i just really want to hammer home that when peoples basic needs are met all crime drops. you do not need a place to put bad people because bad people do not exist, only people who are not being supported the way they should be. rehabilitation and harm reduction are things you need to internalize if you want to make the world a better place.
Summary: You are a staff photographer at Studio 54, working thurs, fri and sat nights. You bump in to the infamous Michael Jackson as the club is in full swing on a Saturday night.
Tags: fluff, meetcute, michael is in his infamous silk shirt, doing press at studio 54, afro and all, he's his shy self, he meets a cute girl and still acts nerdy af, bill is watching from the sidelines with the heaviest side eye
Word Count: 4645
Author’s Note: my first lil ditty, contributing to this awesome tag. i had to give back, bc before the biopic, i had to read fanfics that were 10-15 years old, so thank u for all of ur work!! off to see the movie for the 7th time in imax tomorrow like a freak!
this was originally an OC, hence why it reads the way it does, but if y’all like it I will do a part 2.
If you'd like more, send me an ask ;)
the bass hit different at studio 54.
it wasn't just music, it was a living thing, something that crawled up through the soles of your platform shoes and rewired your whole nervous system before you'd even made it past the velvet rope. you knew this because you'd felt it every thursday, friday, and saturday night for the last eight months, ever since you'd sweet-talked your way into a photography gig with the club's in-house press team.
best decision you'd ever made, bar none.
you pressed your eye to the viewfinder of your canon ae-1 and let the crowd swim into focus. disco light fractured across sequined dresses, wide lapels, feathered hair. a woman in silver lamé threw her head back laughing, a man in a white suit dipped low to the floor, two people in matching gold jumpsuits moved like they'd been choreographed by god himself. you clicked the shutter, click, whirr, and felt the familiar little electric thrill that shot from your fingertip straight to your chest.
you were twenty-three, harlem-born, and you had a camera in your hand in the most electric room on the planet. life, by any reasonable metric, was very, very good.
you wore your hair out tonight, a full, soft cloud of dark brown coils, and had squeezed yourself into a burnt orange halter top and wide-leg tartan trousers that flared satisfyingly at the ankle. a press lanyard hung around your neck, which you hated aesthetically and loved practically, because it meant you could go anywhere. back rooms, the dj booth, the infamous balcony. steve rubell himself had once pointed at your lanyard and given you a thumbs-up as if to say go on, take a shot. you'd taken his photo in return and sent him a print in the mail. he had his assistant send you a written thank you letter, explaining that your work was excellent.
that was the economy of studio 54 and by god, you loved it.
you moved through the crowd the way you always did, fluid, deliberate and grooving. you knew that in a crowd like this, a still body got bumped and a moving one parted the sea.
the dj was deep into his set now, donna summer bleeding into something harder and more insistent. i feel love dissolving at the edges into the opening bars of chic's le freak, and the floor responded like a single organism, hips and shoulders and raised hands all moving with one pulse. you felt it in your sternum. you always did. green, yellow and purple gel lights swirled, casting interesting shadows on vastly interesting people.
you were angling toward the far end of the dance floor, where the lighting did something extraordinary near the mirrored wall. the people there were enveloped in a warm amber haze that made everyone look like they'd stepped out of a renaissance painting. you'd been trying to capture it properly for three weeks, but had consciously kept wasting film. here's to the next attempt, you thought.
you were two steps from your spot when you walked directly into a wall.
except the wall was warm and smelled like sandalwood with a hint of a floral sweetness, and made a very human sound of surprise.
"oh, shoot," you yanked your camera instinctively to your chest by the rainbow patterned strap, protecting the lens, and stumbled back half a step. "i am so sorry, i wasn't —"
you looked up.
then you looked up a little more.
he was tall. that was the first thing your brain logged. tall and lean with shoulders that filled out a dark brown silk shirt unbuttoned just enough to be intentional. he had a face that was almost unreasonably pretty, wide dark doe eyes, a jaw that looked soft but angular and still sincere, a mouth caught somewhere between surprise and amusement. and the hair. lord, the hair. a magnificent afro that seemed to command its own square footage, perfectly round, so lush it had an almost halo effect under the disco lights.
his skin was the colour of warm honey held up to sunlight, smooth and glowing like the room had been lit specifically for him, though you suspected every room felt that way around him without trying.
the second thing your brain logged was that you recognised him.
you'd have to have been living in a cave not to.
