wasssuppp

The lighting in the studio was dim. Michael had worked on this same piece for the last 6 hours, and at this point no one in the studio was having fun.

"How was that Quincy?" Michael asked, taking his headphones off when the music stopped.

"You're hitting every note and run perfectly. It sounds like Michael Jackson singing a song."

Michael frowned. The response confused him. Perfect was supposed to be good.

But something was missing.

Quincy Jones had quite the ear for music. He just knew what would make a certain song "pop". And let's just say the song wasn't there yet.

Michael wasn't feeling the music. He was calculating, analyzing. Quincy could tell.

Quincy stood from his chair. He paused, trying to figure out how to word the hardest piece of his feedback.

"You're trying so hard to sound grown that you forgot to sound honest."

Sometimes Michael's perfectionism got in his own way. The man could spend three hours obsessing over a single riff. Five hours debating a background harmony. An entire evening deciding between two nearly identical takes.

Most artists would've killed for that level of dedication. Today Quincy wanted to strangle him.

"The Lady in My Life isn't about vocal technique." Michael remained silent.

"It's intimacy...vulnerability."

Michael looked away, toward the floor. Anywhere except Quincy. The producer noticed immediately. There it is. The problem.

The song made Michael uncomfortable.

Michael was uncomfortable because the song was honest. Yearning.

To sing a song like this earnestly required a great deal of courage.

Love ballads were nothing new to Michael. He had spent most of his career singing about romance

This track was different though. Michael needed to beg for this woman's presence. He needed to audibly yearn for her touch.

The problem was that Michael wasn't used to singing something so vulnerable.

As a performer, he understood infatuation. He understood longing. He understood excitement.

The thrill of seeing someone from across a room or the rush of a first dance. The fantasy of a perfect love story.

Those emotions lived comfortably in his music. They always had.

Even the love songs from Off the Wall had a youthful energy about them. The kind of romance that existed in daydreams and stolen glances.

The Lady in My Life was different. There was nothing playful about it.

The song wasn't asking Michael to chase someone. It wasn't asking him to flirt.

It wasn't asking him to fantasize. It was asking him to choose. To commit.

"What am I doing wrong, Q?" Michael was genuinely lost at this point. He thought the take sounded great. And that was rare for Michael.

Quincy decided to be blunt.

"I need you to sing this song like you've found the one. Like you're gonna spend the rest of your life with her because you need her."

That terrified Michael. Not because he didn't believe in love. Quite the opposite.

He believed in it so deeply that he treated it almost reverently. Like something sacred. Something private.

The public knew Michael Jackson.

The performer, phenomenon, and superstar.

Very few people knew Michael the person.

People painted Michael out to be overly confident, but the truth was he was still shy. Painfully shy.

He was the kind of shy that would cover his face and mumble "Oh god", when his brothers teased him about a girl. The kind of shy that pushed him to write his feelings into songs, instead of saying them out loud.

Quincy knew the problem wasn't the song. The problem was that Michael was hiding inside it.

And until he stopped hiding, they were going to be there all night.

Quincy checked his watch and decided it was time to bring in some assistance.

"I'll be back."

Nobody questioned him. The producer disappeared from the studio.

Michael stared after him, confused.

Minutes later, you were on your way to the studio.

You had been halfway through getting ready for bed when Quincy called. At first, you assumed something was wrong.

Nobody called this late unless it was important.

"Quincy?"

"Hey, sweetheart. I need a favor."

Immediately you sat up straighter.

"Is everything okay? Where's Michael?"

The producer chuckled.

"Michael's fine."

The answer came so quickly that you knew he'd expected the question.

"But he needs some inspiration."

You frowned.

"Inspiration?"

"Can you be here in thirty minutes?"

You glanced toward the clock on your nightstand. Then toward the novel laying open beside you.

Then back toward the phone.

"I guess." Your confusion must have been obvious.

"Anything to help."

"Good."

Relief colored Quincy's voice.

"I'll explain when you get here."

Before you could ask another question, he thanked you, reminded you to drive safely, and hung up.

You stared at the receiver for a moment, confused.

Michael was in the middle of finishing Thriller. The entire project had consumed his life for months.

Most days he left before sunrise and returned long after dark. You knew better than most how much pressure he was under.

You'd watched him obsess over lyrics, over melodies. Over arrangements. Over things nobody else would ever notice.

Sometimes you wondered if Michael even understood how hard he was on himself. Probably not.

The book you'd been reading disappeared into your purse. You grabbed your keys.

And thirty minutes later, you found yourself walking through the front doors of Westlake Recording Studios.

The receptionist greeted you immediately.

You'd been there often enough that most of the staff recognized you by now.

"Evening."

"Hi."

You approached the desk.

"Quincy asked me to stop by."

The receptionist smiled knowingly.

Of course he did.

After a brief phone call, she nodded.

"Go on back, sweetie. They're expecting you."

You thanked her and headed down the familiar hallway.

The closer you got to Michael's studio, the louder the music became. Then voices.

You slowed. The door wasn't completely shut. Suddenly you felt like you were hearing something you shouldn't be.

And before you could announce yourself, you heard Quincy speaking.

"I need you to beg, Michael."

You froze. Inside the room, Michael looked exhausted. His curls were damp with sweat. His sunglasses rested low on his nose.

One hand rubbed the back of his neck.

The other rested against his hip.

"I'm trying, Q."

His voice carried a level of frustration you rarely heard from him.

"I really am."

Quincy shook his head.

"No."

The producer pointed toward the booth.

"You're singing." Michael sighed heavily.

"But I need you to beg her like you might never see her again."

For a moment, Michael didn't respond.

Instead he looked toward the floor. Almost embarrassed, definitely shy.

Which immediately caught your attention. Then he spoke quietly.

"This is very difficult for me."

Suddenly he looked less like Michael Jackson and more like the young man you knew. The one who overthought everything and cared too much.

The one who always felt things more deeply than he let people see.

Michael's eyes lifted and landed directly on you. Everything stopped.

For a split second, his entire face changed. The frustration and exhaustion disappeared.

And a smile almost appeared.

Seeing you was honestly the best thing that had happened to him all day.

Then realization struck.

His eyes narrowed, slowly and suspiciously.

The smile vanished. Uh oh.

"What?" You questioned. Didn't he know you were coming?

Michael immediately looked toward Quincy, then back toward you.

When he looked back toward Quincy, the betrayal registered in real time.

"Q."

Quincy suddenly found the ceiling fascinating.

"Q."

The producer refused to make eye contact.

Michael pointed directly at him.

"You called her?"

You looked between the two men.

"Wait." Your confusion grew.

"He didn't tell you?"

"No."

Michael dragged both hands down his face.

"Oh God."

You started laughing.

The reaction only made him more embarrassed.

Because the truth was, there were very few people capable of making Michael Jackson genuinely flustered.

You happened to be one of them. Michael groaned.

"Q, why would you do this to me?"

The producer finally looked up.

Because he knew exactly why.

For all the time the two of you spent together, Michael somehow remained oblivious to how obvious he was.

Everyone noticed it.

There was something about the way that his shoulders relaxed when you walked into a room. The way he unconsciously searched for you in crowds.

The way his entire mood improved whenever you stopped by the studio.

Everyone noticed.

Michael didn't know how obvious it was. He was simply too shy to admit it.

Unfortunately for him, Quincy Jones had never been interested in protecting anybody's pride.

Especially when there was a hit record on the line.

Quincy nearly shoved the two of you the inside the recording booth.

The moment Quincy closed the studio door behind him, the room fell silent.

Too silent.

You glanced toward Michael.

Michael glanced toward you.

Then immediately looked away.

Michael never wished he could disappear more than in this moment.

"Oh, this is terrible."

You could't help me giggle at Michael's visible discomfort.

"It's not that bad."

"It is."

"It isn't."

"It really is."

You smiled.

The reaction only made him groan louder.

Truthfully, Michael felt for you exactly what the song needed.

Outside the booth, Quincy flicked a few switches. The overhead lights dimmed.

The bright fluorescent glow disappeared, leaving only the softer amber lighting around the recording equipment.

The space suddenly felt smaller, warmer. More intimate. Almost private.

Through the glass, Quincy gave Michael a thumbs up.

Michael looked horrified. You were beginning to understand why.

He lifted his sunglasses, awkwardly putting them back on.

"Michael" you said softly, holding out your hand expectantly.

"No" He moaned.

You better than anyone knew the shield his sunglasses afforded him. Michael really didn't want anyone looking him in his eyes.

You tilted your head, giving him a kind smile. Still, your palm stayed open.

He sighed deeply before taking the glasses off and handing them to you. Still, he avoided your gaze.

Quietly, you picked up your book and sat cross legged on the floor in front of Michael.

The instrumental started.

Soft. Smooth. Warm.

For a moment Michael stood completely still. One hand resting against his headphones.

Eyes closed. He was preparing.

Then he started singing. It was euphoric.

You had been trying to focus on your book. You understood that staring at Michael would only further fluster him.

But when he started singing this song, you couldn't help but look him.

His eyes were shut anyway.

You'd heard Michael sing hundreds of times. At rehearsals, sound checks. In recording sessions.

Sometimes in the car. Sometimes absentmindedly while making breakfast.

But this felt different. There was no performance in it. No choreography. No audience.

No Michael Jackson.

Just Michael.

The man. The person.

The friend you had spent countless afternoons talking to about everything and nothing.

His voice wrapped around every lyric so gently it almost hurt.

"Lay your body close to mine...Let me fill you with my dreams"

Your breath caught. The words sounded familiar. You knew the song.

But somehow they felt different now. It was as if they belonged to the room. Like they belonged to you.

Michael kept his eyes closed through most of the first verse.

You suspected it was because he was too embarrassed to look at you.

Then he reached the chorus and finally opened them. Big mistake.

Because the second his gaze met yours, his stomach flipped.

You realized Michael wasn't looking through you.

He wasn't imagining someone else. He wasn't pretending.

He was singing directly to you.

Michael hoped it wasn't obvious, but you felt it immediately.

Every lyric. Every promise. Every note. It was as though the song had transformed into a conversation.

It was as though Michael had somehow taken everything he struggled to say aloud and hidden it inside the music.

The realization made your chest ache.

Because suddenly you understood what Quincy had been hearing all along.

Every line felt like a confession and every promise felt personal.

For the first time, you realized how much of himself Michael hid from the world.

People saw the confidence. Talent, fame, and perfection.

They didn't get to see this.

The softness and tenderness. The way he looked at someone he cared about.

Halfway through the second verse, Michael stopped looking away. Stopped hiding. He stopped being embarrassed.

And for a few beautiful minutes, he forgot there was anyone else in the building.

He forgot Quincy, and the engineers.

The pressures of Thriller and deadlines drifted away.

There was only you. The woman sitting across the room.

The woman who knew him when the cameras were off.

You were who he looked for first whenever something exciting happened. The one he wanted to call when something went wrong.

Somehow you made him feel more like himself than anyone else ever had.

When the final note faded, silence settled over the booth.

Neither of you moved or spoke.

Then—

"THAT'S IT! We got it."

Quincy's voice exploded through the speakers, booming claps disrupting the mood.

The spell immediately shattered.

Michael and you both jumped. And just like that, the embarrassment came rushing back.

Before you could say anything, Michael reached for his sunglasses and shoved them back onto his face.

He felt heat rushing to his face as he felt his fight or flight kicking in.

You noticed, unfortunately for him.

"I should go."

"What?"

"I should go."

Michael immediately started gathering random things. Headphones.

His orange juice. A notebook. Anything and everything.

The poor man looked like he was trying to flee the country.

"Michael."

"Thank you for coming."

The words came out way too fast as he fumbled with the miscellaneous items he was holding, nearly dropping things.

"I really appreciate it."

"Michael."

"And Quincy got what he needed so—"

"Michael."

Finally he stopped moving, slowly and reluctantly.

You tilted your head.

"Why are you acting weird?"

"I'm not."

"You are."

"I'm really not."

"You are."

Michael covered his face, groaning. The sound was muffled by his hands. Then silence.

You watched him carefully. And suddenly everything clicked.

The song, the embarrassment. The sunglasses.

The way he'd looked at you. The way Quincy had looked at him.

The way everyone in the room seemed to know something you didn't.

Your eyes widened.

"Oh."

Michael immediately knew.

"Oh no."

A smile slowly spread across your face.

"Michael." You said teasingly, nearing closer to him.

"Please don't."

"Am I..."

You struggled not to laugh.

"Am I the lady in your life?"

Michael covered his face. Completely. Every ounce of dignity abandoned.

"You're embarrassing me." He shook his head, smiling bashfully as he turned away from you.

Michael wished he could vanish into thin air. The answer was obvious.

Your heart nearly melted. You approached him, wrapping your arms around his waist from behind.

Michael instantly felt himself relax under your touch. This type of embrace was new. Sure, you'd hugged before. But this felt different.

"Michael."

"No." He mumbled through his fingers, still covering his face.

"Michael."

"No."

"You are so cute."

The compliment only made things worse. A frustrated noise escaped him.

Then finally, after a long pause, he lowered his hands and turned

Just enough for you to see his eyes. You kept your arms around him.

His vulnerability nearly stole your breath.

Because suddenly he wasn't embarrassed anymore. Just honest.

"You really don't know?"

The question came out quietly. Almost disbelieving.

You stopped smiling. Michael looked down. He found the courage to find your eyes again

"I thought everybody knew."

You felt a knot in your stomach. The confession sounded so sincere. So painfully Michael.

"I look for you in every room."

His voice dropped lower.

"I tell you everything." Another pause.

"You're the first person I want to talk to when something good happens."

Michael swallowed hard.

Then finally said the thing he'd been trying not to say all night.

"Of course it's you."

It felt like time was frozen. His expression softened.

Michael leaned against the wall behind him, pulling you to him in a way that had you sure he was going to kiss you.

"You've always been the lady in my life."

It’s not like you expected a paying gig right out the gate when you moved to the big city to chase your dream of becoming a musician, but you at least figured you would be able to get something that pays in the meantime.

At this point, every rejection is a shot straight to the heart.

You applied to every store you could find with a hiring ad. Both online and in-person, skipping over the occasional store that you felt you weren’t cut out for. Now, it’s come to the point where you don’t have the luxury to be picky.

Still, the shoe store that wouldn’t hire you? At least you have shoes, even if they’re worn-in Vans and Converse for the most part.

The reception job at the law firm? It’s not like you have a degree or can cite any, but you know general laws.

This? You sigh as your gaze traces the letters across the failing light box, deep red letters spelling out Adult Boutique.

It’s not that you have anything against it.

It’s that you’ve never used a sex toy.

Hell, you don’t know the first thing about them.

You’ve never even had sex before.

Sighing, you throw your head back against the headrest of your old rusting sedan and take a moment to breathe in the harsh disappointment of chasing your dreams. Your hands settle in your lap as you set aside any reservations you have, snatching your resumé from the passenger’s seat and shutting the door behind you. You walk with as much confidence as you can muster into the shop, but it’s almost humiliating how far out of your wheelhouse you are when you’re met with the interior. For as confident as you are, it drains from you in an instant.

Humiliation is a kink though, right?

“ID?” You pause in the doorway before you can get much of a look at the store, staring at a man with piercing blue eyes and white hair. He’s handsome, maybe a year younger than you, and his friendly smile is horribly infectious.

You stand like a deer in the headlights, your lips caught in an embarrassing ‘o’ before your mind catches up. ID. You’re in an age-restricted store. Right.

“Shoot–” Your hands fly down to your pockets, reaching for the wallet…

… That you left in the car.

Your jaw hangs ajar at the realization, warmth climbing from the back of your neck to the tips of your ears as the handsome clerk’s startlingly blue eyes pin you in place.

You shut your eyes, biting down on your lower lip. “I’ll be right back.”

In the midst of your walk of shame back to your car across the street, every thought reminds you that you could just leave. You could forget this ever happened and simply accept you aren’t getting the job. The fact that your wallet is so empty that you left it in your unlocked car in a shady part of town serves as a reminder that, again, you don’t exactly have the luxury of being picky.

With a forlorn sigh and a drag of your hands down your face, you put on your best confident smile and make your way back inside. The clerk grins as you hand over your ID, leaning over the counter on forearms that you swear you’re not staring at.

They’re just veiny.

And incredibly hot.

“Sorry,” you sigh as you pocket your ID again.

“Don’t worry about it,” there’s a small wave of his hand to brush you off, and when you look up to meet his eyes, there’s a particularly sultry look to his gaze. It’s enough to warm your cheeks again, and you can only pray he doesn’t notice how much you’ve been staring. “Looking for anything in particular?” He bears a lopsided tilt to his grin that sets your nerves further alight as your stomach ties in knots under the handsome stranger’s gaze.

It’s gotta be a bad combination to be clueless on everything around you and thinking about the hot man in front of you rather than the job you’re applying for.

Shaking your head to center yourself, you put on your best smile. “Yeah, actually.” The man’s expression changes to intrigue as you hand over your resumé. His eyes skim it, brows raising.

He gives you a once-over, setting the paper down with a more genuine grin. “We could use the help,” he admits. “The owner’ll be in tomorrow morning, I’ll have her give you a call.”

That’s the most positive response you’ve received to an application thus far. Although you find yourself nervously eyeing a bottle of G-Spot Stimulating Gel on the counter that you don’t know the first thing about, you’re honestly relieved that things could be looking up. You can handle this job with a bit of research, surely.

“That would be great,” you offer a smile. “Thank you.”

–

So, the good news is that you have a job. The bad news is that you still don’t know the first thing about what you’re selling. Admittedly, you probably should have done some research or looked over the product offerings on the store’s site, but somewhere between preparation for a new job and trying to sleep through the train shaking your apartment every few minutes, you forgot.

