to the information as if he’s a little shocked. “You? Never?”
“Never.” You reply.
He scans your outfit while his eyes stay fixed on your chest a little longer than intended. “I'm shocked, y/n,” he chuckled, “I’m sure plenty of guys would like you. You dress up nice, and you seem to have a good head on your shoulders.”
You can’t help but flash a cheesy, telling smile. “Wow, Michael, thank you. Yeah, I guess they do like me sometimes but.. I just don’t engage much. I’m very shy.”
“I understand, I’m shy too.” Michael replies.
In the fellowship hall, there lies a small room, with just enough space for two people to be able to move around without making a huge mess.
“Can I uh, can I show you something?” He asked. “It’ll be quick, we’ll still have time to set up some stuff. Promise.”
“It’s just… I think I can teach you something valuable. I used to be a lot like you, you know. He added, flashing a smile while twirling his curls around his middle finger.
“Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.” He leads you toward the room (which you didn’t know existed until this moment), you follow behind him until he suddenly pauses.
“Bring your Bible with you.”
You’re not sure why he’s requesting this specifically, but you naively pick it up and bring it with you, assuming that you’re simply going to go over a chapter or a verse.
He leads you to a dimly lit room with dark blue carpet, a table, a stack of boxes, and a mirror that sits on top of the table.The wooden fan with a light switch attached whirrs above you two.
Unbeknownst to you, he locks the door as he shuts it behind you both.
“Now, listen, y/n. You do realize that there are ways to stay pure and still enjoy yourself, right?
He asks.
“Wh-what do you mean?” You ask, slightly concerned, but still trusting.
“Well, you told me you’ve never been with a guy before. What about when you get married, or even just have a boyfriend? Wouldn’t you want to know a thing or two before jumping into things?” He pauses, “I-its better that way. Trust me.”
He’s the youth instructor; surely he probably knows how to navigate a relationship while still being religious. If he says it's ok, then it has to be.
You’re inexperienced, sheltered, shy, untainted. That’s everything he liked about you other than your pretty little face, and the way your voice melted in his ears like molten. Something told him, perhaps his conscience, that it’s a little sick to think of it that way, but lets face it,
Sin feels good.
You look around the room before meeting his eyes again. Maybe he’s right, you’ve often thought about how embarrassed you may be by the time you get a boyfriend. You didn’t want to date some sex machine, but you also knew you didn’t want them to be just as clueless as you. It’s nice to be guided.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re right. But.. sometimes I feel embarrassed..” You admit, looking up at him through your lashes, still cradling your bible in your arms.
“You don’t have to feel that way, it's natural.” He reassures you.
“Here, sit in this chair. I want to show you something. It’ll help you get over your little embarrassment. You’ll realize how silly it is.” He adds.
You, naive and curious, sit down in the chair while he stands over you.
“What could he possibly be trying to teach me? I hope it’s not one of those ‘look in the mirror and affirm yourself’ nonsense. That’s pretty lame.” You say to yourself.
You sit down in it slowly, looking him straight in the eye as you lower yourself down. Your breath gets heavier before you can even notice.
“Now, just look straight at yourself.” He instructs, softly bringing his palm to your face and turning it straight to your reflection.
He kisses your neck, your cheek, and then your lips. Your eyes fly open and you pull away out of instinct. “Michael! Wh-what are you doing?” You whisper, “ We’re in Church. My mom.. If she found out”.
“Nobody is going to find out.” He softly interrupts.
“But what about God Michael? He can see us. He’ll judge us. I don’t wanna go to hell.”
He smirks and rubs your shoulder. “He won’t mind.”
You look away from his gaze, scared that you won’t be able to say no to anything if you look at him for too long. That soft, tantalizing voice and those big beautiful eyes.
How could anything feel wrong with a man like that?
“I–I’ve just.. I’ve never.” You pause.
“But I want to.”
Michael smirks with approval and scans your face, “I thought so.”
“Now, let's get these off you.”
