The Glided Mask & The Sea of Stars
✧ Pairings: Dangerous Era! Michael Jackson x Black! Female Reader ✧ Genre: Fluffy ⎜Drama ⎜⎜ Angst ⎜ Slow Burn ⎜sfw ⎜Titanic AU ⎜Historical Fiction ⎜Romance ✧ Warnings: Period-typical racism and classism, verbal harassment, mentions of medical examinations, mild anxiety/panic themes. ✧ Word Count: 1.5 K
✧ Date: April 10, 1912
✧ Slang/Terminology: Steerage (Third Class), Gallows-bird (A person who looks like they’ll be hanged/shady), Toffs (Rich peple/Socialites), Bully-rag (To intimidate), Skiddoo (To leave quickly).
The air in Southampton was a thick, suffocating soup—a cloying mixture of coal smoke from the towering funnels, the expensive, floral perfumes of the Toffs arriving in their motorcars, and the sharp, briny scent of the English Channel. Standing before the R.M.S. Titanic, (Y/N) felt like an ant staring up at a mountain of cold steel and hot rivets. To the rest of the world, this was the "Ship of Dreams," a miracle of modern engineering. But to her, as she clutched the single valise containing her entire life, it was a floating fortress of uncertainty.
She adjusted the worn leather strap of her bag, her knuckles turning a stark white. Inside, the heavy, comforting weight of her medical textbooks pressed against her side. They were her shield. They were her ticket to a life that didn't involve scrubbing the grime from white marble floors or tending to the spoiled children of the aristocracy. In the Americas, she would be a healer. Here, she was just another body to be counted.
"Back of the line, girl! Don't you try to skiddoo past! Move it!"
A police officer’s heavy wooden baton shoved against her shoulder with enough force to bruise, abruptly forcing her out of the queue. (Y/N) didn't stumble. She planted her heels into the soot-covered cobblestone, her dark eyes flashing with a fire that had been stoked by years of surviving the rigid, suffocating layers of the British class system.
"I have my ticket and my papers, sir," she said, her voice steady and resonant despite the frantic thrum of her heart against her ribs.
The health inspector, a man whose skin looked like parchment and whose mustache was permanently yellowed by cheap tobacco, didn't even deign to glance at her documents. He reached out with a calloused hand, grabbing her chin roughly and forcing her head back. "Open up," he barked, poking at her teeth as if he were inspecting a horse at a common market. He twisted her head from side to side, his breath smelling of stale ale and bile.
"Eyes are clear. No lice. Hands?" He flipped her palms over, sneering at the lack of callouses. "Soft. What are you then? A lady’s maid who stole her mistress's jewelry? Or did some Gallows-bird pay your way for a little... 'entertainment' in the Steerage bunks?"
The men around him, a gaggle of low-level dock workers and petty officials, guffawed. Their side-eyeing glances dripped with the filth of their implications, looking her up and down as if she were a piece of meat rather than a human soul. (Y/N) pulled her arm back with a sharp jerk, her spine straightening until she felt taller than the inspector himself.
"I am a student of medicine, sir. I am going to New York to complete my residency at a teaching hospital," she stated with sharpen intellectual authority.
The laughter stopped, replaced by a deadly, cold silence that felt heavier than the ship's anchor. The inspector’s face turned a dangerous shade of purple, his eyes bulging. To him, her ambition was a personal insult—a breach of the natural order. He lunged forward, his fingers digging into the meat of her arm like iron talons, attempting to bully-rag her into submission.
"Don't you get smart with me, girl. A 'doctor'? People like you don't even belong in the infirmary as a corpse, let alone on this ship!" You're nothing but a—"
CLATTER.
A sudden commotion at the First Class gangway drew everyone's attention to the habor. A stack of designer steamer trunks had toppled from a porter’s trolley, spilling silk ties and silver brushes across the dock. In the center of the chaos stood a tall, slender figure draped in a dark fedora and a long, expertly tailored traveling coat that billowed like a cape.
"Monsieur Michael! Over here! Is it true the Jackson family is moving their entire fortune to the Americas?" "Lord Michael, give us a smile for the London Times!" "Is it a French heiress you're looking for in New York, or is the 'Melancholy Prince' staying single?"