"michael jackson, man of the hour," you said. it came out less like a greeting and more sarcastic, given the volume at which you had to shout it for him to hear you.
his expression shifted, the tiniest flicker of something, that particular micro-expression you'd learned to read on famous faces, the brief internal oh, here it comes, before the amusement settled back in, warmer now, almost relieved.
"you're not going to scream, are you?" he said, equally sarcastic. quick-witted, you noted. sharp little mouth.
his voice was softer than you expected, though. a little tentative. but there was a current underneath it, something playful running just below the surface.
"in this room?" you glanced around at studio 54 in full saturday-night effect. "i'd just be contributing to the ambient noise." you shifted your camera strap on your shoulder and tilted your head. "besides, i'm working."
he looked at the canon camera swinging from your side, and something in his face changed. the polite, practiced ease that had surfaced when you said his name, the armour a person builds after fifteen years of being in the spotlight, softened into something more genuine.
"that's a canon ae-1," he said.
you blinked. "...yeah."
"you're shooting with the fifty millimetre?" he shouted over the thrumming bass.
you looked down at your lens, almost involuntarily, then back up at him. "forty. more range in a tight space." you paused. "you know cameras?"
"i know that camera," he said. "i've been looking at one. for a while now."
he was still looking at it the way you looked at a great shot before you took it, with a hunger that was also a kind of reverence. you knew that look intimately.
it was only then that you noticed the man standing about ten feet back.
he was large, not in a threatening way, but in a settled way, like a piece of furniture that had decided where it belonged and wasn't going anywhere. broad-shouldered, somewhere in his fifties, with kind eyes that were nonetheless doing a very thorough and continuous sweep of the immediate area. he wore a dark blazer and looked like he was having fun, professionally. he caught you looking and gave you the smallest nod. not unfriendly. just noting you.
michael followed your gaze and something shifted in his expression. softer. almost boyish.
"that's bill," he said simply. as if that explained everything. as if, somehow, it did.
the dj pivoted again, the opening shimmer of earth, wind and fire's september rolling out across the floor like a wave, and the crowd surged with collective joy around you. someone jostled michael from behind and he stepped closer to you, instinctively ducking his head toward yours so you could hear him.
up close he smelled even better. you noted this the way you noted good light. he smelled expensive, which made a lot of sense.
"could i ask you about it?" the amusement was still there in his eyes, but it had company now. a sincerity that seemed to cost him something to show. he ducked his head slightly when he said it, almost shy, like the question had taken some working up to. "i've been trying to figure out what i actually want before i, there's people around me who'd just go buy me ten cameras if i said i want to try photography, and i don't want that. i want to understand it first."
"you want to talk about my camera," you said slowly, with a smirk.
"i want to talk about photography," he said. there was a slight defensiveness in it, like a correction. like it mattered to him that you understood the distinction. then, quieter, a half-smile appearing at the corner of his mouth: "but you and your camera seem like a package deal, so."
you looked at him for a moment. looked at him the way you looked at the room, properly, with the eye you'd trained over eight months of watching people be themselves in an extraordinary place.
he held your gaze for exactly two seconds before he glanced away, jaw tightening slightly, like he'd surprised himself.
painfully shy, you thought. underneath all of it. every bit of it hard-won.
"there's a spot near the back bar," you said. "better lighting and you can actually hear yourself think." you patted your camera. "and i need to reload some film anyway."
you didn't miss the way he glanced back at bill as you moved. bill gave a small, almost imperceptible lift of his chin, go ahead, and something in michael's shoulders dropped half an inch. like a string cut loose.
the back bar at studio 54 was a relative term. it was still studio 54, still throbbing and gilded and lit like a fever dream, but there were low velvet benches along the wall and the speakers were one degree removed, and you could hold a conversation without lip-reading.
bill stationed himself at a comfortable distance, close enough to matter, far enough to give the illusion of privacy. you noticed michael notice this, and noticed the small, grateful thing that passed over his face before he tucked it away.
michael folded himself onto the bench across from you and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and it struck you suddenly how young he looked like this. not small, he was built long and graceful, but young. unguarded. like he'd stepped out from behind something. his fingers were long, lovely and restless, tapping a loose, unconscious rhythm against his knee, and you had the sudden and very clear understanding that this was a person who was almost never still, and that stillness, for him, had to be chosen rather than stumbled into.
you cracked open the back of the canon with practiced ease and began feeding in a fresh roll of kodak tri-x.
"how long have you been shooting?" he asked.
"since i was sixteen." you threaded the film leader to the take-up spool. "my uncle had a darkroom in his apartment in the bronx. smelled like chemicals and weed so strongly that you'd leave high. loved it though." you clicked the back shut and wound the advance lever twice, firmly. "you?"