The kind woman who interviewed you over the phone and the store’s owner– Jillian– greets you at the door as you push into the store. Her graying hair is curled tightly at her roots, her eyes wrinkled at the corner and kind. She wears a pale pink wool sweater that compliments her lip gloss, standing at about the same height as you. She’s old enough to retire and still gorgeous all-the-same.

“Welcome, dear,” she smiles brilliantly at the sight of you, ushering you towards the front counter with a hand on your shoulder. “I appreciate the help, it’ll be nice to step back from the counter and keep my job behind-the-scenes.”

“I’m happy to help,” you reply with a kind grin, keeping up your best customer service attitude. As she leads you behind the counter, your eyes flick to the two tall men standing behind the counter. You recognize the first as the hot white-haired man who accepted your resumé. Cheery, charming, and strikingly handsome with toned muscles visible from under his white t-shirt.

The man beside doesn’t bear the same welcoming nature. In fact, they’re the definition of polar opposites.

Standing a couple of inches taller than the one you recognize, he has black hair that must be dyed, pink roots standing out like a rose among thorns. His ears are pierced in a multitude of ways with matching brow and lip piercings and tattoos that travel up the back of his neck, reaching his jaw. He’s in far darker and more casual clothes, arms crossed over his broad and built chest with his hip leaned on the counter, and a look of mild disinterest that does no favors for your nerves.

Where the white-haired man bears a friendly smile and a button-up that makes him look ready for a job in a cubicle, his black-haired colleague is very clearly assessing your every move, and looks like he could be on-stage at a dingy bar.

She introduces you to the men, earning a grin from the one you recognize and… nothing from the man with black-dyed hair.

“I’ll be in every couple of days to do the cash deposit,” she explains. “I’ll also drop by to check on the office and put together paperwork, but Satoru–” she points to the white-haired man who casually salutes in greeting, “and Ryomen–” her hand waves towards the frowning man who doesn’t react save for a glance at the older woman, “will train you. Satoru usually does the opening shift and Ryomen does the closing shift. We’re closed Mondays and Tuesdays, but you’ll work the rest of the week.” You’re grateful for the consistency, if nothing else. “You’ll take the midday Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, you’ll be alone for a bit while the boys are in classes, and you’ll take the closing shifts on weekends to help Ryomen during busy hours.”

His gaze, a crimson so striking you have half a mind to wonder if they’re contacts, flicks to you, indiscernible, then back to Jillian.

“You won’t be alone while you train of course though, the boys and I will cover until you’re comfortable being alone.” She pats you once on the shoulder. “Does that work for you, dear?”

“Not a problem at all,” you nod. You clasp your hands together politely.

“Perfect!” She claps once in glee, clearly happy to step away from serving customers. You can understand that sentiment. “I’ll grab your paperwork.”

Satoru’s gaze follows her as she heads for the back room, then turns cheerily to you. “Hey, newbie!” He steps forward from the counter, outstretching his hand. “Nice to meet you.” Shaking his hand, you match his grin. “Well, by name anyway.”

You turn your expectations to Ryomen, who doesn’t move from the spot he’s standing in. His weight shifts to the other hip, still leaning against the counter when he juts his chin out in less of a greeting and more of an acknowledgement. “Hey.”

“Nice to meet you, Ryomen.” You give him a little wave.

“Sukuna,” he corrects you. His words aren’t sharp per se, but they carry a blunt edge. “Only the old lady can call me Ryomen.” His voice is as gruff as his style and stature, fitting of the brutish impression he gives off. His slightly narrowed eyes give off the notion that he’s evaluating you. Reading you.

With a tight-lipped smile, Satoru scratches at the back of his head. He shoots you an apologetic glance as you uncomfortably gather that this isn’t unusual for Sukuna.

“Got it, sorry.” You offer an apologetic smile, which he accepts with a nod.

Satoru steps forward to save you from the interaction, motioning with his head out to the store’s floor. “Why don’t I show you around?”

You nod gratefully, letting him lead you away from the counter. Sukuna’s gaze is quick to drop to the counter as he leans over a book of some sort, his chin resting atop his hand. You turn your attention back to Satoru as he leads you through the long back area of the store

A colorful assortment of dildos and vibrators line the walls of the first aisle, anything from glass to silicone in different shapes and size varieties. The light in the far corner flickers when you step into the aisle, faux wood creaking under-foot. The store has that sort of old strip mall feel where, although well-maintained, its age is evident in the old fixtures and failing lights.

“Sorry about him,” Satoru’s voice is a near-whisper as he shakes his head. His hair falls in front of those striking blue eyes as he leads the way down each aisle. You’re not sure you’d really call it showing you around, but you’re certainly walking the floor. “He’s uhhh–” he waves his hand through the air as he searches for the right term. “Moody, or something.” He chuckles. “I don’t know, you get used to it. Don’t take it personally.”

“He doesn’t seem like a customer service person,” you admit sheepishly, keeping your voice down.

Satoru does no favors keeping his own down as he barks a laugh. “No, not really, hey? He’s Jillian’s friend’s son, so–” he shrugs as you mentally connect the dots that landed him this job. “It’s an easy enough gig and honestly business is slow.”

“That’s a shame,” you offer, mostly for Jillian’s sake, although you don’t mind it being slow.

“I said it was slow, not bad,” he grins, eyes narrowing to that sultry gaze he shot you when you dropped off your resumé last week. “We have a lot of regulars. People who spend a lot. You’ll recognize them in time.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “It’ll be nice to have some company for the end of my shifts,” he adds, tilting his head to eye you. He crosses his arms over his chest, catching your attention as you glance at his muscles just long enough to consider yourself caught. He takes the opportunity and swings with it. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you.” His voice drops a tone, the flirty lilt warming the tips of your ears.

“Yeah, it’ll be nice to get to know you too.”

Jillian returns with paperwork before Satoru can take the opportunity to flirt any further– but you get the feeling he will. It seems to go hand-in-hand with his personality. Once everything is signed and Satoru has headed off for class, Jillian leaves training in Sukuna’s hands as she retreats to the back to file your paperwork.

Sukuna’s gaze is a slow drag down your form as he evaluates the dark blouse and nice jeans you chose to wear. Admittedly, you now feel a little overdressed given his relative comfort and ripped jeans, but in spite of the judgement clear as day in his eyes, he keeps it to himself. At least, as long as you don’t count the frown he bears. You can’t really tell if that’s meant for you or if that’s his neutral expression.

With a sigh, he shuts whatever book is on the counter behind him and gives you a rundown in short, clipped sentences. “Floor work first, cash after. You worked cash before?”

You nod, though the register looks fairly old here.

He gives a hum of approval. “Good. The floor's pretty self-explanatory. Everything is ordered by brand, then color. Shipments Mondays and Thursdays. Back room for any overstock.” He points over his shoulder to where Jillian disappeared as he lays out instructions like facts. “No clock system. Just work when you work. Pay is every second Friday. You’ll get a check.”

Again, you nod.

His gaze travels the length of your figure, but it doesn’t feel as though he’s checking you out. It’s an evaluation. And you’re pretty sure you’re failing before you’ve had the chance to start. “I don’t care what you do when customers aren’t around. Study, read, go on your phone. I don’t give a shit.”

“Oh, okay. That’s kinda nice.”

His tone is apathetic as he hums in agreement. “I didn’t have time last night and I know Satoru’s lazy ass didn’t clean this morning, so I’ll get you to organize the shibari while I put some shit away.”

You nod, slipping away from the counter onto the floor. His gaze tracks you as you very unconfidently thread through the rows in search of shibari. To your horror, nothing is well-labeled, which means there isn’t a distinct section with some big flashy sign to point you in the direction of a kink you don’t know the name of.

“It’s at the back,” Sukuna’s low voice calls out. Biting down on your lip, you move towards the back of the store, your gaze trailing along the wall. There are a number of bondage devices you can’t name, ropes that you assume go with bondage, and chains and whips that all feel bondage-adjacent.

So, more or less, you’re still at a loss.

Really failing that evaluation now.

Behind you, Sukuna is replacing products that were atop the counter at the front, but his movements stop when he fixes you with his narrowed gaze. “The ropes,” he points them out on the wall with displeasure prickling around the edge of his sandpaper-scraped voice. Now that you look at them, it feels obvious given how out of order they are.

“I know!” Heat flares beneath your skin in all the wrong places. Still, you won’t let him get to you. “I was just looking.”

He doesn’t reply, his crimson gaze boring into your expression so hard that you’re pretty sure he can see right through you.

At least you can’t fuck up the organization of the ropes.

Quietly sucking in a breath, you turn to the wall, pulling down the plastic-covered rope bundles that are out of place.

“So,” you turn your gaze over your shoulder. “You’re in school?”

“Mhm.”

“What are you taking?”

“Business.”

He’s difficult, too. Great.

Once the ropes are in a more sound order, you spin on your heel to face him. He’s already turning away, moving to a different area to put away a vibrator.

“Can I–”

“Here.” He tosses a bottle of lube at you, caught clumsily in unexpecting fingers. “Put that away, too.”

Pressing your lips into a tight line, you nod, more to yourself than him. At least you know what lube is.

You search the store for the spot where it belongs, twisting it on the shelf so the label faces out, then make your way to the counter where Sukuna’s already standing over his book again. Before you have the opportunity to speak, the bell over the door rings as a customer walks through the door. She’s around your age, and quickly flashes ID towards Sukuna, who nods.

A regular, you suppose.

The tattooed clerk’s eyes trail to you, jutting his chin out expectantly towards the customer.

Making your way up to the woman with cute blonde hair cut short, you fall into your customer service voice. “Can I help you find anything?”

“Hi!” She beams at you, her smile putting your first day nerves at ease. “Thank you, but I know where most things are,” she waves you off politely. “I appreciate it, though!” She moves past you towards the back of the store, whirling around suddenly as her gaze shifts between you and Sukuna. “Oh, actually, did you get any more of the cherry stimulants in?”

You turn your attention to Sukuna, who fixes you with a lazy unsure expression. “She can check for you.” He leans his hip on the counter again, arms crossed over his chest as he faces you. “It’ll be in the back. They come in a box with a cherry logo on them.”

Worrying your lip between your teeth, you nod as you make your way to the back.

Truthfully, the cramped room is a bit of a relief from the uncomfortable tension Sukuna just seems to naturally exude. Him and Satoru are big personalities in the most opposite way you can possibly imagine, but at least Satoru is willing to chat.

Jillian glances over her shoulder from an old computer at the back of the room. “Everything going well, dear?”

“Yeah,” you grin, though truthfully this already feels like a disaster where you’re being scornfully judged by your colleague and accidentally making enemies on day one. With one of the only people you work with. So that’s great. “There’s just someone looking for stimulants.”

She shifts in her chair, doing a once-over of the boxes. “Not back here. There’s an inventory list on this computer that you can usually use, but I don’t want to lose progress on your files. Can you ask Ryomen to check the holds drawer? Satoru might have put some on hold if he knew they were looking.”

“Sure, thank you!”

With a grateful smile, you head back to the front and relay the information to Sukuna.

“Holds drawer’s there.” He points to a handle on the lower inside of the counter. Within are a number of boxes and small sachet packs. “Mm, there they are.”

Clearly one of the sachet packs is what she’s looking for. Unfortunately, they all fail to say exactly what they are on the front with bright and bold brands rather than descriptors or even a damn cherry logo, which means you haven’t the faintest clue what you’re looking at.

“The orange one,” Sukuna adds when you’re still paused staring at the drawer. There’s an unimpressed lilt to his tone that has you wincing before you pull the sachet pack from the drawer. You do what you can to keep your expression neutral and feign confidence when you stand upright again.

The whole situation is tense and embarrassing. It might at least be tolerable with Satoru, but Sukuna either enjoys your suffering or he’s an asshole.

The unfortunate third possible option is both.

His grimace as you set the pack in his hand isn’t lost on you, although you choose to head towards the register in hopes that he can at least teach you how it works and you can get on with this day. He chooses not to say a word to you as the customer finishes looking around, returning to the front with a rose-shaped vibrator.

“Ooh, thank you!” She grins as she spots the packet at the register.

Sukuna nods, glancing over his shoulder to make sure you’re paying attention. “Just type the amounts into the register,” he explains, putting both prices from the stickers into the old machine. Once he hits the equals button, the cash drawer pops open as he gets the total and it calculates tax for him. The customer flashes a card, so Sukuna shuts the drawer and types the amount into the machine to his right. “While she pays, get the serials on each tag and write them here,” he explains, pulling the number from each barcode and writing them on a pad of paper left of the register. Once her payment is processed, a receipt prints, which he hands to her, keeping the second copy under the till. Finally, he bags the items.

She thanks him, giving you a polite little wave and retreating out the door.

You let out a breath, nodding. “The register seems easy enough,” you try more friendly commentary in spite of his half-assed teaching, but you suppose by now you shouldn’t expect Sukuna to be receptive. He hums, a judgemental flash in his eyes as he pins you in place with a narrowed gaze like he can see something you can’t.

He works his jaw in a slow grind of teeth like he wants to say something but thinks better of it, dropping your gaze. “I’ve got to study. There’s not much else to the job besides that, so keep yourself busy.”

Thankfully the rest of the day passes without much of a hitch and you’re able to leave as evening hits, with Sukuna staying to close the store.

He doesn’t give you another word for the remainder of the day. He doesn’t expect you to handle customers. He handles the till. He doesn’t even look at you as you let him know your shift is over. You aren’t sure whether to be grateful or dread the rest of your shifts with him, but thankfully you’re able to spend more time with Satoru tomorrow.

Given that you’re off a couple of hours before close, you use the opportunity to stake out local bars with stages and take note of a small pub tucked away in a little corner. The outside has a sign that doesn’t light up in the night’s cover, but within it’s rather warm, with string lights hung over a stage in the back. While you work on your online presence, it’s the perfect spot to get your stage skills up.

The thick metal of the door is cool on your hand, creaking on its hinge as you press through to the interior warmth. There’s a small two-man group on-stage performing low-energy grunge that seem to be garnering decent attention from onlookers and groups you would be willing to bet are regulars based on the way they move around the small scene.

Adjusting your jacket over your shoulder, you make your way to the bar. The bartender looks to be a couple of years senior to you, with short brown hair kept neat aside from a couple of stray strands that fall over his forehead. He has a prominent nose and sunken eyes that give him an overall air of tiredness.

The apron he wears over a clean-cut button-up pulls taut across his chest as he reaches overhead to set a bottle of whiskey along the back wall before turning his attention to you with a polite smile. “What can I get for you?”

“Oh, um, actually,” you begin with a polite smile, “I was wondering who I need to impress to be up there.” You point to the grunge band at the back as his gaze follows you.

He hums, his calm demeanor shifting from the routine of bartending to something more friendly. “I can give you the owner’s email. If you fit in with the crowd, he’ll work with your schedule.”

Casting another glance at the two men on-stage, you nod, chewing on your lip in an effort to hide your giddy smile. “That’d be great. So… what– a little moody, kind of chill? Maybe some minor chords in there?”

The bartender chuckles, picking up a glass like routine simply fills his subconscious. “Sounds to me like you’ve already got the gig.”

Leaving behind the smell of drowned sorrows and shared laughter, you can hold onto the fact that while your day took a turn for the worst, it’s just a job. Once you leave the building, you don’t have to think about it and can focus on music. Sukuna isn’t the end of the world and if you can manage to stay out of his hair, surely you can find some sort of common ground with him.

–

Wind whips too fast across the street when you lock your car behind you. Your unzipped coat flails in the wind, leaving you with a flustered expression as the shop door slams shut behind you.

“Hey newbie,” Satoru greets you with an amused grin. You flash him a smile as you smooth down your outfit, far more casual than the previous one with jeans and a band shirt. “How was yesterday?” He asks, wiping down the counter and tossing the wipe in a garbage as he claps his hands together to brush them off.

The chuckle that parts your lips is half-hearted as you drop your laptop bag atop the front counter. “Kind of a disaster?” You wince, shaking your head. “Is he seriously always like that?”

Satoru stands upright, running a hand through white locks. “He gets better when you get to know him, but yeah he’s kind of an asshole,” he laughs brightly, unbothered. “I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips.”

“Sure, if the chips are sour,” you mutter.

Satoru snickers, nodding. “What happened anyway?”

“I didn’t immediately know where everything is without being shown,” you wave a hand through the air, letting it hang there for a moment in disbelief.

Satoru, unphased, grins. “Oh, yeah. Sounds like a classic case of not running on Sukuna’s schedule. You should really get on that.”

You throw your head back with a sigh, giving a dismissive wave of your hands. “Whatever, it’s a new day, right? Maybe it won’t be so bad today.”

Satoru teasingly sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Sorry newbie, but my sources are telling me today’s weather is looking cloudy in Sukuna-land.”

Satoru’s unseriousness helps settle a modicum of your nerves as you find yourself laughing at his charm.

“But hey, you’ve got me for a couple of hours first.” He grins, settling the balls of his palms atop the counter as he leans his weight back. One of his sleeves, rolled to the elbow, slides down his forearm to his wrist. “What did he go over with you, anyway?”

You laugh loosely. “Like, nothing. He gave me a thirty second run-down of the till and told me I don’t need to clock in or out.”

“That’s gold,” Satoru shakes his head in an effort to get hair from falling into his line of sight. “I thought he’d be nicer to a pretty girl like you.” His face lights up as you avert your eyes, smiling at the scuffed floor underfoot. He keeps the conversation flowing like it’s second nature. “Tell you what, I’ll actually try to show you around before he gets here, and you can tell me what brought you to the city.”

Recovering quickly, you fix him with a humbled expression at the callout. “Is it that obvious that I’m not from here?”

Satoru barks a laugh. “Yeah. You’ve got small town energy.”

“Small town energy? What does that even mean?” You follow him out from behind the counter as he leads the way to the back room first.