He slips off your black skirt, and then your pantyhouse. Now you’re only left in a blouse and panties, which tell on you immediately.
“Oh, wow, y/n. You’re already so wet f’me. That doesn’t seem pure to me.”
Before you can answer, he slips them to the side. He turns your face away from his and toward the mirror, locking eyes with you through the reflection.
He takes his long, veiny fingers to your center and begins rubbing gentle circles. Your hips instinctively buck up and your breath gets shaky. As you look at your face in the mirror, you almost look like you’re about to cry. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you for a second.
You draw your head back as he continues rubbing you. You can’t even get a word out, you just try your best to stay quiet. Until you can’t. You try to close your legs while he’s between you, but he pushes your thigh open with his hand.
“Mmmnn– Michael. My stomach.”
“That’s where you’re supposed to feel it, baby. It’s okay to let me make you feel like that. Stay still for me, please.”
Only being able to utter a moan in response, you bury your head into his chest. But he isn’t gonna let you off that easily. He moves your face toward the reflection once again.
“I didn’t say you could turn away, angel. Or have you had enough?”
He retreats his hand back, causing you to squirm. “No!” You beg, “Please. Please. I promise I won’t move.”
He smirks and continues rubbing you relentlessly, using his free hand to hold you in place while you succumb to his touch. He made sure to hit the spot that feels so good it almost hurts. He knew you’d probably never felt anything like that before, and he wanted to make sure that he was the first person to introduce it to you.
“You’re so good f’me, y/n. Look at you, in God’s house like this. Do you usually get this wet during Church? Hmm?” He whispered in your ear.
Before you could even answer, he slipped a finger into your entrance and watched you tense up and then relax around the newfound pleasure.
“Oh, Michael. Mmm.. it feels so good, f–”
You catch yourself. You’re getting your clit played with in the fellowship hall, but God forbid you let a curse word slip out your lips on top of it.
“Huh? What were you about to say, angel? I can’t hear you.”
You shake your head side to side trying your best not to cum right then and there.
“It feels s-so good. Please. I feel so dirty.”
He suddenly stops, which makes your body retreat.
“Stand up.” He instructs.
He undoes his belt, then opens the zipper to his trousers. He pulls himself out of the hole and grabs you by your waist and pulls you closer to his manhood— causing a broken sigh to escape your lips.
You stand up, and he bends you over the table, leaving you eye level with the reflection. His eyes meet yours in the mirror, and he grips your hair softly to get a better view of your face
“Can I take you, angel?” He asks, lips to yours, as if he’s feeding the words to you. His breath was hot against your skin, his sweet, musky cologne grounding you with his touch.
“Y-yes.” You cry, “Even if it makes me dirty.”
He pushes himself inside of you, stretching you out completely. He’s so long, wide, and warm. You’d never felt anything like it before.
“Michael,” You gasp, “Michael. Oh my God. I-it hurts. Please, my mother. She can’t know.”
“I know baby, but you can take it.”
He grabs your Bible, opens it, and flips to Matthew 6:9-13. He props it up on the mirror.
Read f’me, angel. It’ll cleanse you of your sins, you won’t be dirty anymore.”
“And make sure to look at me.” He adds.
You let out a shaky moan and bite down on your lips. Whatever chance you had of getting into heaven, surely it’s long gone now.
“O-our. Fuck– our father in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, oh God.”
Your eyes fill up with tears combined with pleasure, dread, and guilt all at once. You struggle to focus on the words as they all begin to blend together.
For the first time in your life, it’s like your body and mind worked against each other.
“Yes that’s right baby, keep going. Don’t stop. Or I’ll stop”
“Give us this— our daily bread, and forgive us our debts. As we have forgiven.. forgiven our debtors.
You let out a tearful sigh as you try to keep your composure.
Without saying a word, Michael pushes himself deeper inside you and holds himself still and begins twitching inside of you. This new sensation makes your body jump forward, making it difficult to even understand what you’re reading.
“Finish it.” He commands.
“And lead us not into t-temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