"never, really. that's the thing." he was watching your hands work with an attention that felt almost studious. up close, his eyes were extraordinary, very dark, very still, in contrast to those restless fingers. "i write music, i know how to put together a mean string section, and can break a song and put it back together. but a photograph —" he paused. "i took a picture last year. just a disposable camera, nothing fancy. a picture of my brother, marlon, sleeping on the tour bus. just because the light was coming through the window and it looked —" he made a gesture with his hands that you instinctively understood. a gesture that meant it looked like something that deserved to exist.
"and?" you prompted.
"and when i saw it developed, i thought, i made that. i caught something that was gone a half a second later." he shook his head slightly. "i want to learn how to do it properly. how to make it look the way you see it."
you turned the camera over in your hands. "that's the whole game," you said. "that's all photography is. learning to close the gap between what you see and what the film sees." you held the canon out to him, handle first. "here."
he took it with both hands. carefully, the way you'd accept something borrowed and irreplaceable.
"it's heavier than it looks," you told him. "that weight matters, it means something is actually happening inside. you're not just pressing a button, you're opening a little window." you leaned over and tapped the lens gently. "this one sees roughly what your eye sees. no drama, no distortion. it's very honest, nothing like a disposable."
he raised the camera slowly and looked through the viewfinder, and something happened to his posture. a subtle shift, a stillness settling over him. the restless fingers stopped. you recognised it immediately because it was the same thing that happened to you. the world narrowed to a rectangle, and everything inside that rectangle either mattered or it didn't, and the deciding was entirely yours.
"oh," he said quietly.
"yeah," you said.
he lowered the camera and looked at you over the top of it. "how do you know what to take a picture of?"
"what did you see, just now, in the viewfinder?"
he thought about it. actually thought about it, didn't just offer the first available words. you liked that.
"two people dancing," he said. "but they weren't performing it. they were just in it. you could see it on their faces."
"that," you said, "is what you take a picture of."
he smiled then, for the first time properly, a wide, bright smile that changed his whole face, opened it up, and you felt something register in your chest that you had longed to feel for a while.
"what's your name?" he said.
"Y/N." you reclaimed your camera and slung it back over your shoulder. "staff photographer. harlem born and raised. and before you ask, yes, i am a professional, not some fan. i spent eighteen months photographing corporate headshots in midtown, which is exactly as terrible as it sounds."
he laughed, bright and real and uninhibited. a few people nearby glanced over with the usual double-take of recognition, and you watched the shutters come down behind his eyes by reflex. he caught you watching him do it.
"you do that a lot," you said. not unkindly.
"do what?"
"lock the door." you mimed it with your hand, a little click. "when people look."
he was quiet for a moment. the music shifted again, stevie wonder's as unspooling from the speakers like warm honey, the kind of song that made the room breathe slower, and in the slightly softer atmosphere of it, he seemed to consider you, like he was deciding something.
"well, formally, i will introduce myself. my name is michael." he grinned again, holding his hand out, his dextrous fingers shaking slightly. you took it and shook it firmly.
"most people know me as the little eight year old kid that sung abc," he said eventually. "it gets complicated when you try to be anything other than what they expect."
"what are you trying to be now?" you asked. "besides twenty-one and keeping me from my work."
something sparked in his eyes. that current again, running below the surface. "trying to figure that out," he said. "that's kind of why i'm here." then, quieter, almost to himself: "tonight was supposed to be press for my new album. show face, smile at the right people, leave."
"and instead you cornered a photographer."
"and instead," he agreed, with a gravity entirely undermined by the way he was almost smiling, "i cornered a photographer."
you glanced over at bill without meaning to. he was gazing at the middle distance with the practiced neutrality of a man who was absolutely listening to every word and would die before he admitted it. you had the sense, suddenly, that he'd watched michael do this exact calculation, press obligation versus the pull of something real, many times before.
you wondered how often michael won that particular argument with himself.
not often, you thought. looking at the nervous energy still running through him, the way he'd shift his weight slightly and then catch himself, the way he'd meet your eyes and then find somewhere else to look for a half-second before coming back. not very often at all.
"you're trying to flirt with me," you said.
he looked at his own hands. "i'm talking about photography."
"uh huh."
"very seriously." but the smile had reached his eyes now, and he couldn't entirely kill it, and you had the feeling this was what it looked like when michael jackson lost an argument with himself, quietly, incrementally, with considerable charm.
he was quiet for a beat then, the wrestling match playing out almost visibly on his face, before he looked up with a careful, deliberate calm that you could tell had taken some assembling.