“Just vibes,” he shrugs. “It’s good. Cute,” he grins. You get the feeling he’s a bit of a flirt through and through, but truthfully you enjoy the attention.

Plus, he’s hot.

“Thanks,” you murmur with a bashful smile, chewing on your lip. “I uh– I wanted to give my dream a shot before tying myself down in a career I hate.”

His eyes light up as he turns to you with a palm on the door handle for the back room. “Oh yeah? What’s your dream?”

“Singing. Music,” you admit, feeling just shy enough that you avert your gaze in spite of your giddiness.

“No way.” He’s grinning widely now, his hand leaving the door handle as he chooses to lean against it instead, arms crossed tantalizingly over his chest. “I feel like I’m obligated to be the annoying guy who asks you to sing for me now.”

You laugh heartily. “At least you know it would make you that guy.”

With a chuckle, he finally turns around to lead the way into the back room. He peppers actual explanations of the job’s inner workings between personal questions.

After explaining the inventory system on the back computer and how boxes are organized, he leads the way back through the aisles, pointing out different sections as you walk. “So, do you take gigs between shifts?”

“When I can,” you nod. “I’m trying to put together the money to get some studio time soon. I have some self-recorded stuff, but I don’t think I’m much of a producer.”

“Will you at least tell me what genre?”

“Um,” you shrug thoughtfully, “I guess like punk or indie rock?”

“Oooh, so you’re a moody guitar girl. I like it, I like it.” He nods his approval with a wide grin. The faintest of dimples forms at the corners of his lips, giving him a charmingly boyish smile.

Your genuine shared laughter sends flutters to the pit of your stomach, warm and welcome, as you finish threading through aisles and head back to the front counter. Satoru pushes up on forearms that flex under his weight as he settles atop the counter. You follow suit on the opposite counter, head tilting as you inquire about him.

“Jillian mentioned you’re in school, what are you taking?”

“Business,” he replies with a lopsided smile.

“Oh, like Sukuna?”

“Damn, you got an answer out of him?” Satoru chuckles. “Yeah, he’s a year ahead of me but we’re in the same program. I think he wants to do the whole company startup thing though, I’m looking to kinda take over for Jillian and eventually buy this place if things work out. She’s holding out until I finish.”

Your brow raises as you fix him with an inquisitive look. “You wanna take over here?”

“Don’t sound so shocked,” he chides, gaze lidded with an almost-cocky attitude. “Don’t get me wrong, I know it doesn’t seem busy even with online orders, but I actually think there’s a huge untapped market here.” He straightens and you can see the passion and drive gleaming in his eager gaze. “I think the way sex toys are sold both online and in-stores is outdated and makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable and I want to try to do something new to help people feel more comfortable and open in terms of sex.”

You blink, nodding at the insightful way that he goes on to explain the ins and outs of his opinion on the industry and how, although he loves Jillian, he can see a lot of ways to use his knowledge to improve the business and hopes to change the way kinks are viewed.

It’s not like it hasn’t occurred to you just how inexperienced you are, but as you nod along to his passionate explanation, it occurs to you just how experienced he is. He doesn’t say it outright, but he talks about the way condoms are made and how bad they can be for some people, how he hopes to bring in products for people who struggle with medication killing their sex drive, and even the intricacies of what products work well and which don’t and how he would love to stop stocking them altogether.

It shouldn’t come as a shock– it doesn’t– after all, he’s hot and flirty, but it certainly gives the butterflies in your stomach an edge that you aren’t sure what to make of. It’s not uncomfortable– Satoru’s still kind and has a welcoming personality– it’s closer to inadequacy. Like you should know more, and not just for job purposes. It doesn’t sit well.

But you shouldn’t be thinking about your coworker like that anyway, right?

Thankfully, before you can think too hard about the subject, Sukuna walks through the door with a heavy step to his boots.

Maybe ‘thankfully’ doesn’t suit his arrival, though. His gaze flits briefly between each of you before he heads straight to the back, giving you both a noncommittal wave as you greet him.

When the door shuts behind the brute, Satoru turns to you. He grimaces, faux empathy shining in cerulean seas. “The weather report was right.”

The day passes so quickly with Satoru even without a single customer entering the store that the rest of the day feels like a slog without him. Or maybe it just feels like a slog because Sukuna makes it clear he wants nothing to do with you. He even stayed in the back until Satoru had to leave in spite of the changes in their regular schedules just to train you.

He’s not even that unfriendly with Satoru either from what the kinder of the two told you. He tried to reason that your tattooed co-worker simply isn’t fond of new people, but you’re pretty sure your inexperience grates on his nerves.

And unfortunately, every little slip up seems to tack on. Your shifts with Satoru are a breeze that leaves you grinning bashfully over your new crush while your shifts with Sukuna have you questioning every life choice you’ve ever made.

Your first weekend closing shift with Sukuna, you’re pretty sure you confirm your suspicions that he simply doesn’t like you.

The bell rings overhead as a tall man with dark hair walks through the door. You greet him and offer a hand, but his gait is purposeful as he heads into the back after flashing ID. Passing the time by fiddling with a pen as Sukuna stares blankly at the door with a hand lazily strewn over his textbook page, your gaze lifts when the man returns.

“Excuse me. Do you know the difference between this–” he shows you a bullet vibrator, “and this?” He holds up a hitachi wand next, “aside from size?”

Your jaw hangs open stupidly as you try to formulate a response but find yourself at a loss when size seems like the reasonable answer. Feeling your face flush, you glance sidelong at the business major.

If looks could kill.

The worst part? It’s not even glare.

It’s the most unfiltered and raw disappointment you’ve ever seen.

He huffs, pushing up from the counter. “The bullet is discreet but weak. It takes batteries and they usually only last for five hours overall. It’s still a good amount of use, but they might be watch batteries, which can be a pain.” He shoots you a pointed stare that makes you wonder if you would rather have just embarrassed yourself in front of Satoru in spite of your crush. “The wand is rechargeable, way stronger, lasts about fifteen hours, and has a lot more vibration modes,” he explains confidently.

The man nods, setting the bullet aside as he brings the wand to the counter. Over the course of the past few days, Sukuna’s taken most of the floor-related duties away from you in spite of the fact that you have tried to do some research and are getting to know the sections and general genres of toys. That question simply didn’t come up. Yet for all of the times he’s made a motion for you to take over cash, he doesn’t even offer it this time.

You get the feeling this goes beyond his usual irritation.

You can practically feel it radiating off of him in waves of negative energy.

The moment the customer walks out the door, Sukuna’s palm splays across the counter as he turns with frustrating evenness to face you. Somehow his ability to keep his actions level while being visibly affronted is worse than if he would have just yelled.

“Do you think you’re cute for making my job harder or did you just apply for the wrong fucking job?”

Okay. Fuck this guy.

“You can’t be serious right now.”

He lifts his hands in a loose shrug. “Do I look like I’m kidding?” He replies, dry and even with venomous fangs.

You scoff, but relent nonetheless given that he is close to the store’s owner and you can not afford to lose this job.

Literally.

You can’t call a scoop of peanut butter dinner again.

“Look, I’m sorry, this is just–” you hesitate, your mind muddled as you search for an explanation. Sighing in exasperation, you throw your hands up, letting them fall to your sides with a plop against your jeans. You settle on the truth before you take too long to reply. “Sex toys are new to me.”

His jaw ticks as he leans his hip back against the counter, arms crossing over his chest. Somehow, he makes Satoru look small– not thin or short, but small– given how much bulkier he is. He’s hot too, but his personality stands as a bit of a wall between you. His jaw works, eyes narrowed as he takes in your words.

At last, he chuckles. Dry and devoid of any amusement. “Why the fuck did you apply here if you don’t know anything about the shit we sell?”

“Because I need a job?” You reply incredulously.

He huffs a sigh. “Just my fucking luck.” He turns back to the register, haphazardly tossing the receipt into a small bin under the counter before he grabs the bullet vibrator and heads out onto the floor. “Figure that shit out,” he calls sourly without looking back at you. “Watch porn or buy something, I don’t give a shit. Just don’t make my job harder.”

Leaning back against the counter where it meets the wall, you let your head fall back in disbelief.

Asshole.

–

You wish you could say your first month passes seamlessly, but Sukuna makes the seams painfully obvious.

With Satoru, they’re subtle but you still feel them.

They both present separate problems.

Sukuna is an outright asshole and you want to get things right if only to not hear his virulent voice. The silence is somehow better.

Satoru is kind, open, and caring, but leagues ahead of you in experience and you have a massive crush. There aren’t enough customers in the morning to embarrass yourself in front of him, but you do find yourself wanting to impress him and against your better judgement, you’re pretty sure you’ve given him the impression you know what you’re doing from what little research you’ve done and what you’ve picked up over the month.

At least you’re trained enough that you get a couple of hours to yourself between Satoru’s departure and Sukuna’s arrival now that their hours aren’t extended in order to train you.

“You gonna be okay on your own?” Satoru asks, shrugging his jacket over his shoulder.

“I’ll be fine,” you brush him off with a smile.

He nudges your arm, unknowingly sending goosebumps in a trail up your skin. “Good. Text me if you need something. Or, I dunno. If you’re bored.”

Your heart does a little flip. “Yeah. Okay, thanks.”

You watch bashfully as he leaves, offering a little wave. Once he’s out of sight, you lean on your forearms over the counter. With a forlorn sigh, you drop your chin to the vinyl below, staring blankly out the window. Truthfully, it’s nice to have a breather between each man. You need the time to prepare yourself to handle Sukuna.

Your mind’s distraction comes in the form of your phone buzzing a few minutes later.

1:36 PM Satoru || not bored yet? ;)

A distraction to be sure. Whether it’s fortunate or not– yet to be determined.

The door seems to be opening more and more with him these days and as giddy as that makes you, nerves are beginning to show more and more at the seams. It’s foolish really, and you know that, but you find yourself constantly coming back to your lack of experience.

1:37 PM You || Give me like 5 more minutes and then I will be

You can practically hear the laugh he barks, having grown fond of his company.

You’re still casually texting back and forth when Sukuna’s shoulder presses on the door. He moves confidently through the shop, casting a single glance at you before dropping his bag off in the back room.

He’s still a pain in the ass, but Satoru was right that you do get used to it. You’re not sure that you’d call that a win, but at least you’ve come to some sort of silent agreement with him out of sheer necessity.

He didn’t leave you with many options after realizing just how little you know about the industry. When he got in the following day and returned your greeting with a painfully mild ‘don’t bother’, you had to figure out some sort of system that would prevent him from interacting with you altogether if it means his attitude is milder.

That’s how you landed here. He handles the floor and questions, you handle cash. You can tell he hates the arrangement given that he’s not a chatty guy, but at least you aren’t pinned in place by his vile appraisal every time you interact.

He’s civil.

Civil enough.

Most of the time.

For him, anyway.

He’s less judgemental, at least, and when you are able to help on the floor, he tends to leave you be more often than not. It’s like the loosest form of appreciation you can think of.

You’re pretty sure ‘tolerates’ is a fitting word for how he sees you. Like some sort of intrusive insect that sits just out of reach.

When he re-emerges from the back with his coat shrugged off, you’re surprised to see him in a black button-up and slacks, carrying his usual aloof expression as he makes his way to the counter. Admittedly, it’s a good look for him.

It’s unfair that he gets to be hot and an asshole.

“Is there a reason you’re staring?”

Thank god you don’t find him intimidating anymore. He’s a dick. Even to customers from time to time, but you don’t find yourself feeling small under his judgement. Maybe you should, but your ability to quickly bounce back could easily be placed at fault.

Blinking, you avert your gaze. “Sorry. I’m just not used to seeing you so dressed up.”

He examines your expression as though he suspects a lie in your words. “I had a presentation,” he explains, surprisingly open as he offers the explanation willingly.

Holy shit. It’s the first sunny day in the Sukuna forecast.

“What sort of presentation?”

“A marketing pitch.”

“Oh, nice.” You nod, trying to keep the peace. “How’d it go?”

He nods, turning to the counter to open his laptop. “Good. We’re gonna workshop it a bit, but I’m hoping to pitch to investors soon.” There’s pride within the evenness of his voice that has you tilting your head, intrigued to get something genuine from him.

Leaning in, you push to see how much you can get from him. “Like, a startup idea?” You recall Satoru mentioning something of the sort.

His gaze fixes you from over his shoulder. You get the feeling with him that he’s always trying to read you. “Yeah. A platform where people can pitch their businesses to customers within a certain distance without needing social media.”

“Oh,” you blink, mildly surprised. “That’s a really good idea.”

He hums, turning back to his laptop.

“You don’t really strike me as the CEO type, if I’m being honest.”

“I’m not,” he agrees, surprisingly unbothered by the observation. You consider yourself lucky he doesn’t take it as an insult. “I’d be looking for a co-founder to handle the personal, financial, and sales bullshit. I’d run strategy and go-to-market.”

Admittedly, yeah. That suits him. He’s sharp and straightforward, he seems like the type to be more inclined to work on strategy and run everything without the constant need for approval and help from others.

“That sounds more your style. What made you think of the platform idea?”

He doesn’t look back as he replies. “Just seemed like something that would make money.”

You recognize that as Sukuna being polite. He’s shutting you down without a look that makes your skin crawl for once. You suppose it’s as good of a time as any to return to your texts. Your friend from back home has been religiously sending memes during your shifts to get you through the Sukuna days and today is no exception. You laugh at a few of them under your breath.

The day is as uneventful as usual. Sukuna even casts an approving glance in your direction when you correctly answer a customer’s question. He’s not so bad when he isn’t glaring every couple of minutes.

You pray the weather stays sunny in Sukunaland.

Shutting the register as a customer leaves, you turn back inside the store to find Sukuna back to work, hunched over his textbook and regurgitating the information into notes. You opt not to bother him, turning your attention instead to a flickering bulb in the back of the floor. Much like both men have chosen not to mention or fix it, you have too.

Turning your attention back to your phone, you cast a smile at your latest text from Satoru.

5:49 PM Satoru || how’s the pretty newbie handling our favorite co-worker??

5:53 PM You || The weather's looking surprisingly sunny today!!

5:54 PM Satoru || be on the lookout for rain. the weather can change on a dime

5:54 PM You || I can handle a bit of rain

5:55 PM Satoru || i’ll bet you can ;)

There your stomach goes doing flips again. Your thumbs fiddle with the edges of your phone case, pulling at the plastic as you stare at the message with that horrible mix of nerves and your stomach tying in knots. You get so caught up in your own self-doubt, you don’t realize you’re staring at Sukuna, busy with his own phone.

“What?” He gruffs, retaining that hint of annoyance.

“Hm?” You blink, brought back to the present. Before you, Sukuna is leaning against the counter, phone in-hand as his jaw shifts left and right. His lip ring noticeably catches like he’s fiddling with it. “Oh. Sorry.” With a shake of your head, you stare back down at your screen. Your gaze catches on the winky face. The underlying meaning behind it and his text. The impression you’ve probably given off working at a sex toy boutique.

The goddamn butterflies, though. The same ones causing the wave of self-consciousness that you know is foolish. But fuck is it hard not to feel that way when Satoru is undeniably the kind of guy that has people hanging off his shoulder with little to no effort. Your experience shouldn’t matter, but society has taught you to think otherwise.

“Hey,” you speak up on impulse before your mind can catch up to the move your mouth is already making. You can’t be certain whether it’s bravery or stupidity. “You know a lot about what we sell, right?”

His eyes narrow, minute. Just enough to catch your attention. “Yeah. I’m good at my job.”

The dig at your knowledge has you pressing your lips together. God, he’s frustrating. “Asshole.” His brow raises slightly, like something he once deemed uninteresting or unuseful has caught his attention and he’s appraising the situation to find if you’re deserving of it. “Is there, like… a way to improve without watching porn?” You query, worrying your lip between your teeth.

No longer engrossed in his laptop upon noticing your stare, Sukuna’s gaze bores into you. He doesn’t particularly make you uneasy now like he did when you first started, but it is sharp in spite of the evenness behind it. “I told you. Buy toys.”

You suppose you could have been a bit more specific. “No, I know that. A lot of them need a partner, though.”

He waves his hand in disinterest through the air like you’ve already answered your own question and he’s done entertaining any more. “Find one, then.” He’s already looking away as he replies.

You suck in a breath. “I’m from a small town. I just moved here, I don’t really know anyone.”

Sukuna just stares at you again like he expects you to figure it out yourself. His arms cross over his chest, his hip leaned against the counter. It’s not until the air turns stifling, your words hanging a hair too long as you meet his gaze that he cuts the tension with a disbelieving laugh.

“You’re asking me?” You can’t make heads or tails of his expression when it sits somewhere between disbelief and intrigue. It’s akin to the look you got upon calling him an asshole.

“No! Or– maybe? I don’t know.” The wince you shoot him is humiliating as you try to navigate the stormy seas you’ve set yourself sailing through.

“Why don’t you go ask Satoru?” He queries, pushing a hand back through his black-dyed locks like this question was never meant for him. Still, his tone doesn’t give off the impression that he’s irritated by you, so much as something more curious in nature.

Your gaze averts as your jaw hangs open in a frustrating moment of hesitation. Briefly glancing at the texts sitting in your hand is the only tell Sukuna needs, unfortunately able to read you like a book for some god forsaken reason.

“You’ve got to be fucking with me,” he chuckles, airy and amused. He pushes up off the counter, taking a step towards you like he’s laying out a challenge. “You don’t give a shit about the job. You’re trying to impress that fucker.” He rakes his tongue over his teeth, standing over you like he owns this damn conversation.

You cross your arms over your chest, fixing him with your own judgement. “You don’t have to make a big deal out of it.”

He pushes a condescending breath through his nose, smiling with nothing but mockery. “I don’t, but I’m gonna. You two would hit it off.”

