Mak @mvkyis - Tumblr Blog

May 22

Desire, Interrupted

Pairing: Michael Jackson x Fem!reader

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

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

Word Count: 11621

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You froze.

"Who?"

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

You stared at her. Heart thundering.

"Third night?"

"Third night, baby."

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

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

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

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

You took it with shaking hands.

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

You broke the wax seal.

Y/N,

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

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

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

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

With great care, Michael Jackson

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

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

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

₊˚°⊹˚

Thursday came around faster than you could prepare for.

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

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

"You look beautiful, sweetheart."

"Sandra, I am really nervous."

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

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

₊˚°⊹˚

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

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

You stepped inside.

It was empty.

He had bought it out for the night.

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

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

Michael.

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

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

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

"Hi."

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

Then —

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

"I wasn't sure I would either."

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

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

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

You stared at him.

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

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

"Good."

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

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

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

"Yes."

"Will you let me call you?"

"Yes, Michael." You laughed.

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

"Can I —" he started.

You didn't let him finish.

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

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

Then you kissed him.

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

It became something else within about two seconds.

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

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

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

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

So you got in the car.

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

You barely slept that night.

₊˚°⊹˚

That was three months ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He had said not like this.

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

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

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

You had not pushed the subject after that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You had said yes before he had even finished asking.

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

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

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

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

You spent two days running his lines for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

₊˚°⊹˚

You had been nominated.

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

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

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

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

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

Daniel.

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

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

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

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

₊˚°⊹˚

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

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

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

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

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

"The studio had a thought"

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

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

Would you consider going to the luncheon together?

Just as professional dates. Just for the photographs."

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

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

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

You had said you would think about it.

You had thought about it.

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

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

You did not have a boyfriend.

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

So you said yes to Greg.

And you called Michael that night.

You told him on the phone.

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

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

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

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

"are you sure?"

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

"Michael."

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

He hung up before you could say anything else.

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

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

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

So you didn't.

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

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

₊˚°⊹˚

Daniel was waiting at the entrance to the Rainbow Room.

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

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

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

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

Daniel reached for you.

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

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

You inwardly grimaced at the use of that statement.

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

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

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

You forced a smiled at the photographers.

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

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

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

You crossed the room.

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

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

He didn't say anything.

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

"Michael," you said quietly.

"Mm."

"Are you alright?"

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

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

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

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

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

He shook Michael's hand.

He said it was an honour.

He said

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

Michael smiled at him.

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

Daniel laughed. Clapped Michael on the shoulder.

You saw Michael flinch very faintly under the contact.

Daniel went back to his own table.

You turned to Michael.

"Michael —"

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

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

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

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

Everyone could sense the tense energy.

It got worse during the speeches.

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

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

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

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

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

You looked over at the table.

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

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

You tried.

You really did.

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

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

He looped his arm through yours.

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

His face was completely blank.

You felt sick.

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

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

He was already steering you away.

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

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

He did not look at you on his way out.

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

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

And then you were moving.

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

"Darling, wait —"

"I'll be back."

"Greg said —"

"Tell Greg I'll be back."

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

You shoved the door open.

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

You ran.

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

You took a left.

Then a right.

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

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

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

You saw him immediately.

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

"Michael!"

He stopped.

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

He looked at you across the alley.

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

You crossed the alley.

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

You stopped in front of Michael.

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

"Michael —"

"Go back inside Y/N."

"What?"

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

"I don't care."

"Yes you do."

"Michael, I don't —"

"You should." His voice cracked very slightly.

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

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

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

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

You felt something shift very coldly in your chest.

"Make what harder?"

He looked at you.

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

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

"What?"

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

"Michael, what are you talking about?"

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

His voice cracked properly this time.

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

You stared at him.

"What are you saying?"

"You know what they say about me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He didn't flinch.

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

"Y/N."

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

"Look at me."

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

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

You looked.

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

"You see me. Right?"

"Michael —"

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

"I see you. the real you."

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

"Michael, what are you doing."

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

"Don't."

"You're going to leave me eventually."

"Michael —"

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

"Michael — stop —"

"I'd rather you leave now."

You felt the bottom drop out of your stomach.

"What?"

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

"Michael, please look at me — "

"Go back inside."

"Michael — "

"Go back inside. Please."

You reached for him.

He stepped back.

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

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

You could not speak.

"Please."

You could not speak.

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

"Take care of yourself."

He turned around.

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

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

₊˚°⊹˚

You don't remember the cab ride home.

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

You'd asked her to leave eventually.

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

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

You were sitting on the floor of your bedroom.

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

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

You kept replaying it.

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

You kept replaying the wrong parts of it.

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

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

You had let him go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You wished —

There was a knock at the door.

You froze.

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

It was past midnight.

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

The knock came again.

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

You got off the floor.

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

You did not look through the peephole.

You opened the door.

Michael was standing in the corridor.

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

Then he moved.

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

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

His mouth came down on yours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Michael—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You saw his body fully for the first time.

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

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

He was the most breathtaking thing you had ever seen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Don't you dare stop."

He drove into you in one deep, relentless thrust.

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

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

He began to move.

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

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

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

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

"I know," you gasped.

“I love you.”

He said it like it hurt.

“I love you so much.”

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

"I can’t do another almost.”

His hand tightened around yours. The thrusts ragged.

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

"I'm yours. I'm yours, Michael —"

He kissed you again, swallowing your cries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"For which part?"

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

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

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

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

"I don't care."

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

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

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

He caught your mouth in a deep, hard kiss.

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

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