"can i take a picture of you?"
you blinked. "you want to —"
"a portrait." he nodded at the canon. "you just told me to shoot what's worth keeping." a pause. the almost-smile was gone now, replaced with something more honest and considerably more exposed. "so."
the room felt, for a moment, smaller. just the two of you and the slow golden spin of the stevie wonder and the amber light off the mirrored wall that you'd been chasing all night and had entirely forgotten about until this moment.
you unlooped the strap from your shoulder and held the camera out.
"don't you dare waste my film," you teased.
he took it, both hands again, that same careful reverence, and this time he held it with more confidence, adjusting his grip the way you'd shown him, getting the weight of it settled. you caught him glance toward bill again, just briefly, a quick sideways flicker, like a kid checking that someone they trusted was still in the room, and bill, without looking directly at him, turned his body a fraction. a subtle shift. i'm here.
michael raised the camera slowly. you sat back against the velvet bench and let yourself be looked at, which was not something you were generally in the habit of doing.
he waited. longer than you expected. you'd thought nerves would rush him, but he was still again, that same quality of attention descending over him. you watched his jaw loosen. watched his breathing slow.
click.
just once. he lowered the camera and looked at it in his hands, then back at you.
"one shot?" you said.
"that was the one," he said simply.
you held out your hand and he gave the camera back, and your fingers overlapped in the handoff, his hand large and warm, the roughness of guitar strings and piano keys worn into his fingertips, and neither of you moved for a beat longer than was necessary.
he cleared his throat quietly. looked at you. looked away. looked back.
"Y/N."
"mm."
"you've made tonight —" he stopped. tried again. "i came here because i had to. that's the honest truth of it. bill had me on a schedule, in and out, back to the hotel by midnight." he glanced toward bill again, that same shy sideways look, and something in it was so unaffected, so genuinely boyish, that it made your chest do something inconvenient. "it's almost one."
"your bill doesn't look particularly alarmed," you observed, giving bill a little wave.
"bill is very patient with me." he said it with a warmth that told you exactly what kind of man bill was, and exactly what he meant to michael. not just a bodyguard. something considerably more than that.
he turned slightly toward you on the bench, his knee almost touching yours. almost. you could feel the nervous energy radiating off him, this specific particular kind of nervousness, the kind that wasn't fear but was the next-door neighbour of it. the nervousness of someone about to do something they almost never do.
"can i kiss you?" he asked.
it came out quiet. careful. like he'd rehearsed it twice and still wasn't sure.
"you're asking," you said.
"i'm asking," he confirmed. his eyes were very steady on your face, which you understood now was what it looked like when he was working hardest. all that restless energy pulled inward, focused down to a point. "i wanted to ask. it's polite. mother taught me to always be a gentleman."
you leaned forward and closed the distance.
he met you halfway, and then, gently, completely, he took over.
his hand came up first, slow and deliberate, curving around your jaw like he'd thought about exactly where it would go. his thumb rested just below your cheekbone and you felt the warmth of his palm against your skin, and then his mouth found yours and it was soft. careful. the way he'd held your camera. that same quality of total attention, like something worth not rushing.
he kissed you softly, once, and pulled back just enough, a breath of space, and you felt him exhale slowly, and then he came back, and this time there was something different underneath the gentleness, something that curled around the softness of it and held on. his other hand found the back of the bench, just behind your shoulder, not quite touching but present, enclosing, and the combination of it, the tenderness and the quiet certainty of him, made something in your chest do a slow, complicated turn.
he was so gentle. and somehow that made it more sensual. you'd never had someone approach you this way and be so sweet about it. he clearly was not in the habit of doing this with strangers, considering his extravagant life.
you'd known him from the press, and of course had grown up with his music. but this was clearly a new side to him that gave you butterflies. of all the incredibly interesting and gorgeous people dancing in studio 54 on this fine saturday evening, he had chosen you.
when he pulled back, his hand stayed at your jaw a moment longer, thumb tracing one slow arc along your cheekbone like he was finishing a thought.
his eyes opened. dark and very still.
"okay," he said quietly. as if confirming something to himself.
"okay?" you said.