Frowning, you opt to not give him the reaction he wants. Your nails dig into the skin of your arm. “I think I liked you better when you didn’t talk as much.”

“Most people do,” he smirks. He steps forward, hands in his pockets as he leans over you. “You still want me to teach you a thing or two, sweetheart?” His tone drips with condescension now that the person he once saw as little more than a pain in his ass has become something he can toy with.

You roll your eyes. You hadn’t expected your quiet co-worker to be this kind of an asshole. Why couldn’t he just say no and move on? Where did all the theatrics come from? “Why are you such a dick?”

“Answer the question,” he deflects, unbothered and painfully egotistical.

You huff, staring at the lemon-shaped vibrator sitting atop the counter that you’ve been contemplating buying for the last hour. “Fine. Yeah, I do.”

He blows a breath through his nose, standing upright again once he’s gotten your admission in his hands. “What’s in it for me?” The way he stands over you, chin tilted, and eyes narrowed, makes you huff.

You hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead. Hell, you didn’t expect to even voice your thoughts out loud. You barely even know enough about him to offer him anything. “I took business as a minor,” you suggest. “I could tutor you.”

“Nah, I’m set.”

You shrug, exasperated. Your hands wave uselessly through the air before plopping back down at your sides. “What do you want, then?”

He regards you with a thoughtful expression. “I’ll train you to close. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing, if I ask you to take my shift, you drop whatever you’re doing and take it.”

You shift your jaw to the left, chewing on the inside of your cheek. You expected worse.

“And you don’t tell Jillian or Satoru you took my shift. I keep the money.”

Ah. There’s the ‘worse’ you expected.

Frowning, you give the nerves in the pit of your stomach a moment to settle over making a deal with the devil. You want to say figuratively but you aren’t so sure. “Fine.” You extend your hand, but the man shakes his head, frowning.

“Rules first, then we shake.” He holds up his pointer. “Don’t tell a soul. Not even your friends back home.” Another finger. “No kissing. No making out. No sex.” He holds up a third finger. “This isn’t a little romantic fantasy thing. This isn’t a relationship. Don’t call this shit friends with benefits or fuck buddies, either. We’re not friends. Don’t expect anything cute from me. Got that?”

You don’t bother holding back a scoff. “I wasn’t going to, trust me.”

He smirks, unbothered. “Good.” His hand extends first this time.

For a long moment, you stare. You contemplate your life choices. You debate just ignoring your fears with Satoru and praying you can play the role of having experience. You equally contemplate just telling him you have no experience and that you’re nervous.

But somehow, the way nerves churn your stomach makes the butterflies worse. You want to squash them. You want to impress Satoru.

And you know. You know it’s stupid. You know you shouldn’t have to impress him, but the heart and mind don’t always connect, do they?

Against your better judgement, you clasp hands with him. You go to do the actual motion of a handshake but he keeps your hand in place. When your gaze raises to meet his in a silent question, he’s scrutinizing every little movement in your features.

His expression doesn’t hold the condescension you expect. His gaze is devoid of amusement, fixated on the frown you bear. “You really sure about this?”

You don’t hesitate to nod.

His eyes narrow a sliver. “Well, aren't you full of surprises?” There’s that hint of assholery. “One more rule.” His hand remains unmoving, still clasped with yours as he holds your gaze. “Either of us can shut this down at any time. It still never gets mentioned.”

You nod. “Agreed.”

Finally, he goes through with shaking your hand. “When are you looking to start?”

Your nose wrinkles at the way he makes it sound. “Do you have to say it like it’s a– I don’t know, job or something?”

“Oh, my bad,” he sneers, his grin too proud. “When do you wanna get fucked?”

You shouldn’t have asked.

Pulling your hand away from him, you rub your temples. You’re definitely not about to prod any further, lest he get more vulgar. “I’m free ton–”

“Not tonight,” he interrupts. “I got someone coming over to study.”

Scheduling ahead doesn’t sit right with you either. “Can we just decide during shifts? See how we’re feeling?”

“Whatever suits you,” he shrugs. The mild arrogance to his tone is… another can of worms to unpack, but as your colleague turns back to his studies, you only have one question for yourself.

What the hell have you gotten yourself into?

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౨ৎ a/n ; i hope you enjoyed the first chapter of what will be a VERY kinky series LOLOL. i'm having a lot of fun with these two so far and i hope you are too <3

as a note, i'm trying moving tags to another blog which some of you may have seen due to changes in how tumblr's bot detection system is working, so please bear with me while i figure out how to not get my account flagged while doing taglists 🙃 edit; it's not working. if you weren't tagged, bear with me while i try to figure it out :')

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"mikey, baby..." you giggled breathlessly as you felt the softness of your boyfriend's tongue playfully kissing over the most sensitive areas of your neck. it was a cosy rainy day, so you were cuddled up in your bed, surrounded by teddies and pillows, the decor a chaotic mess from your pillow fight just thirty minutes prior. you both lay on your sides, but almost on top of each other in the manner that your limbs were interwoven, and also in how your lips didn't dare to be apart for more than a few seconds. the only sounds were wet kisses, sighs, and the comforting patter of rain on the window.

your hands were threaded comfortably through his dark curls, and you couldn't stop giggling at the ticklish yet sensual sensation stemming from his head's position beneath your jaw, still pressing kisses to your skin. he couldn't get enough of you.

"hm?” michael murmured into your neck, running his hands up and down your torso. you hadn’t been together that long, but you were both obsessed with each other, craving each other’s touch all the time. and michael was oxymoronically both a shy and passionate lover—there was passion in everything he said and did to you, but outside of sex he was often hesitant to commit sensual actions, such as gripping your ass (even as much as he wanted to) or squeezing your breasts. he overthought a lot of things, and never wanted to cross a boundary.

now though, he’d become so lost in you that for him this moment was akin to the intimacy of sex itself, and so he squeezed and grabbed at your ass through the fabric of your tiny denim shorts. you laughed airily as he did.

one of the biggest elements of your adoration for michael was that very coalescence of shyness and heated passion. his songs and stage persona spoke of the latter, and generally he embodied the former, but when it was just the two of you, him so immersed in your body, the depth of his devotion would be enacted.

“stop it, michael,” you said through breathless sighs as he started to nip at you, “i wanna see your pretty face.”

reluctantly, michael paused his bestowing of affection, and pulled back to look at you. a wide smile was brought to your face, while michael’s was bashful. he shook his head.

“why are you shaking your head?”

“callin’ me pretty…” he muttered, embarrassed. his face was still lit up, but his eyes looked a little melancholy. you hated whenever he got like that, which for michael was way more often than one should experience. and in relation to that, michael often forgot that a romantic relationship wasn’t a one-way thing—you felt for him the way he did for you, and you would never hesitate to demonstrate that.

it really did upset you, though—how he despised his looks so much. a few years ago he’d had rhinoplasty to thin out his beautiful nose, and while of course he still looked as angelic as ever—he always would—you wished you could’ve been with him at the time to convince him not to go ahead with that surgery.

“baby, don’t start that with me,” you whispered, cupping his cheek. “what did i say? every time i tell you how pretty you are, you must take it with no arguments, okay?” you rubbed your thumb over his cheekbone, before gently squeezing.

he smiled, but there was a bone-deep tiredness in his eyes that entwined with the melancholy. he had been so busy lately, and you knew he wasn’t taking care of himself. that was further evident in how quiet he’d been today, and you felt a pang of worry that he might’ve been buried in your neck for reasons other than for your pleasure.

that was true, although he wouldn’t admit it. he’d rested on your chest before settling his exhausted face into your neck in order for you to neither see how bad he supposedly looked, and so that you didn’t worry too much about the visible depletion due to over-exerting himself in rehearsal and onstage while he deliberately starved.

but while you were only in the honeymoon phase, so early on in your relationship, you knew michael well enough already. and of course it wasn’t all of a sudden in this moment that his fatigue had expressed itself in his appearance—so hiding it from you now was useless.

the two of you looked at each other, you gazing into a pair of sad eyes, and michael gazing into a pair of softly concerned ones.

“sweet boy,” you said quietly, before cupping his chin now and kissing his angel lips, both of you relishing in the comfort of how your legs were weaved as if the limbs were one. and michael was again glad that you seemed to be initiating a makeout, because that meant less time for you to think about other things that he knew you would, regarding his health.

“honey…” he murmured in between kisses, slipping in his tongue as you sighed and played with his hair.

but after a couple of minutes, you pulled back. no, you weren’t going to spend the rest of your time together with only kisses while without words. you knew he wasn’t doing well, and you wouldn’t allow him to distract his way out of the gentle confrontation you had to approach him with.

as soon as you pulled away, he held you by your neck and resumed the kiss without question. but again, you ended it.

“wha’s wrong, baby?” he furrowed his brows.

“nothing, michael—you know i could kiss you all day,” you smiled softly, but your heart ached as you looked at him.

you busied yourself with twirling one of his curls while you braced yourself for the question you were about to ask, because you knew it would make him uncomfortable. you hated to see your baby upset or put in a difficult position, but you needed to broach the subject all the same.

“then why’d y’ stop?” he asked in that beautiful, angelic cadence of his, pressing a sweet kiss to the button of your nose.

“because i need to talk to you about something.” now you interlocked your fingers with his, and his face grew concerned.

you took a deep breath. “have you eaten today?”

michael instantly averted his eyes from you, looking instead at the comforter below.

you squeezed his hand and kissed him again, momentarily this time. “no. look at me.”

reluctantly, he did.

“now answer me, michael,” you sighed, with the soothing rhythm of running your thumb over the skin of his jaw and his cheek. you didn’t want to press him like this, but you were seriously concerned. you knew that since childhood he’d had very disordered habits around eating, but recently you noticed that days passed where you could’ve sworn he hadn’t eaten a thing. and what concerned you now was that yesterday was a sunday, and for michael sundays were for fasting.

“haven’t gotten round to it yet,” he murmured, still trying to look away but each time he attempted to, you gently repositioned his attention with your gentle hand.

and michael couldn’t lie to you like he could with most people, because since he couldn’t stand to be apart from you—so deeply in love that he was—you spent virtually all your time together. even while he was still so busy, he had you with him at all times. so now, he knew that you were aware he likely hadn’t eaten. you were asking him to answer for you, but you were pretty certain already. really, the most important thing to you was that he could confront the issue and hopefully nourish his body at least a little, and even if it was for no other reason than that his girl requested it of him.

“honey,” you whispered, moving as close as you could to his warm, thin body, despite how close you were already. you held him by the nape of his neck, your other hand still holding his. “it’s four in the afternoon.”

“yeah. i’ll eat a little somethin’ later.”

“how about now?” you suggested gently. “you’re so exhausted, baby, i can see it in your face. and you have such a long day tomorrow at the studio.”

“’m not really hungry,” he muttered, but he hated being this way with you—all miserable and quiet. he was usually only ever whimsical and happy in your presence.

“that doesn’t matter when you haven’t eaten in almost two days, michael.”

your gaze never left him, and he felt anxious underneath it, but he understood that it stemmed from how much you cared.

except, he just didn’t want to eat. he deliberately used starvation as punishment and as a form of control over his chaotic existence—he had done so for years—but the restriction also tied into how he was so specific about what he ate and what it would do to his dancer’s physique. and there were also many days where he’d forget to eat simply due to obsessing over his craft. that had definitely contributed this time, but there were always a multitude of aspects.

“i know,” he smiled slightly.

“let me make you something. we can eat together, okay?”

he didn’t seem to like that suggestion, as you expected, but he nodded. “somethin’ vegetarian?”

“duh,” you grinned. “you’re my baby—i know you well enough.”

a sweet smile grew on your boyfriend’s face at that, and your heart felt that it melted. you pecked his lips several times, producing a warm laugh from his previously deflated voice.

“i love you,” you whispered. “i just wanna keep you safe and hold you here forever.”

“likewise, pretty mama.” his happy face had returned properly, and it only propelled your own further.

“mikey, don’t try to distract me now,” you laughed, squeezing his cheek. he knew how words like those, in that beautiful fucking voice of his, got you all worked up.

“that’s not what i’m doin’, honeypie,” he teased further. another thing you adored about your boyfriend was his frequent use of the cutest pet names, ones your past lovers had never used with you, and therefore forever associated with only michael.

you squinted at him playfully, nudging his bicep. “alright, i’m off to go play my ten-minute part as michael jackson’s personal chef.”

“nooo,” michael groaned, quickly pulling you snug against him so that you were flush to his chest, laid on top of his whole body. he wrapped his arms around your waist tightly so you couldn’t move. and you didn’t want to either, but your need to make him eat something overwhelmed your desire to stay cuddled up.

“mikey, it’s only ten minutes, baby,” you chuckled.

“ten minutes where i’ll be alone without you,” he frowned.

“i’m sure you’ll survive,” you grinned with a wink, before kissing his forehead, his nose and lips. then you laughed. “wink for me, baby.”

michael rolled his eyes lightheartedly. your boy never could wink, and the sight of him trying to do so always tickled you. it had stemmed from the first time you’d met, and to impress you he attempted it with the vision of looking sexy, but he ended up just blinking both eyelids. you found it hilarious, but of course it didn’t stop him from exuding the sex appeal that had drawn you to him even before you met. all his little quirks had really only amplified the way you felt about him.

now he tried to do it again at your request, but of course to no avail. all he did was blink both eyes, and together you laughed, while you still laid on top of him.

michael seized the moment to begin another passionate kiss, slipping in his tongue almost instantly, and at first, you fell for it, swirling yours with his, moaning softly into the peaceful embrace of your mouths meeting.

but then you remembered the task at hand. “nope!” you jumped off of him and stood up. “i’m going to the kitchen. you’ll see me in ten minutes.”

as you walked away, you heard michael groan again, and you chuckled to yourself.

in the kitchen you made him a tofu salad sandwich, and you sat cuddled up with him while he ate it. he did so as slow as ever, but at least he was eating. you played with his hair to distract him from his thoughts, and kissed his nose every so often to watch his bright energy light up in his eyes even if only briefly.

he didn’t finish the sandwich, but you hadn’t expected him to. you were just glad to have seen him consume most of it, because you couldn’t stand to see him so malnourished.

he was silent afterward, adding onto the comfortable silence you’d been in while he’d eaten, and you wondered if he was upset about something. he looked deep in thought.

“baby?” you asked from beside him, scratching at his scalp now in the way he always loved.

“yeah?” he replied softly, kissing your hand.

“something on your mind?”

“a few things.” michael started to smile.

“like what?” you furrowed your brows in amusement, because you knew that look on his face all too well.

“like,” he pressed several open-mouthed kisses up your arm from your wrist, “i wanna go down on you right now.”

you chuckled. “and that’s the first thing you thought of after eating that sandwich?”

“yeah. dessert,” he murmured against your skin, breathing you in happily. he was in a better mood now, and you smiled at him with just as much elation.

“well, if you’d like…”

michael grinned wider, pulling you into a kiss. you laughed into his mouth and pulled back to point something out. “but wait ten minutes, honey. you don’t want indigestion.”

michael rolled his eyes, sitting up against the headboard because he knew you were right.

“this first…” you hummed, moving over to straddle his lap. wrapping your arms around his neck, you cupped his jaw and initiated another sweet make out session.

as you kissed, sloppily and heavenly, you rocked over his clothed bulge, hardening the more you moved and the more you whined into his mouth.

then after some time had passed, while michael could’ve kissed you forever he also craved something that excited him much more. he squeezed your waist and broke the kiss, for the first time in his life.

“alright, honey, i think it’s been much more than ten minutes.”

you giggled, climbing off him to lay back against the sheets.

and while you got yourself comfortable, you watched in amusement as he began to busy himself with something. he took great care in how he maneuvered your stuffed animals to the floor, putting them down one by one.

“this isn’t appropriate for the teddy bears and the little kitties to see.”

you laughed, then squealed as he pulled your legs up, settling himself between your legs. slowly he pulled down your tiny shorts and threw them somewhere.

then, wordlessly he hooked his arms around your thighs, pressed a kiss to your centre through your panties, and wasted no time in tugging them down, although the way he did so was, as always, reverent and gentle.

upon witnessing the sight of your soaked folds, michael immediately licked one warm stripe up your slit, and you hissed, toes curling even at the first touch. then he spread your puffy folds with two fingers, and pressed a soft kiss to your waiting clit.

“i missed her,” he murmured against your bundle of nerves, and you ruffled his hair in turn, giggling.

“baby, it’s been like, four days since you last went down on me.”

his pretty brown eyes looked up into yours. “that’s a long time, angel.”

amused, you shook your head, and then he dove in properly, and your eyes clamped shut instinctively. “oh f—”

the vibration of his own moans and hums into your pussy only intensified the pleasure, and you tugged at his dark curls with no restraint.

“oh honey, y’taste incredible… like always…”

“mmghhh, just like that, baby—”

“just like this, huh, mama?” he sped up the movement of his tongue, lapping at you eagerly, up and down so that his face was rapidly becoming decorated with your juices.

“michael—”

“i love you so much…” he muttered against you, now rubbing his nose over your clit.

you almost yelled—he knew how much you loved that feeling—and your head fell back further onto the pillows, legs somehow falling even wider apart as you whined. “baby, fuck—feels so good, keep doing that—”

“could taste you forever, sweet girl…”

there was nobody who utilised pet names more than michael, and not one uttered from his lips has any falsity to it. he spoke each word with deliberate care, and the work of his mouth mirrored that same intention.

the situation in your nether region was pure filth. you were completely soaked now, sweet juices smearing all over your boyfriend’s gratified face, and dripping slick onto the sheets below.

at one point, you tugged at his curls a little too hard and he groaned into you. you opened your mouth to apologise, but only louder moans poured out.