Photographers swarmed, their magnesium flash powder exploding in blinding white puffs that mimicked a battlefield. In the distraction, a senior White Star Line official, terrified of a public scandal while the most famous family in the world was boarding, hissed at the health inspector.
"Let her through, you dim-witted fool! We don't need a bloody riot or a bottleneck scandal while the Jacksons are in eye-shot! Just get her on the boat and out of sight. Consider it her lucky day."
The inspector spat on the ground near (Y/N)'s boots, his eyes promising a future grudge. He shoved her toward the dark, cramped entrance of the Third Class. "Get on the boat before I change my mind and toss you in the harbor. A 'doctor'... Lord help America if they're letting your lot handle a scalpel."
(Y/N) didn't look back. She clutched her valise to her chest and stepped into the humid, echoing maw of the ship. Her heart was heavy with a bitter realization: the "great unknown" wasn't just the three thousand miles of ocean ahead—it was the world's stubborn refusal to see her as human.
Meanwhile, several hundred feet above her, a very different kind of prison was being occupied.
The Jackson family moved like an invading royal court through a sea of exploding flashbulbs and screaming newsboys. "TITANIC SETS SAIL! THE UNSINKABLE ERA BEGINS!" they shouted, waving papers with headlines about the "Melancholy Prince of the Palatial Suite." Jermaine was already complaining about the sway of the ship, his hand over his stomach, while Jackie and Marlon were busy tipping their hats to every socialite in a three-mile radius.
"Look at that one, Mike," Marlon nudged his brother, pointing toward a woman in a massive silk hat. "New York is going to be a playground."
But Michael wasn't looking at the women. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, his pale skin—the result of a condition the papers called "reclusive French ancestry"—glistening under the morning sun. He felt the familiar, suffocating itch of the heavy makeup he’d applied to keep the patches of his vitiligo hidden. He felt like a ghost haunting his own body.
He reached into his coat pocket, his fingers brushing against the cold porcelain of a small Peter Pan figurine and the frayed edges of a black-and-white photograph. It was a picture of Latoya, Rebbie, Randy, and Janet. His heart ached. They were back in London, waiting for the "all clear" to join the family once Joe had established their new empire in the States. To Michael, the Titanic didn't feel like a ship; it felt like a giant wall separating him from the people he loved most.
"I want to see the engine rooms," Michael whispered, his voice soft, melodic, and weary. "And the gym... and perhaps the library. I heard they have a first-edition collection. Maybe we could go down, slip away and—"
"You'll do no such thing," Joe Jackson’s voice cut through the air like a whip. He turned, his eyes narrowing to sharp slits as he caught Michael’s hand lingering in his pocket. "What have you got there? That childish toy again? Look at me when I'm speaking. You're a man now, Michael. A Jackson. You are the face of this family's future, not some 'soft' child playing in the nursery. You stay in the suite until dinner. We have appearances to maintain."
Michael flinched, his head bowing. The photographers captured the moment—the "Melancholy Prince" looking down in thought—but they didn't see the way his fingers trembled.
"Joseph, leave the boy be," Katherine intervened, her voice a calm balm over the tension. She stepped close to Michael, her silk gloved hand resting gently on his forearm. She leaned in, her breath smelling of peppermint and lavender as she whispered in his ear. "Don't mind him, Joseph's just anxious about the crossing. Your siblings will be safe, Michael. I’ve packed your books, your poems... even the dolls and toys you like. They're all tucked away in the trunks. No one will see."
Michael looked at his mother, a small, grateful smile ghosting his lips. "I just... I feel like something is shifting, Mother. Like the world is getting bigger and smaller at the same time."
"It's just the sea, baby," she whispered.
As the massive whistles of the Titanic roared, shaking the very bones of everyone on board, Michael looked over the railing. Far below, near the waterline, he caught a glimpse of a woman with skin the color of rich mahogany, looking up at the sky with a look of such fierce determination it took his breath away.
She was a world away from his velvet-lined cabin, yet as the ship began to pull away from the dock, Michael felt a strange, magnetic pull toward the depths of the ship.
One week. They had one week to reach New York.
But as the shoreline of England faded into the mist, the "Ship of Dreams" began its journey toward a destiny that would bridge the gap between the gold-plated ceilings of the First Class and the salt-stained dreams of the Third.
(Y/N) and Michael were on the same path now. And the Atlantic was a very, very big place to be alone.
Chapter 2 ⇒