"more than okay." he lowered his hand, slowly, in no apparent hurry. "really good, actually."
you looked deliberately across the dance floor, where the crowd was doing extraordinary things to rock with you, which had drifted in at some point without you noticing, slow and warm and gold.
he seemed extremely bashful that his own song was playing, but you paid absolutely no mind to it. what a rare moment, to see someone so shiny and famous and perfect be so completely disarmed.
you raised your camera, more for something to do with your hands than anything else.
"next saturday," you said, keeping your voice even. "i'm here from ten. if you wanted to —"
"i won't be able to come back for a while." he said it quickly, and something flickered across his face, not quite regret, more like true disappointment. "i'm in la by monday. then the tour with my brothers is happening shortly after." he glanced toward bill again, and this time bill was looking back at him, not impatiently, but with a quiet we need to go soon in his expression.
michael turned back to you. "the schedule is unforgiving. it doesn't leave a lot of room for —" he gestured vaguely at the space between you, which you understood encompassed considerably more than just next saturday.
"that's a very diplomatic way to put it," you said, your cheeks burning slightly. he noticed your reaction almost immediately. he was really watching you, and that sent a shiver down your spine.
"i'm working on being honest," he said. "bill says it's a good quality to develop in this business." he said it with a small dry seriousness that made you want to laugh. you didn't, quite.
the music rolled on around you, the opening of something new now, the warm electric glide of don't stop 'til you get enough, and it struck you suddenly as almost funny, the specific absurdity of sitting in studio 54 at one in the morning having this conversation with the singer of that very song, a person who had absolutely not been in your plans for the evening.
it was strange, having had such an intimate moment with someone so enormous. someone who, on a stage, was a completely different creature, possessed by a more thoroughly confident version of himself. here, on this velvet bench, he was just a boy working up the nerve to say what he meant.
you turned to look at him.
"so what are you asking?" you said.
he held your gaze, and this time he didn't look away.
"where's your studio at?"
it landed simply. no performance in it. just a question with a very clear answer underneath it: i want to find you again, and i will make the room in whatever schedule i have, but i need to know where you are.
you studied him for a moment. the honey-warm skin and the extraordinary hair and the restless hands now gone still in his lap. the boy who had been famous since before he could tie his own shoes, sitting on a velvet bench in the most excessive room in new york, asking where you kept your darkroom.
you reached into the small bag at your hip and produced a business card, slightly battered at the edges, your name and number printed in cream stock, and turned it over and wrote an address on the back. west 28th street. third floor. the small, chaotic, light-flooded studio you'd been renting for two years and loved more than any place you'd ever lived.
you held it out.
he took it with both hands, of course he did, and looked at it for a moment, front and back, with the same attention he'd given everything else tonight. then he tucked it into the breast pocket of his silk shirt, close to his chest, and pressed his hand flat against it once, briefly, like he was making sure it was real.
"Y/N," he said, in his shy, soft voice.
"don't lose it," you said, and winked at him.
he looked at you, and for once he didn't look away, and the smile that came was quieter than the others, smaller, and somehow because of that, more intimate.
"i won't," he said.
you stood, straightened your trousers, and looped your camera back over your shoulder. bill had materialised at a slightly closer distance, not pressing, just present, the gentle tide of the schedule beginning to come back in.
michael noticed it too and rose to his feet, unfolding that long graceful height, and for a moment you were standing very close together in the amber light, and the music was doing something beautiful around you, and you were thinking about a photograph you hadn't taken.
you raised the canon, not through the viewfinder, not framed or considered, just turned the lens toward him and pressed the shutter.
click. whirr.
he startled slightly. "was that —"
"that one's mine," you said.
he looked at you for a long moment, something quiet and certain moving behind his eyes.
"yeah," he said softly. "yours."
you held his gaze for one more beat, then turned and walked back into the crowd, back into the noise and the light and the people, back to work, back to the life you'd built in this extraordinary room.
you looked back at him through the crowd.
he was stood, hand on his hip, watching you with his lip caught under his teeth. basically smirking at you across the dancefloor. you'd expected him to have scurried out intensely with his bodyguard, but he truly was taking you in, unbothered and unhurried.
you laughed and turned around, disappearing into the funk of the crowd.
in the breast pocket of michael's black silk shirt, pressed flat against a heartbeat still working slightly harder than usual, a business card with a west 28th street address waited to see what happened next.
Rating: E
Word count: 5,353
Pairing: Luke Hemmings/Calum Hood
Summary: It’s hard to tell why some nights feel like walking on a razor's edge, restlessly waiting to fall to one side or the other, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it.
And all night there has been the heavy feeling of eyes on him. While he feels like a hunter tonight, the constant weight of it makes him think that he might be the prey.