“y’did that on purpose, baby?” michael smirked against your clit, before latching on to suck and in turn sending your eyes rolling into the back of your head again.

“no, i promise,” you chuckled through a high-pitched gasp. truly, you were tugging only absentmindedly, and the pleasure from the vibration of his sounds was a bonus.

michael laughed, then continued to ravish you, jaw working at an insane speed to pleasure each fraction of your pussy with immense dedication. too lost in the pleasure, your eyes were clamped shut, and when he brought up two fingers and pushed them in—still never letting up the work of his tongue—it was such a sudden intrusion that you were seeing stars.

michael’s fingers were so long, and so with one swift thrust inside, they without fail hit your spot instantly.

“aw, that’s it, mama… y’feel me right where y’need me most, yeah? tell me, pretty baby… need to make sure i’m pleasin’ y’ right…”

as his tongue continued to lap at you, in tandem with the quick while specific thrusts of his digits hitting your g-spot, he took even more pleasure in listening to you struggle to form a coherent response.

“michael—baby, i’m gonna cum, i’m so close—you’re perfect, fuck—”

“nonono,” he muttered just above your weeping entrance (stuffed full by those beautiful fingers) licking up the messy slick that didn’t cease to emerge. every last drop, he savoured.

but now, he took those two fingers out and began to gradually phase out the pace of his tongue—although that took quite a few moments to get him to actually stop, because of course the boy was equal parts munch and head over heels for his girl, so he found it very difficult to actually detach his mouth from your sex, no matter how hard he tried.

finally however, he pulled away. he looked up at you and wiped the space around his mouth with the back of his hand, and the sight of that casual action paired with his soft brown eyes had you feeling dizzy even though the treatment of pleasure had halted.

you were pouting at him in confusion, and he chuckled—another sound and sight that sent shivers through your spine. instinctively, you bucked your hips up a little and arched your back, grinding on the sheets without a thought.

“don’t edge me like that, mikey,” you frowned.

“’m not done, sweetheart,” michael smiled, before beginning to quickly shed his clothes. “wanna be inside you when i get you there—y’know that.”

“i do,” you grinned. “my gentleman.”

“how does that make me a gentleman?” he raised a brow, stepping out of his boxers.

you bit your lip insanely hard at what beheld—michael’s huge, thick cock leaking milky beads of precum.

but more accurately, your lip bite was a product of the feeling produced from that sight. your core ached, and again you unconsciously writhed your hips, needing to feel him so fucking bad.

then you realised you hadn’t answered his question. your boyfriend was fully naked now, and understandably that was a big distraction.

you shook your head to collect yourself. “sorry, what did you say, baby?”

“i said,” he began, while moving to settle himself over you, stroking his painfully hard cock in one hand with a wince. his other hand stroked your soft thigh. “how does wantin’ to be inside you when you cum make me a gentleman?”

“because…” you tugged his curls again but this time to pull him down for a slow kiss.

then you spoke so sincerely, surprising yourself at how the words managed to flow despite how you were insatiably horny.

“you’ve always seen sex as a sacred act. it’s so intimate and beautiful with you and i’ve never had that with anybody before. you make love, baby. so caring and passionate and… fuck, y’know, let’s stop talking—just get inside me.” you chuckled.

“honey…” he smiled wide, a beautiful expression lighting up his still-fatigued features. “i’m glad y’feel that way. always wanna make y’feel good and safe.”

“you always do, michael. without fail.”

you both looked deeply into each other’s eyes, getting lost in the so familiar orbs, and suddenly michael reached down to rub slow, perfect circles over your clit. you gasped, and immediately he interlocked his fingers with yours. he continued to pleasure your nerves as he talked.

“sex with you could never be anything less than sacred. my baby…” he started to pepper kisses over your face while you blushed and squirmed beneath him. “my beautiful girl… y’want it like this, mama?” he asked, gesturing to the position you were both in, and since you’d just spoken of intimacy, he assumed missionary was what you wanted.

he removed his thumb and now gently smacked the head of his cock over your clit, before gliding his length up and down, soaking it in a mixture of your wetness and his precum.

“mhm. need your body on mine…”

“of course, sweetheart. arms up f’me.”

you did as he asked, and gently he pulled your sweater up over your head, before silently unclasping your bra with ease. you let it fall from your shoulders.

“there, that’s better…” michael started to mouth over the most sensitive parts of your neck, making you writhe and sigh with ease. “a lot better. so fuckin’ pretty…”

now he brought his kisses down to your breasts, murmuring praise against the skin, breathing in the scent that he deemed magical.

and finally, his lips latched onto one of your nipples, with a suckle somehow both tender and rough.

“michael—need you, baby…” you whined, squeezing his hand.

“i’m right here, angel,” he muttered over your areola, kissing and licking around the nipple now.

“inside, mikey, please… need it so fucking bad.”

he pulled back and looked up for a moment, before turning to switch his affections to the other nipple. one of michael’s quirks was that he always had to balance everything out.

“no,” you countered, pushing his head back in protest. “baby, quit teasing. seriously, i’m so—”

“i know,” he chuckled, with another smack of his tip over your clit. you shuddered at the feeling.

“alright, shh. you want me like this, yeah?” michael whispered, as he leaned forward so that you both laid skin to skin, chests essentially pressed against each other.

your nipples brushed against his warm, smooth skin, and you hummed in the most thorough content.

then he leaned his forehead down to meet yours, and kissed you oh so softly, you thought you could melt in his arms.

“i love you,” you whispered against his lips—equally as gentle as everything else about him—then wrapped your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck, hugging his shoulders.

“i’ll love you forever,” michael replied. “i’m so grateful for y’, honey…”

“my prince,” you grinned, cupping his cheek.

he smiled so wide, and the butterflies in your stomach were ever-prominent. with michael, they had never left since that first day.

now he kissed your cheek over and over, resting his head against yours comfortably, as he reached a hand down to slowly guide himself into your entrance.

your body seized instantly, always struggling to take him at the initial stretch, but he cooed at you through the light pain. “i know… you’ll be alright in just a moment, okay? y’take me so well, my baby girl…”

“mi—fuck—mmghhh,” you moaned and gasped as he pushed further inside. michael was only ever satisfied if he knew he was taking things at the most careful pace for you. he always searched for signs of real distress on your face, but today it was clear that you were definitely prepared, given the state of your soaking pussy.

and when he bottomed out, you sighed in sheer happiness, giggling at how beautifully full you felt. you brought a hand up to his curls, and he squeezed your other.

“what’s so funny?” he asked with a smirk.

“nothing, i’m just happy,” you smiled even brighter than before.

“’m so glad, angel,” michael whispered. “now ‘m gonna make love to you exactly how you deserve, yeah?”

you nodded and kissed his shoulder above you, but then you had a different idea.

“no, mikey, wait,” you looked up at him with sincerity, running your thumb over his knuckles. “it doesn’t always have to only be about me.”

he raised his brows in confusion, so you continued.

“i mean… sex is between the two of us—it isn’t just about my pleasure. i swear, you deserve everything that’s beautiful in this world, baby. let me show you how much i love you.”

you were beyond grateful for how michael always put your sexual needs first—every woman deserved a partner like that—but in all areas of life michael always looked down on himself, never believed he was worthy of true adoration and in turn would always shy away from anyone showing how much they appreciated him. particularly as of late, he hadn’t been taking care of himself in several ways—his food restriction being one of them, alongside his hyper-critical attitude toward his craft.

michael bit his lip and scrunched up his face in embarrassment. he loved to be intimate with you if he was the giver of such intimacy, but to be the receiver had him feeling incredibly shy, because he always believed himself unworthy.

“michael…” you smiled with an eye roll and a nudge to his bicep. “let me love on you, baby.”

now he squinted with a shy smile. “i’m the one makin’ love to you, sweetheart.”

you rolled your eyes again. “just let me show you what i mean.”

you had been stuffed full of michael’s cock for two minutes now, and you gasped at the feeling when he twitched inside your walls.

“move now, honey, please…” you sighed, tangling your fingers in his hair and digging your heels into his lower back where your legs were wrapped around him.

michael nodded with a sincere expression, and you felt that lingering butterfly sensation again, strengthened when he now thrusted for the first time.

you moaned in the utmost satisfaction as he again hit your sweet spot with ease. “oh baby…”

and before he could say something, before he could swallow your words in hot kisses, you started to worship him with both words and touch, endeavouring to make him feel so loved, despite his usual protests. he spent all his days doing that for you, so why couldn’t you replicate the same for him? you just had to get past his dismissive attitude when it came to things like this.

despite how in terms of position he was the one with the dominance, being above you and in control of the pace and depth, that didn’t affect the way you planned to take care of him that afternoon. while he took care of your pleasure, you did so with his nervous system, and his very soul. he had been so detached from self-love his entire life, and there was nothing you cherished more than possession of the ability to be the one girl who could make him understand his worth, even if that understanding only ever lasted for short moments.

you knew that michael would probably never treat himself right, that he would always believe himself to be unattractive and unworthy of everything you gave him and of what his fans gave him, but that depressing inevitability never deterred you from trying your best with him. you always tried your best to influence even the slightest self-love on his behalf, and even while it was a struggle, the result of seeing the shy brightness in his eyes and the flushed expression on his beautiful face always brought you so much relief.

“michael, baby,” you said through moans as he hit your spot with every devoted thrust, “promise you’ll listen to every word i’m about to say…”

“what d’y’ wanna say, sweet thing?” he whispered in your ear, before pressing two slow, wet kisses beneath it.

you pulled him down for a passionate kiss of your lips, the wet squelches of each smack filling the room with the sound of sex. then you moved your lips to his neck, sucking all over his most sensitive erogenous zone.

“gonna tell you how beautiful you are…” you murmured, leaving a deliberate hickey. michael continued to fuck you so perfectly, rhythm slow and deep. “how much i love you…”

he let out the most ethereal moan at the feeling of your sensuous treatment, and began playing with your fingers as he thrusted, for that was always what kept him grounded the most—especially when he felt shy. like right now, he was diffidently anticipating the words you’d choose next, in a moment that couldn’t be more intimate.

“c’mere, dollface.” he pulled back so you were made to detach your lips from his neck, and kissed your forehead, then your nose, with the sweetest smirk on his face, although you could see that telltale shyness seeping through the mask that tried to hide it.

“shh,” you whispered, heart so full and body so complete with a shuddering arousal that you felt this might be the most treasured moment in your life so far.

you noticed his hand had moved to cup your cheek, while the other was enveloped in your own hand, and you adored the way his thumb would rub circles that were half-absentminded, half with purpose.

although, it didn’t take long before he pulled back, and that hand reached down to the area that needed him most. there he circled your throbbing clit, rubbing in tight repetition. this was what he would’ve done anyway, but now you noticed he’d definitely taken the opportunity to do so as a sly method of making you so distracted that you’d stop with the intimate talk.

but if that was the case, you didn’t fall for it.

“no,” you protested, tugging him back down so your bodies were attached again. now you held the back of his neck, gripping your man so securely so that he was as close to your face as possible—but when he went in to kiss you, you squeezed his cheek and giggled.

he thrusted a little quicker all of a sudden, so the giggle was quickly cut short by a high moan from your throat, but still you remained focused. you’d been gasping and whining since he entered you, but you wouldn’t let him get away with assuming that you wouldn’t be able to talk coherently in the midst of all that. sure, he’d usually be correct, but this time you were so dedicated to talk him through it, rather than the other way round as it always had been.

still holding his hand and the nape of his neck, you noticed that even while you were pressed so close—in the most intimate form of missionary imaginable—he wasn’t looking into your eyes. he looked down at your breasts, then to the side, to your lips, but not directly into your eyes.

“my baby, listen to me, you’re so pretty…” you murmured against his lips, and he shook his head, trying to swallow your words with another kiss.

“nuh-uh,” you smiled, but admittedly bit your lip at the pleasure, and almost forgot what you were meaning to say. “angelface.” you held his chin and kissed him once, softly.

that nickname always got him so incredibly flushed, and the feeling was a million times more pronounced whenever you used it during lovemaking.

“baby…” he scrunched up his face, delving into your neck now to try to kiss you there, since you’d denied his access to your lips. but of course you refused and gently pushed his head back up again.

“michael, i’m not gonna stop ‘til you listen—oh god…”

“i get it honey, y’think i’m pretty,” he sighed, snapping his hips harder now as if a sort of physical way of changing the subject. his low grunts were somehow as soft as those of angels in your ear, and he thought the same of the sounds spilling from you too.

“it’s more than that, mich—fuck, right there…”

“right there, yeah?” he cocked his tongue to the inside of his cheek, pounding you at that same ideal rhythm.

“mhm, now—shit, oh—you’re the most beautiful man on this earth, baby… body and soul—stop talking down on yourself…”

those words you managed to declare coherently, despite the ever-building immense pleasure from his cock abusing your gummy walls with each snap of his hips.

michael still wouldn’t answer, smiling only slightly, and you playfully nudged his bicep.

“ugh, come here, i don’t care how much you try to fight it.” you dragged him into a tongue-filled kiss, running your nails up and down his back now. “you’re an angel, honey,” you sighed against his throat as you resumed your neck kisses. “my handsome angel…”

you loved to bury your head in his neck, not only for the intimacy, but because you adored his scent. it was intoxicating—a rich blend of dark florals with vanilla and masculine spice.

michael’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. the feeling of your words against his skin, with the content of them, and with how your tight, wet pussy gripped his cock so perfectly, had him wondering how you were even a real human being, let alone one he could call his own.

“you mean so much to me—mmhh—and to so many people,” you continued, kissing all over his jaw to his cheek, then over his eyelids, caressing his face with your smooth hand.

“pretty dove, i love y’ so much,” he moaned back, shutting his eyes at the beautiful sensations he was so blessed to indulge in.

“i’m with you forever, my baby…” still you sucked, nipped and kissed at his skin, and you could really feel your orgasm looming now. “you’re my fucking soulmate, baby—please—oh, baby—please look after yourself…”

you couldn’t tell his reaction to that line, because his face was already in a squint due to the force of his thrusts and due to how you made him feel, but you did notice the emotion in his eyes shift slightly.

“for me,” you whispered, pausing your affections to cup his cheek again and make direct eye contact with him.

finally, he looked at you properly. michael loved eye contact during sex—really it was usually you that ended up shy—but tonight was different, because you’d flipped the switch.

“even if you won’t do it for yourself. do it for me, please.” you suddenly felt teary-eyed—how ridiculous, you thought, to almost cry during sex, but this was probably the most passionate the two of you had ever made love, and that was a big statement to make considering passion was michael’s main endeavour.

the difference was that you had never before spoken those words to him during sex.

“c’mere, sweet girl,” he moaned, now cradling the back of your head. “i love you. i’m listenin’, i promise…”

“don’t just say that to please me, michael,” you sighed through more whines as you grew closer and closer to climax, but still never taking your mind off the topic at hand.

“i think ’m pleasin’ you enough here, angel,” he teased, and you softly nudged his arm again, but a smile escaped your lips.

“shut up,” you laughed. “stop for a sec.”

michael furrowed his brows, pausing as obligated. “everythin’ alright?”

“yes,” you kissed him deeply, “you’re making me breathless and i needed to tell you we’re one hundred percent continuing this conversation after this.”

“all i heard was ’m makin y’ breathless,” he grinned, and you rolled your eyes again.

“michael.”

he only chuckled with a shake of his head, and resumed his thrusts, now hard as ever. “i know, honey, we’ll talk,” he murmured through grunts, before crashing his lips onto yours again, still cradling your head protectively.

you whined out, gripping at his shoulder with one hand, noticing he still hadn’t let go of your other.

“oh, michael,” you nearly screamed, as his cockhead slammed into your sweet spot aggressively now. this was how you guys liked to make love—slow and soft initially, before building up to more aggressive thrusts as you each came closer to climax.

“this alright, mama?” he whispered, and your toes curled even more at the sound of his beautiful voice. “nice n’ deep, huh?”

“perfect, baby—mmhh, fuck,” you moaned as you writhed beneath him on the creaking bed. your breasts were squashed against his warm chest, heels of your feet still digging into his lower back. you were completely entwined, becoming one in the act michael cherished so much.

“you close, handsome?”

“yeah, real close—ohh—”

you started to suck and bite all over his neck again, murmuring sweet nothings into the crook as he pounded you into oblivion. you wondered how he had all this energy when he hadn’t been nourishing himself lately, but you couldn’t think too much about that now. you’d care for him in the inevitable exhaustion afterward.

“my pretty baby,” you whined into his ear, to make sure he definitely heard. “such a perfect angel… y’gonna cum for me, mikey?”

michael’s heart was racing like crazy. he was absolutely obsessed with you, enamoured of your existence, and he could never believe that this life with you was real.

as you’d assumed, nothing you ever said would make him change the outlook he had on himself. no matter how sincere your tone, he still thought he looked entirely unattractive, and he’d never for a second consider that his personality had anything resembling an angel.

and that was the only thing you could ever dislike about michael: the heart-wrenching understanding that he would never see himself the way you did.

“s’close, mama, where d’you want me to—?”

“inside, baby, please—i need your cum,” you almost groaned, needing to emphasise your point profusely. you pulled back from his neck to look into his warm brown eyes.

“but—” he tried to protest, but you shook your head and silenced him with a finger to his lips.

“i’ll take that new pill, y’know—mmhh—what’s it called? the one you can take after sex?”

michael only grinned, and set an impossibly fast pace that now sent the bed rocking with even more aggression. it was a good thing nobody was home, but the neighbours were certainly hearing your endeavours to break the bed.

each time he slid in and out of you, his cock was decorated with a milky ring of your slick, and if he wasn’t chest to chest with you, he would’ve been staring down intently at where the two of you merged. that was always one of michael’s most favourite sights.

“honey, y’sure y’ want me to cum inside?”

“yes, baby—maybe i need to start taking the pill because i—fuck—hate when you don’t… feels so good…”

“alright, let go f’me… at the same time, angel, i wanna feel it, right now…”

michael’s thrusts were becoming a little more erratic, struggling to contain his orgasm, but upon his request, your climax met his.

“oh, michael, baby—”

“i know, mama, i know…”

as usual, it was heavenly, an experience of the divine. toes curling so hard you thought you might cramp, back arching off the bed, eyes shut tight as your release flooded through you—this time made even more pleasurable by the feeling of michael’s hot seed decorating your womb. spurts of his liquid shot through you, and you tightened the lock of your ankles around his hips in an attempt to push his cum as deep as it could go.

michael’s eyes were shut, lip bitten between his teeth as he tried to calm down through the aftershocks, but once he’d semi-caught his breath, he pecked your nose and laughed.

“y’want your womb filled, angel?”

your mouth dropped open in an embarrassed shock—even though you had quite literally just begged for his cum and then physically attempted to lock in his seed deeper.

and michael was being playful with his words, but you knew how much he’d wanted kids of his own for a very long time now—the only reason he hadn’t brought up the possibility was because he was so busy with his career. and you hadn’t been a couple for all that long, but you very much enjoyed the prospect of him bringing that sort of language into the bedroom, while without the attachment of legitimate baby-making.

“i like the feeling…” you sighed, suddenly growing shy. you were filled to the brim with your man’s cum, as he looked into your eyes with a teasing smirk.

“y’want me to pull out now, or?”

“no,” you said quickly, and the desperation in your voice made him laugh again.

“okay,” he smiled, pressing one final kiss to your lips before settling his body comfortably to blanket yours—as it had already been doing, but now as though he was literally using your torso as a mattress.

his head rested between your cheek and your neck, while you ran your fingers through his soft hair. you wrapped the comforter protectively around his back.

“y’feelin’ okay?” he asked, words muffled against you.

“yes, baby, i’m perfect. how are you feeling?”

“amazin’. but tired,” he yawned. “real tired.”

“i know,” you whispered softly. “you’re so good to me honey, but don’t overexert yourself just to please me, okay?”

he made a soft sound of understanding, and snuggled further into you.

“we’ll talk later, sweet boy. get some sleep.”

and so michael drifted off into a slumber while resting inside you, humming and sighing against your neck in the comfort you provided for him. he struggled with sleep as well as food, and it brought a tear to your eye as you laid with him, to see him so safe in your arms. you were the only one who understood him, and the only one who could influence the slightest bit of self-compassion, even when he was at his lowest mentally.

he slept there for two hours inside you, which you knew wasn’t ideal for a woman not intending to get pregnant, but you found yourself unable to care. you had your beautiful sweetheart resting peacefully on top of you, and true peace had been so hard for him to achieve.

─── ❤︎ thank you for reading!! i’ve been super busy the last week so this took me a while, but i’m happy to finally post again!! :3

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

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

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

“I think we should split up.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m sorry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ironic.

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

Not as of recent.

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

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

You confessed your love to Michael that night.

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

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

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

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

Oh, he had really done it this time.

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

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

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

“You ready, sweetheart?”

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

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

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

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

Cha-ching!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perfect.

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

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

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

“Everybody did, sweetie.”

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

“Hate who?”

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

And there he was.

Michael.

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

It aggravated you that he looked so good.

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

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

Fuck award show assigned seats.

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

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

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

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

“You look beautiful.”

“What did I just say Michael?”

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

This night was going to be the death of you.

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

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

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

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

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

You scoffed quietly, “That’s rich.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“At least I have one.”

That sure wiped the smirk off his face.

“And definitely not a downgrade in the bedroom.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That title was his.

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

He knew you were aggravating him deliberately.

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

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

Well, not actually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mama..”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this time — you let him.

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

“Jump.”

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

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

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

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

“Please—mmhm—Need you, fuck.”

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

Ones you knew were his favourite.

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

You nodded, “Just f’you, Mike.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mmphmh—M-Mich—Michael, please!”

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

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

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

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

“Oh, you’ve done it now, ma.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

It was supposed to be dinner, nothing more than dinner, a simple, civil, carefully portioned evening where Odessa would sit across from Jaafar beneath soft lights and say the thing she had rehearsed a dozen times in the mirror, that it was better if they remained separated, better if they stopped circling each other like two wounded gods too proud to admit the war had ruined them both, better if they finally put an end to the back and forth, the almosts, the maybes, the quiet little domestic rituals that kept dragging them back to the edge of something neither of them seemed brave enough to name, and maybe, maybe, it was time to stop pretending the divorce papers were not waiting somewhere in the shadows like a prophecy neither of them had wanted to read aloud.

She had sworn this would be it.

She had sworn she would not let his eyes soften her, would not let his voice pull her into memory, would not let the fact that he knew how she took her wine, how she liked her food plated, how she always got quiet before saying something that scared her, become another reason to stay inside a marriage that had learned how to bleed quietly instead of die.

But then plans changed.

Or maybe he changed them.

Almost as if Jaafar had sensed the rug being swept from beneath his feet before Odessa ever reached for the corner, almost as if some old god had whispered in his ear that his wife was coming to bury them and he, stubborn as Orpheus turning toward the dark, had decided he would not let her walk into the underworld without singing first.

So there she sat, not in a restaurant, not at some polished table where distance could be measured by cutlery and folded napkins, but in an art classroom, of all places, with an easel set up before her like an offering, the room emptied of students and noise and ordinary life, leaving only the faint scent of paint, paper, and the hearty meal she was certain he had cooked himself, not ordered, not delegated, but prepared with those same careful hands that had once known every tender place in her life before they learned how to pack boxes and sign forms and leave.

The food sat plated beside her, warm and fragrant, arranged with a thoughtfulness that made her chest ache before she had even tasted it, and next to it stood a bottle of her favourite wine, because of course he remembered, because Jaafar had always remembered the things that made loving him complicated; he remembered the sweet red she reached for when she wanted to feel softer, the songs she played when she wanted to pretend she was not sad, the exact kind of intimacy that did not ask for forgiveness directly but placed itself in front of her like a sacrifice at Aphrodite’s altar and waited to see whether she would look away.

Sonder hummed low through the speaker, the music spilling into the empty room like smoke, all velvet and ache and late-night confession, and Odessa frowned as she looked around, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag because the entire setup felt too deliberate to be accidental, too intimate to be innocent, too painfully Jaafar to be anything other than a trap wrapped in romance and nostalgia.

“Jaafar?” she called, her voice travelling through the room and coming back to her softer, thinner, swallowed by the walls covered in drying artwork and half-finished studies of fruit, hands, faces, bodies, all those little mortal attempts to capture something before time took it.

No answer.

Her frown deepened as she picked up her phone, thumb already moving toward his name, irritation rising with unease in the pit of her stomach, because if this man had lured her into some dramatic, half-lit, emotionally manipulative performance and then had the audacity to be late to it, she was going to skin him alive like Apollo punishing Marsyas and leave his pretty confidence hanging somewhere as a warning.

But just as she was about to press call, the door at the back of the classroom opened.

Jaafar stepped out.

Not in the clothes she had expected, not in one of those clean, expensive shirts that made him look like trouble with a stylist, not in the calm armour he usually wore whenever he knew a serious conversation was coming, but in a linen robe tied loosely at his waist, the fabric soft and pale against his skin, his feet bare, his curls slightly mussed, and a sheepish smile sitting on his mouth as if he knew exactly how absurd he looked and had decided to let the absurdity disarm her before the rest of him tried to.

Odessa stared at him.

For a moment, genuinely, she had no words.

Jaafar lifted one hand in a small, almost boyish gesture, the kind of humble little wave that did not belong on a man who had once stood in her kitchen with the confidence of Hades claiming a queen and the mouth of Hermes after stealing cattle from Apollo.

“Before you say anything,” he said, that sheepish smile widening just enough to become dangerous, “I can explain.”

Odessa’s eyes moved slowly from his robe to the easel, from the meal to the wine, from the speaker playing Sonder to his bare feet on the art room floor, and then finally back to his face, where he stood looking too beautiful, too nervous, too pleased with himself, and entirely too capable of ruining every speech she had spent the day preparing.

“You better,” she said, though her voice came out quieter than she wanted, because the sight of him like this — ridiculous, vulnerable, staged and yet strangely sincere — had already reached for something in her she had planned to keep locked.

Jaafar’s smile softened.

And Odessa hated that too.

Because she had come there ready to end something.

But Jaafar, damn him, had set the room up like a man preparing to paint over ruin with his own hands.

Jaafar’s sheepish smile flickered, not disappearing, not exactly, but softening into something Odessa had not seen on his face in a long time, something stripped of swagger before he even untied the robe, something that made the linen hanging from his shoulders feel less like theatre and more like surrender, and for one awful, aching second she realised that whatever game she had expected him to play, whatever slick-mouthed, arrogant, beautifully infuriating performance she had prepared herself to resist, this was not quite that.

“I figured,” he began, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as his eyes moved from the easel to Odessa and then away again, as though looking at her directly made the confession harder, “one of our biggest issues, one of the reasons we’re… separated, is because you can’t see me.”

Odessa’s brows pulled together, but she said nothing, because there was something in his voice that stopped her, something quieter than flirtation and heavier than guilt, something that seemed to step into the room before him and lay itself at her feet like an offering to some old, merciless goddess.

“And maybe that’s on me too,” he continued, his mouth curving with no real humour this time, “because I don’t always know how to make myself visible to you without dressing it up as a joke, or confidence, or me acting like I’m fine when I’m not, and I know I got a slick mouth, Odessa, I know I can talk my way around a room and make everybody think I’m untouchable, but that don’t mean you’ve been seeing me.”

Her grip tightened around her phone.

Jaafar noticed.

Of course he did.

He always noticed the small things, the hand tightening, the breath catching, the way her eyes gave her away before her pride could shut the door, and maybe that was what made this worse, because Odessa had spent months believing she was the only one left standing naked in the ruins of them, only to find him here, barefoot in an art classroom, robe loose around his body, wine and dinner and Sonder arranged like incense at the temple of a marriage they had not yet buried.

“So I figured,” he said, stepping farther into the room, his voice low enough that the music nearly swallowed the edges of it, “if we’re going to fix things, if we’re even going to be honest enough to find out whether there’s something here worth saving, then I want you to see me.”

Odessa swallowed.

“Jaafar…”

“No,” he said gently, lifting one hand, not to silence her exactly, but to ask for just a little more courage from both of them. “Let me get it out before I lose my nerve, because contrary to what you like to think, I do lose it sometimes.”

That almost pulled a laugh from her.

Almost.

But then his fingers went to the knot of the robe, and the room changed.

Not crudely.

Not cheaply.

Not in the way her body might have expected after the kitchen, after his hands at her waist, after the kiss that had almost made her forget every sensible reason they were still separated.

This was different.

This was Jaafar standing before her not as the man who knew how to make her breath catch, not as Jalen’s father with the dangerous mouth and dangerous memory, not as the husband who still had a key to a house he no longer technically lived in, but as a man asking to be studied without armour, without performance, without the pretty tricks that had once made Odessa fall so fast she did not realise she was already in the underworld until the pomegranate seeds were sweet on her tongue.

“I’m gonna sit nude,” he said, and though the words could have been arrogant from any other version of him, tonight they came out careful, almost reverent, like he was offering himself not to Aphrodite’s vanity but to Psyche’s lamp, to the terrifying intimacy of being looked at while having nowhere left to hide. “And you’re gonna show me how you perceive me.”

Odessa stared at him, her pulse climbing into her throat.

The easel stood between them like an altar.

The blank canvas waited, pale and unforgiving, ready to receive whatever truth her hands were brave enough to tell.

“You want me to draw you?” she asked, because it was the simplest part of what he had said and therefore the only part she could safely touch.

“I want you to look at me,” he corrected softly, his eyes finally lifting to hers, steady now, darker than the room around them. “Really look at me, not the version you’re mad at, not the version you miss, not Jalen’s daddy, not the man who pissed you off, not the man you think already knows he can get you back if he smiles the right way.”

Odessa’s lips parted.

His mouth tilted faintly.

“There he is,” he murmured, almost to himself. “That’s the one you hate the most.”

“The arrogant one?” she asked, though her voice had lost some of its bite.

“The one who knows you still love him.”

The room went still.

Even Sonder seemed to hum lower.

Odessa looked away first, furious with herself for it, furious with him for saying it so plainly, furious that the sentence had crossed the space between them and found something in her that did not even try to deny it.

Jaafar did not press.

That was the thing that nearly undid her.

He did not smile like he had won, did not step closer, did not turn the moment into another one of his little victories; he simply stood there, robe still tied, eyes on her with a patience that felt older than both of them, like Orpheus had finally learned not to turn too soon, like Hades had opened his hand and waited to see whether Persephone would choose the fruit on her own.

“While you draw,” he said, quieter now, “we talk.”

Odessa let out a slow breath through her nose.

“About what?”

“Everything.”

“That’s broad.”

“It needs to be.”

“Jaafar.”

“Just you and me,” he said, and there it was, the plea beneath the confidence, the ache beneath the charm, the man beneath the myth. “No Jalen, no Malcolm, no family dinner, no school runs, no pretending the only reason we keep finding our way back to each other is because we share a child.”

Her eyes returned to his.

Jaafar’s jaw worked once, like the next words cost more than he wanted them to.

“No excuses,” he said. “No audience. No escape routes. Just us.”

Odessa’s chest felt too tight.

She glanced at the canvas again, at the charcoal set neatly beside the easel, at the meal still warming in its covered dish, at the wine he had remembered because of course he had, because loving Jaafar had always been impossible partly because he was careless in the places that hurt and devastatingly careful in the places that made leaving feel cruel.

“You think this fixes things?” she asked.

“No,” he said immediately.

That surprised her.

His eyes softened.

“I think this starts something honest.”

Odessa hated how much she wanted to believe him.

Jaafar looked down then, fingers brushing the robe’s tie again, not undoing it yet, not until she agreed, and that restraint, that quiet asking, lodged somewhere deep in her.

“I don’t want you to paint me pretty,” he said. “I don’t want you to flatter me. I don’t want you to draw the version of me everybody else sees, because everybody else gets the easy version, Odessa, everybody else gets the smile, the name, the stage, the bloodline, the charm, the parts that don’t ask anything from them.”

His gaze lifted.

“I want to know what you see when you look at me now.”

The words settled into her like dusk.

Odessa thought of him in her kitchen with his hands around hers, of him kissing Jalen’s forehead, of him saying he wanted his woman back with the kind of certainty that made her want to scream and soften at the same time; she thought of all the nights she had told herself separation was peace when really it had been winter, thought of Demeter grieving under grey skies, thought of Persephone pretending the underworld was only a prison when some part of her had made a kingdom there too.

“And what if you don’t like what I see?” she asked.

Jaafar’s smile was small, sad, and unbearably beautiful.

“Then at least I’ll finally know where I stand.”

For a moment, Odessa could not speak.

Then, slowly, she placed her phone facedown on the table.

Jaafar watched the movement like it meant something.

It did.

She hated that it did.

“You sit,” she said, nodding toward the stool positioned beneath the warm overhead light, her voice steadier than her heartbeat. “You talk. I draw.”

His mouth curved then, not into a grin, not yet, but into the beginning of one, that familiar confidence trying to return because it had never known how to stay gone for long.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Odessa pointed a finger at him.

“And if you make one slick comment about me studying your body—”

“You mean the body that gave you Jalen?”

“Jaafar.”

He lifted both hands, the sheepish smile returning as he backed toward the stool. “I’m done.”

“You are never done.”

“No,” he said, eyes warm on hers as his fingers finally loosened the tie of the robe, “but I can behave.”

Odessa picked up the charcoal, her mouth dry, her pulse disobedient, her whole body aware of the fact that this man had somehow turned a conversation about divorce into an art study, a confession, and a battlefield all at once.

“You better.”

Jaafar sat beneath the light, his robe slipping from his shoulders with the quiet gravity of a curtain rising before an audience of one, and Odessa forced herself to look not as a wife, not as a lover, not as a woman who had once known exactly how his skin felt beneath her hands, but as an artist, as a witness, as the only person in the room he had trusted enough to ask for the truth.

And still, when her charcoal touched the canvas, her first line trembled.

Odessa sighed as she let her bag slip from her shoulder, the leather landing softly beside her chair with a sound that felt far too final in the quiet room, and for a moment she simply stood there, caught between the woman who had walked in prepared to end a marriage and the woman now lowering herself slowly onto the stool behind an easel, charcoal and paint waiting in front of her like instruments of confession.

She watched Jaafar reach for the tie of the robe, watched his fingers hesitate for half a breath before he let the linen fall open, and the moment the fabric slipped from his shoulders, Odessa turned her gaze away too quickly for it to look casual, her breath catching in a way that irritated her because she had not given it permission to betray her.

Jesus.

How long had it been?

A year?

Two?

No, that was a lie, and she knew it before the thought even finished forming, because there had been moments, foolish moments, weak moments, lonely moments when grief had worn his voice and memory had smelled like his cologne, when Odessa had needed him more than she wanted to admit and had let herself be found in the ruins of their almost-endings; moments she had folded away afterward with trembling hands and called mistakes because calling them anything else would have required more courage than she had been willing to spend.

Still, this was different.

This was not the dim mercy of old habit or the desperation of two people reaching for each other because the night was too quiet and the ache too familiar; this was Jaafar deliberately placing himself beneath the light with nothing to hide behind, offering himself to her gaze like some mortal man dragged before Aphrodite’s altar and asking not to be desired, but to be understood.

Odessa sat at the easel, her back straight, her mouth pressed into a line too controlled to be honest, and reached for the shade of red before she reached for anything softer, because if Jaafar wanted to know how she saw him, then he could not expect pastels and mercy, could not expect the clean gold of Apollo or the gentle blue of an untroubled sea, not when loving him had always felt like pomegranate seeds crushed between her teeth, like a wound dressed in velvet, like the kind of red that belonged equally to devotion, anger, hunger, and war.

“Talk to me, baby,” Jaafar whispered, and the desperation in his voice was so bare, so unvarnished, so unlike the slick-mouthed confidence he usually carried around like a crown, that Odessa’s fingers tightened around the brush before she could stop them, the red paint gathering thick and wet at the bristles like pomegranate juice, like blood beneath a blade, like the first honest colour in a room where they had both spent too long pretending grief could be made polite.

His brown eyes met hers from beneath the soft classroom light, darker than usual, stripped of performance, and for once he did not look like the man who knew how to talk his way into her smile, or the man who could stand in her kitchen and make arrogance sound like devotion, or even the man who had given her Jalen and left her with a son who wore his face like a divine insult; he looked like someone waiting at the edge of his own judgment, like Orpheus standing in the mouth of the underworld with his hands empty and his voice trembling, knowing one wrong note, one wrong breath, one wrong turn could cost him the only woman he had ever been fool enough to lose.

Odessa looked at him over the rim of the easel, her throat tight, her body still far too aware of him despite all the hurt sitting between them, because there he was, offering himself to be seen, asking for truth as though truth were not the sharpest thing she owned, as though she had not spent the last year filing it down behind her teeth just so she could speak to him about packed lunches and school shoes and bedtime without bleeding all over the floor.

“What do you want me to say, Jaafar?” she asked, and her voice came out quieter than she intended, not weak, not broken, but careful in the way a woman sounded when she knew one honest sentence could bring the whole temple down.

Jaafar swallowed, his shoulders lifting with a breath that did not seem to satisfy him, and the linen robe lay discarded near his feet like the last piece of armour he had been willing to remove, leaving him seated before her not as a husband, not as an ex, not as the father of her child, but as a man asking to be drawn by the very hands he had once taught to shake.

“Tell me how I hurt you,” he said, and the words came rougher now, his gaze never leaving hers even though she could see what it cost him to hold it. “Tell me you hate me, tell me you can’t stand me, tell me you wish I’d never walked into your life with my pretty words and my ego and all my damn promises, but just…”

His voice cracked there, barely, the smallest fracture, but Odessa heard it as surely as if Zeus had split the sky open above them.

“Don’t stay quiet.”

The room seemed to still around them, the Sonder playing low through the speaker suddenly sounding distant, almost underwater, as though they had slipped beneath the surface of the life they showed everyone else and arrived somewhere older, darker, more sacred, some hidden chamber beneath Olympus where gods went when they were tired of being worshipped and needed, finally, to be wounded like mortals.

Odessa stared at him.

Not at his body, though it sat there beneath the light like another truth she refused to indulge, not at the careful arrangement of food and wine and paint and canvas he had set out like offerings to a goddess he had angered, but at his face, at the man beneath the beauty, beneath the name, beneath the confidence, beneath every version of himself he had used to distract her from the simple fact that he had been hurting too.

And that made her angry.

Angrier than she wanted to be.

Because it would have been easier if he were cruel.

It would have been easier if he sat there defensive, if he argued, if he smirked, if he gave her something sharp enough to swing at, but this version of him, this quiet, desperate, open-palmed Jaafar, made her feel like Psyche lifting the lamp over Cupid’s sleeping face and realising love was not some abstract punishment sent by Aphrodite, but a living thing with lashes, breath, scars, and the terrible power to look back.

“You want me to talk?” she asked, dipping the brush into the red again, too hard, watching the paint smear thick across the palette. “Fine.”

Jaafar did not move.

Odessa dragged the first stroke across the canvas, red cutting through the white with a violence that made her inhale through her nose, and the line was not clean, not pretty, not flattering, but it was honest, angry and alive and slanted across the blank space like the beginning of a wound.

“You hurt me because you made me feel stupid for loving you,” she said, and the words came before she could soften them, before she could dress them up in maturity or co-parenting language or all the respectable little lies women used when they were trying not to sound devastated. “Not because you didn’t love me, because that would have been simpler, that would have been clean, that would have been something I could bury, but because you did love me, Jaafar, and somehow you still made me feel alone inside it.”

His jaw tightened, but he stayed silent, exactly as she had asked without asking, and that made something inside her twist harder.

“You were there,” she continued, her brush moving again, the red deepening, spreading, finding the rough shape of his shoulders before she had even decided to draw them. “You were physically there, you came home, you held Jalen, you kissed my forehead, you bought the wine, you remembered the little things, and everybody probably thought I was lucky because look at him, look at Jaafar, look how soft he is with his son, look how he knows his wife, look how beautiful that family is.”

She laughed once, but there was no humour in it, only something brittle and old.

“But you were gone in all the ways that made me feel crazy for asking for more.”

Jaafar’s eyes lowered for the first time.

Odessa saw it and hated the satisfaction that came with landing the blow, hated that hurting him did not heal her, hated that the red on the canvas looked too much like all the words she had swallowed.

“You made me feel like I was standing in a room with a ghost who still knew how to touch me,” she said, her voice trembling now despite her best efforts, “and do you know how cruel that is, to have a man’s body beside you and still feel like you’re reaching for smoke, to have him look at you like he wants you and still not know whether he actually sees you?”

Jaafar closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them, they were wet enough to make Odessa’s chest ache in a way she resented immediately.

“I saw you,” he whispered.

“No,” she said, sharper than before, the brush pausing midair. “You saw what I could carry.”

That silenced him.

Completely.

Odessa’s hand shook once before she steadied it against the easel, the red brush hovering over the unfinished shape of him, and she realised then, with a cold sort of clarity, that this was the part she had avoided saying for months, the part even her own reflection had not been trusted with, because it was one thing to say a marriage failed, one thing to say two people drifted, one thing to say life and pressure and pride got in the way, but it was another thing entirely to look at the man you still loved and tell him exactly where he had laid his weight until your back began to bend.

“You saw that I could mother Jalen,” she said, slower now, quieter, each word placed down like an offering and an accusation at the same time. “You saw that I could keep the house warm, keep the schedules straight, keep the dinners going, keep myself pretty, keep myself patient, keep myself from embarrassing you with too much need, too much anger, too much hurt.”

Jaafar’s lips parted, but he did not interrupt.

“You saw that I could survive you pulling away,” she whispered. “So you let me.”

The words struck the room like a bowl dropped onto stone.

For a moment, there was only music, only breath, only the ugly red blooming across the canvas between them, only Jaafar sitting beneath the light as if he had asked for a portrait and been given a mirror polished by the gods themselves.

Odessa looked down at her palette because looking at him had become too difficult.

“I don’t hate you,” she said, and somehow that sounded sadder than if she had. “That’s the problem.”

Jaafar’s breath left him unevenly.

“I wanted to,” she admitted, her laugh breaking softly at the edges. “God, I wanted to, because hate would have been easier than sitting across from you three nights a week watching you make Jalen laugh, watching you wash dishes in my kitchen, watching you look at me like you still had every right to miss me, while I had to act like my whole body didn’t remember you.”

His eyes lifted to hers again, and the heat that passed between them was immediate, unwanted, familiar, threaded through with so much ache that it could not be separated from grief.

Odessa saw him hear that part.

Saw him feel it.

Saw the man in him respond before the wounded husband could hide it.

“Don’t,” she warned softly, though she did not know whether she was warning him or herself.

Jaafar’s mouth closed.

His hands flexed once against his thighs.

“I’m listening,” he said, voice rough.

That nearly undid her more than anything else.

Because she believed him.

Damn him, in that moment, beneath that light, with red paint on her brush and the truth sitting open between them like a sacrifice at Athena’s feet, she believed him.

Odessa turned back to the canvas, her next stroke slower, softer, red giving way to a darker shade near the place where his chest would be, because despite everything, despite the anger, despite the loneliness, despite the divorce papers waiting somewhere like a curse with her name on it, she could not paint him as only damage.

That was the cruel thing.

Jaafar had hurt her, yes.

But he had also loved her.

He had also held their son like a prayer.

He had also shown up.

Not always correctly, not always fully, not always in the ways she had needed, but enough to make leaving feel like cutting through living flesh instead of dead rope.

“You want to know how I see you?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the canvas.

Jaafar’s voice was quiet. “Yes.”

“I see you in pieces.”

He inhaled.

Odessa did not look back.

“I see the man who made me feel chosen and the man who made me feel abandoned wearing the same face, and I don’t know what to do with that.”

She sighed as she shut her eyes, the brush hovering uselessly over the canvas while the red on its bristles began to gather too heavily at the tip, trembling there like a drop of blood that had not yet decided whether to fall, and for a moment Odessa looked less like a woman painting her husband and more like some weary priestess standing before an altar she no longer knew how to pray at, caught between confession and mercy, between the hurt she had already handed him and the truth that would not let her make him the only villain in a story they had both helped fracture.

“But it wasn’t your fault,” she said at last, her voice quieter now, no longer sharp enough to draw blood, only tired enough to show where she had been cut. “Not all of it, anyway. We were both… weird.”

Jaafar’s brows drew together, not in offence, not even confusion exactly, but in the careful concentration of a man trying not to miss a single word, his body still beneath the light, his hands resting against his thighs, his mouth parted slightly as though he wanted to respond and had finally learned that love, real love, sometimes meant letting silence do its work before ego rushed in with a mop and ruined the crime scene.

“How so?” he asked.

Odessa laughed softly, but there was no humour in it, only a little disbelief at the size of the thing she was trying to explain with such an ugly, childish word as weird, when really what she meant was that they had been two people standing inside the same burning temple, both pretending the smoke was weather because admitting there was a fire would have meant admitting one of them had to reach for the other first.

She opened her eyes and looked at him again, really looked, not at the warm brown of his skin beneath the classroom light, not at the shape of his shoulders or the bare vulnerability of him sitting there stripped of every easy disguise, but at his face, at the softness around his eyes, at the tension in his jaw, at the man who had asked her to see him and was now learning what it cost to be visible.

“We were weird because we both wanted to be understood without having to explain,” she said, dragging the brush slowly across the canvas, the red softening into a shadow near where his chest would be, no longer a wound now, not exactly, but something closer to heat beneath skin. “I wanted you to know I was drowning without me saying I was drowning, and you wanted me to know you were trying without you saying you were scared, and somehow we both stood there waiting for the other person to become a prophet.”

Jaafar swallowed, and she saw it move down his throat.

Odessa looked back to the canvas before the sight could soften her too much.

“I kept thinking, if he loves me, he should know,” she continued, her voice lowering under the weight of honesty. “He should know when I’m tired. He should know when I’m lonely. He should know when I’m angry but too exhausted to fight. He should know that when I say I’m fine, sometimes I mean I’m one bad moment away from falling apart in the bathroom with the water running so Jalen doesn’t hear me.”

Jaafar’s eyes closed briefly.

“Odessa…”

“No,” she said, not harshly, but firmly enough that his eyes opened again. “Let me say it.”

He nodded once.

She took another breath.

“And you…” She paused, searching for the right colour, the right word, the right place on the canvas to put the kind of pain that had not come from cruelty but from misunderstanding dressed in pride. “You kept thinking if you provided enough, if you showed up enough, if you were calm enough, if you didn’t add your fear to mine, then that was love.”

Jaafar’s gaze dropped to the floor.

Odessa watched him for half a second, then dipped her brush into a darker shade.

“But I didn’t need you calm all the time,” she said. “Sometimes I needed you messy with me. Sometimes I needed you to sit in the ugly part and say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing either,’ instead of acting like you had everything handled just because your voice stayed steady.”

His jaw flexed.

“I thought I was helping.”

“I know,” she whispered, and somehow that made it hurt more, because knowing his intentions had been tender did not erase the ache of their impact. “That’s the part that made it so hard to be mad at you.”

The music hummed around them, slow and aching, Sonder’s voice filling the room like incense in a ruined shrine, and Odessa felt suddenly aware of the wine sitting unopened beside her, the food growing cooler with every confession, the easel between them becoming less like an art assignment and more like a battlefield map where every stroke exposed a place they had once lost each other.

She added another line to the canvas, this one gentler, curving near the outline of his shoulder.

“We were weird because I wanted you to chase me, but I punished you when you got too close,” she admitted, and the shame of it warmed her cheeks before she could hide it. “I’d pull away because I was hurt, then get mad when you respected the distance, because in my head I was thinking, no, don’t respect it, fight for me, notice that I’m only leaving because I want to know if you’ll come after me.”

Jaafar’s eyes lifted to hers, something pained and familiar moving through them.

“And I did the same thing,” he said quietly.

Odessa stilled.

He breathed out, his voice roughening. “I’d go quiet hoping you’d ask what was wrong, then get in my feelings when you didn’t, like I wasn’t the one sitting there acting like a closed door.”

Her mouth softened despite herself.

“Exactly.”

Jaafar’s laugh came out low and humourless, a broken little thing that did not belong to his usual confidence. “We were stupid.”

“We were scared,” Odessa corrected, and her voice softened around the word because there, finally, was the truth beneath all the other truths, the root buried under the ash. “Stupid too, maybe, but mostly scared.”

He looked at her then, and Odessa could feel the shift, that old invisible pull between them tightening again, only this time it was not desire alone, not the slick warmth of his mouth or the memory of his hands, but something more fragile, something that had survived beneath all the wreckage like a green shoot pushing up through cracked marble.

“Scared of what?” he asked.

Odessa’s brush moved once, slowly.

Then stopped.

She stared at the canvas, at the rough red beginning of him, at the shape emerging under her hand like a truth she had been carrying longer than she knew, and when she spoke, her voice was almost a whisper.

“That if we admitted how much we needed each other, the other person would have too much power.”

Jaafar went very still.

Odessa smiled faintly, sadly.

“And God forbid either of us be the first one on our knees, right?”

The words landed between them with a soft, brutal accuracy.

For a moment, Jaafar said nothing, his gaze fixed on her as though she had finally turned Psyche’s lamp toward both of them at once and revealed not monsters, not gods, not heroes, but two terrified lovers with ash on their hands and pride where prayer should have been.

Then he leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on his knees, every bit of staged vulnerability becoming real beneath the weight of what they were saying.

“I was scared you’d look at me and realise I wasn’t enough,” he said.

Odessa’s breath caught.

Jaafar’s mouth twisted faintly, not a smile, not quite pain either, something caught between the two.

“I know how that sounds.”

“No,” she said softly. “You don’t.”

His eyes searched hers.

Odessa set the brush down, because suddenly painting felt like hiding, and she had spent too long hiding behind movement, behind motherhood, behind dinner plates and school bags and the excuse of their son sleeping in another room.

“You think I wasn’t scared of the same thing?” she asked. “You think I didn’t look at you sometimes and wonder when you were going to wake up and realise loving me had gotten too heavy?”

Jaafar looked wounded by the very idea.

“That never happened.”

“I know that now,” she said, though her voice trembled enough to betray how much she had not known it then. “But fear doesn’t wait for proof, Jaafar. It just starts writing stories in the dark and calling them warnings.”

He looked down, breathing through it.

Odessa picked the brush up again, not because she wanted to hide this time, but because the confession had opened something in her hand, had given shape to something she could not carry in words alone, and when she touched the canvas again, the red did not slash; it curved, it shaded, it softened into the outline of a man she had loved, feared, blamed, missed, and never truly stopped seeing.

“We were weird because we kept testing each other,” she said. “Little tests. Quiet tests. Cruel tests we pretended weren’t tests.”

Jaafar nodded slowly, his expression tightening with recognition.

“I’d wait to see if you’d call.”

“And I’d wait to see if you’d come over.”

“I’d act like I was fine.”

“And I’d act like I believed you.”

“I’d leave before I asked to stay.”

Odessa looked up at him.

“And I’d let you.”

“I wanted you to see me,” Odessa sighed, her voice thinning around the confession as she reached for the white paint and squeezed it directly into the red, watching the colour soften beneath her brush, watching all that raw, angry crimson turn into something gentler, something bruised and tender and almost pink, as if even the wound on the palette had decided it was tired of bleeding and wanted, for once, to be touched without being opened again.

Jaafar’s eyes stayed on her.

Not on her hand.

Not on the canvas.

On her.

And Odessa hated that, hated it because this was what she had asked for and what she had resented him for not giving, hated that now, when she finally had his full attention laid across her like sunlight from Apollo’s chariot, she wanted to look away, wanted to hide beneath sarcasm or anger or the careful movements of her brush, because being seen, really seen, was terrifying when you had spent so long convincing yourself that invisibility was safer.

“I wanted you to see me without me having to fall apart first,” she said, dragging the softened red across the canvas in a slow, careful stroke, the colour catching beside the harsher marks she had already made, gentling them without erasing them, because maybe that was the truth of him too, maybe Jaafar was not one shade, not all wound and not all warmth, but some impossible mixture of both, some man made of damage and devotion, pride and tenderness, absence and arrival. “I wanted you to look at me and know when I was tired. I wanted you to notice when I was quiet, not peaceful. I wanted you to hear the difference between me saying ‘I’m fine’ because I was fine and me saying it because if I said anything else, I was going to start crying and never stop.”

Jaafar swallowed, his throat working around whatever apology he had learned, wisely, not to rush into the room before she finished bleeding the truth out of herself.

Odessa mixed more white into the red, slower this time, pressing the brush in circular motions until the colour changed beneath her hand, and the motion felt almost too symbolic to bear, like Hera herself had leaned over her shoulder and laughed at the mortal woman trying to make sense of marriage with paint, as though love had ever been clean enough to shade properly.

“I know I made it hard,” she admitted, her eyes fixed on the palette because looking at him would have made the words too real. “I know I acted like I didn’t need anything. I know I got sharp when I was hurt and cold when I wanted to be held, and I know I expected you to understand a language I never actually taught you.”

Jaafar’s breath left him softly.

“Odessa…”

“No, let me finish,” she said, though there was no anger in it now, only exhaustion, only that deep, aching honesty that came when two people had finally stopped performing strength for each other and started admitting where the armour pinched. “Because I did that too. I did. I wanted you to read my mind and then punished you when you couldn’t, and maybe that wasn’t fair, but God, Jaafar, sometimes it felt like if I had to explain every place I was hurting, then it meant you hadn’t been looking.”

The brush touched the canvas again.

This time, the stroke was lighter, almost hesitant, catching the outline of his face, softening the red shadow beneath the cheekbone she knew too well, the same cheekbone Jalen had inherited, the same face that had haunted her son’s smile and made it impossible to ever fully hate the man sitting before her.

“I wanted to be chosen after the baby,” she whispered.

Jaafar went still.

Odessa felt it without looking.

The whole room seemed to tighten around that sentence, the music lowering into something ghostlike, the wine standing untouched beside the meal he had prepared, the canvas between them becoming less a portrait and more a battlefield where every colour had started naming casualties.

“I know you loved Jalen,” she continued, her voice roughening at the edges. “I never questioned that. Not once. You were beautiful with him, Jaafar. You still are. Sometimes it made me angry how beautiful you were with him, because everyone could see that part. Everyone could see Daddy. Everyone could see you holding him, rocking him, making him laugh, showing up with Starbursts and promises and that soft voice you use when he’s sleepy.”

Her hand trembled slightly, and the brush left a small uneven mark near the edge of the canvas.

She did not fix it.

“But I wanted you to look at me too,” she said. “Not just as his mother. Not just as the woman who could handle things. Not just as the person keeping the whole world from falling apart around him. I wanted you to look at me like I was still Odessa.”

Jaafar’s eyes shone, but he stayed silent.

Good, she thought, though the thought held no cruelty now.

Good.

Let him sit with it.

Let him know what it had felt like to become Demeter and Persephone at the same time, mother and missing woman, earth and underworld, life-giver and ghost, expected to bloom while half of herself remained unseen in the dark.

“I wanted to feel like you still wanted me when I wasn’t easy,” she said, dipping the brush again, dragging pale red into the hollow of the canvas’s unfinished chest. “When I wasn’t pretty and rested and laughing. When I was exhausted. When I was resentful. When I was touched out and lonely at the same time. When I was standing in the kitchen with spit-up on my shirt and my hair undone and I couldn’t remember the last time someone looked at me like I was a woman instead of a function.”

Jaafar looked down then.

Just for a second.

But Odessa saw it.

Saw the pain cross his face like a shadow over Olympus.

“I did want you,” he said quietly.

Her chest tightened.

“I know,” she whispered. “But wanting me in silence didn’t help me.”

The words broke something open between them.

Not violently.

Not loudly.

Just enough that the air changed, enough that Jaafar’s shoulders dipped as if the truth had finally found a place to land inside him, heavy and deserved.

Odessa exhaled, then mixed the paint again, red and white folding into each other until neither colour remained untouched by the other.

“I think that’s why I got so angry,” she said. “Because I could feel you loving me, but I couldn’t always see it. And then I started wondering if maybe I was imagining it, if maybe I was just making a myth out of scraps because I needed the story to be bigger than what it was.”

She finally looked up at him.

Jaafar’s eyes were already waiting.

“And I hated myself for that,” she said softly. “For still believing in us when I was so tired of being disappointed.”

His lips parted, but nothing came out at first, and for once Odessa did not mind the silence, because it was not empty; it was full of him listening, full of him receiving, full of the man who had brought her here and asked her to see him now being forced, finally, to see her.

“I see you now,” he said.

Odessa’s mouth twisted faintly, not quite a smile.

“Now is easy.”

“No,” he said, and his voice was still low, but firmer now, threaded with something rawer than charm. “Now is late. That don’t make it easy.”

That made her hand pause.

Jaafar leaned forward slightly, still careful, still not reaching for her, though she could see the effort in his restraint.

“I should’ve seen you sooner,” he said. “I should’ve asked better questions. I should’ve come closer when you got quiet instead of convincing myself you needed space. I should’ve known that sometimes you saying ‘leave me alone’ meant ‘please don’t make me ask you to stay.’”

Odessa’s throat tightened.

“And I know that ain’t fair to put all on me,” he continued, his eyes locked on hers, “but I’m not trying to be fair right now. I’m trying to be honest. I missed things I should’ve caught. I loved you, but I loved you lazy sometimes.”

Her breath caught at that.

Lazy.

Not absent.

Not false.

Lazy.

The word sat there with a brutal kind of accuracy, stripped of excuse and drama, and Odessa hated how much relief came with hearing him say it, hated how badly some part of her had needed him to name the thing correctly.

Jaafar’s jaw flexed.

“I thought because my love was real, you’d feel safe in it,” he said. “I didn’t understand that real love still gotta move. Still gotta speak. Still gotta get up and cross the room.”

Odessa blinked fast, turning back to the canvas before the tears could gather enough courage to fall.

The colour on her brush looked softer now.

Almost forgiving.

Not forgiveness itself.

Not yet.

But the colour of something considering it.

“Keep talking like that and you’re gonna ruin my concentration,” she muttered.

Jaafar’s mouth curved, small and careful.

“Don’t.”

“I ain’t say nothing.”

“You breathed smug.”

“I breathed relieved.”

That pulled the faintest laugh from her, unwilling and quiet, and Jaafar looked at her as if that tiny sound had been handed down by Aphrodite herself, a little mercy wrapped in music.

Odessa shook her head, dipping her brush again.

“You’re still annoying.”

“I’m still yours too,” he said softly.

Her hand stopped.

The room stopped with it.

Jaafar held her gaze, and there it was again, that confidence, not loud, not slick, not dressed in the old arrogance that used to make her roll her eyes and forget her own name, but something steadier, something that had survived being humbled and still refused to lie down.

Odessa’s chest rose slowly.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“I know.”

“But you said it anyway.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Jaafar’s eyes softened.

“Because I wanted you to see me too.”

Odessa’s brows furrowed as she cocked her head to the side, putting the paintbrush down with a carefulness that made the small wooden handle sound louder than it should have against the tray, and for the first time since he had stepped out in that ridiculous linen robe with his sheepish smile and his grand little wounded-man plan, she looked at him not as the subject of her painting, not as the father of her son, not even as the husband she had come prepared to discuss divorcing, but as a man sitting beneath a classroom light asking for a truth she had not realised she owed him too.

“Tell me how I didn’t see you.”

Jaafar’s eyes moved from the brush to her face, and something in his expression shifted, not toward accusation, not even toward relief, but toward the raw uncertainty of someone who had wanted to be asked and was still unprepared for the violence of answering, because there were some wounds a person carried so long they became part of the posture, part of the smile, part of the way they entered rooms pretending nothing hurt.

He breathed out slowly, his hands resting loosely against his thighs, his shoulders lowered, his body still offered to her gaze though the conversation had made him feel more naked than the robe ever could have.

“You saw what everybody sees first,” he said quietly.

Odessa did not move.

Jaafar’s mouth twisted a little, not quite a smile, not quite bitterness, something sitting between the two like wine gone warm on an altar.

“You saw the name. You saw the face. You saw the Jackson of it all, the charm, the music, the confidence, the way people looked at me before I even opened my mouth. You saw the man who knew how to walk into a room and make it feel like he meant to be there, and I let you see that because it was easier than showing you the rest.”

Odessa’s throat tightened, but she stayed silent, because she knew what he meant before he even reached the centre of it; she had loved his confidence once, had been drawn to it like mortals drawn toward Apollo’s golden light, never thinking that light could blind as easily as it could warm.

Jaafar looked down at his hands.

“But you didn’t always see how much of that was performance,” he said, his voice lower now. “You didn’t see how much I was trying not to look scared.”

Her lips parted slightly.

He lifted his eyes back to hers.

“You thought I was calm because I knew what I was doing,” he continued. “Half the time I was calm because if I let myself feel everything at once, I didn’t know if I’d be able to stand in it. I became a father and a husband and a man everybody expected to carry legacy like it was light work, and I didn’t know how to tell you that sometimes I felt like Atlas with the sky on his back, except if I bent even a little, everybody would notice.”

Odessa swallowed.

The room seemed to quiet around him, the music still playing, the food still cooling, the wine still unopened, but all of it had faded behind the sound of his voice, behind the strange ache of hearing Jaafar Jackson speak without the shield of his slick mouth.

“You saw me providing,” he said. “You saw me showing up. You saw me with Jalen, and you saw that I loved him, and I know you never doubted that, but you didn’t always see that sometimes I was terrified of failing him.”

His jaw flexed once.

“Terrified,” he repeated, softer, as if the word embarrassed him. “I’d hold him when he was tiny and he’d look at me with my whole face, and all I could think was, what if I mess him up? What if I give him the worst parts of me? What if one day he looks at me and sees through everything the way you do and decides I wasn’t enough?”

Odessa’s eyes softened before she could stop them.

Jaafar saw it, but he did not use it.

He did not grin.

He did not turn it into an opening.

He simply sat there, naked in every way that mattered, and kept going.

“You didn’t see me because I made it hard,” he admitted. “I know that. I kept giving you the version of me I thought you needed, the steady version, the charming version, the one who could make you laugh before you got too close to what was really going on with me.”

His eyes flickered toward the canvas.

“And then when you painted me that way in your head, when you treated me like nothing touched me too deeply, I resented you for believing the lie I was working overtime to sell.”

That struck her.

Odessa leaned back slightly, as if the sentence had reached across the room and pressed a hand to the centre of her chest.

Jaafar’s laugh came out quiet and humourless.

“Crazy, right?”

“No,” she whispered.

His gaze snapped back to hers.

Odessa’s face had shifted, not defensive now, not guarded, but listening, really listening, and maybe that was why Jaafar’s voice roughened when he spoke again.

“You didn’t see how lonely I was in our marriage sometimes,” he said. “And I know how that sounds after everything you just told me, because you were lonely too, and I should have seen that, but I was lonely beside you, Odessa.”

Her breath caught.

He closed his eyes briefly, as though he hated the admission the second it left him, but he did not take it back.

“I’d be right there next to you and still feel like you were somewhere I couldn’t get to,” he said. “Like you had this whole world inside you that I only got invited into when something was wrong, and even then, I had to guess where the door was.”

Odessa looked down at her hands.

Jaafar’s voice softened.

“You’d go quiet, and I’d panic, but I didn’t know how to tell you I was panicking, so I’d act casual. I’d ask if you were good, and you’d say you were fine, and I knew you weren’t, but I also knew if I pushed wrong, you’d shut down harder, so I’d back off and convince myself I was respecting you.”

He paused.

“But sometimes I wasn’t respecting you. I was protecting myself from being rejected by my own wife.”

Odessa’s eyes lifted slowly.

His were already waiting.

There was no anger there.

That made it worse.

There was only truth, and truth, Odessa was discovering, had a far more merciless hand than rage.

“You didn’t see that every time you pulled away from me, I took it personal,” he said. “Even when I knew better. Even when I knew you were tired, or hurt, or overwhelmed. I’d tell myself, she doesn’t want me near her, she doesn’t need me, she only wants me here because of Jalen, and instead of saying that, instead of giving you the chance to tell me I was wrong, I got proud.”

Odessa exhaled unsteadily.

Jaafar nodded, as if he had expected that part to land.

“I got real proud,” he said. “Ugly proud. Quiet proud. The kind of proud that don’t yell, don’t slam doors, don’t look like anything from the outside, but it will sit beside the person it loves most and starve before it asks for a plate.”

The image made something in her ache.

Because she knew that pride.

She had married that pride.

She had matched that pride.

Their marriage had been full of it, two starving people sitting at opposite ends of a table they kept setting for everyone but themselves.

“I wanted you to choose me too,” Jaafar said, and his voice dipped into something younger, something almost ashamed. “Not as Jalen’s father. Not because I was already there. Not because it was easier to keep the family together. I wanted you to look at me and want me, and when you didn’t say it, I started acting like I didn’t need to hear it.”

Odessa’s eyes burned.

“You never said that,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“You acted like you already knew.”

“I know,” he said again, and this time the words sounded like penance. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I acted like I knew because I didn’t want to ask and find out I was wrong.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The canvas sat between them, red and softened pink and unfinished lines, an image of him beginning to emerge in fragments, exactly as she had said she saw him, and Odessa wondered whether that was what marriage had been for them too — two people painting each other with shaking hands, using colours they had never learned how to mix.

Jaafar leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees now, the classroom light catching the tension in his shoulders, the vulnerability in his face.

“You didn’t see me because you were hurting,” he said, not accusingly, but gently, as if he had only just found the grace to understand it. “And when you’re hurt, Odessa, you look for evidence.”

Her brows furrowed.

He nodded.

“You do. You start building a case. Every late answer, every tired tone, every time I didn’t notice fast enough, every time I tried to fix what you wanted me to sit with, every time I gave you space when you wanted me to cross the room. You put it all on the table like proof that I didn’t love you right.”

Odessa’s lips parted, and for a second she looked ready to argue.

Then she stopped.

Because he was not wrong.

Jaafar’s voice lowered.

“And maybe I didn’t love you right all the time,” he said. “But you stopped seeing the parts where I was trying.”

Her face shifted.

His did too.

Pain, recognition, regret — all of it passing between them like Hermes carrying messages neither of them wanted delivered.

“You didn’t see that sometimes I came over for family dinner because it was the only time all week I felt like I could breathe,” he admitted. “You thought I was just being consistent for Jalen, and I was, I swear I was, but I was also coming because I missed my house.”

Odessa looked at him sharply.

He held her gaze.

“I know it’s your house now,” he said. “I know. But when I walk in and smell your cooking, and Jalen comes running, and you’re there pretending you’re not glad to see me, for a few hours I get to remember what it felt like before we started turning love into a test neither of us could pass.”

Odessa blinked fast.

Jaafar’s mouth softened.

“You didn’t see that leaving every night hurt,” he said. “You didn’t see me sit in the car. You didn’t see me tell myself to drive off. You didn’t see me wanting to come back up and knock and say, ‘Can I stay?’ like a fool.”

Her breath trembled.

“I would’ve said no,” she whispered, though there was no conviction in it.

“I know,” he said, and one corner of his mouth lifted sadly. “That’s why I didn’t ask.”

The honesty sat heavy.

It would have been easier if he had lied.

Odessa looked at the canvas again because looking at him was becoming unbearable.

“And Malcolm?” she asked, voice quieter. “Was that about you feeling unseen too?”

Jaafar’s eyes darkened, but not with the same jealousy from before, not with the sharp possessiveness that had filled her kitchen and ruined her plans; this was quieter, rawer, more honest.

“Malcolm was about me realising I had let you believe I was okay standing outside my own life,” he said. “And maybe I deserved that. Maybe I stood outside too long and expected you to keep a space warm for me. But when Jalen said that man’s name, all I could think was, she’s about to let somebody else sit where I was too proud to ask to stay.”

Odessa closed her eyes.

Jaafar’s voice came softer.

“And I know you’re not a place, before you say it. I know you’re not a chair at a table or a spot in a bed or something I can claim because I miss it.”

Her eyes opened again.

He was watching her with a faint, wounded smile.

“But I am a man, Odessa. And I love you. So yeah, I felt it. I felt it like somebody had put a blade under my ribs and twisted slow.”

She pressed her lips together.

“And you came in with Starbursts and wine.”

“I came in with Starbursts and wine,” he agreed. “Because I’m still me.”

A laugh almost escaped her, but it broke halfway into something softer.

Jaafar saw that too.

His face gentled.

“You didn’t see how much I wanted you back because I kept dressing it up,” he said. “I dressed it up as family dinner. As helping with dishes. As showing up for school runs. As making Jalen happy. As flirting just enough that you could roll your eyes and not have to answer me.”

Odessa’s hand drifted toward the paintbrush but did not pick it up yet.

“And tonight?” she asked.

“Tonight I got tired of dressing it up.”

Her eyes lifted.

Jaafar’s gaze did not waver.

“I want my wife,” he said simply. “Not because I’m jealous. Not because I’m scared another man might want you. Not because Jalen deserves both parents in one house, even though he does. I want you because I love you, because I miss you, because when I picture my life ten years from now, twenty years from now, when I’m old and not as pretty—”

Odessa gave him a look.

He paused.

“Fine,” he corrected, the faintest glimmer of his usual confidence returning through the ache. “Still pretty, just seasoned.”

Despite everything, Odessa huffed a laugh.

Jaafar’s mouth curved, but he did not let the joke carry him away from the truth.

“When I picture my life, you’re there,” he said. “You’ve always been there. Even when we were separated, even when I was mad, even when I told myself maybe this was just what we were now, you were still the person I wanted to come home to.”

Odessa’s chest rose and fell slowly.

“And you didn’t think I needed to hear that?”

“I was scared if I said it, you’d tell me I was too late.”

The silence that followed was not empty.

It was full of every almost they had survived.

Every night he had not knocked.

Every time she had not called.

Every family dinner pretending to be casual while grief sat with them and helped set the table.

Odessa reached for the paintbrush again, but her fingers hovered over it for a moment before she finally picked it up.

“What else?” she asked quietly.

Jaafar looked at her.

She dipped the brush into the softened red, the colour no longer angry enough to be blood, no longer pale enough to be forgiveness, but something in between.

“What else didn’t I see?”

Jaafar’s expression shifted, and when he answered, his voice was barely above the music.

“That I needed you too.”

Odessa froze.

His eyes shone, but he did not look away.

“I needed you,” he said again. “And I hated that I did, because needing someone makes you feel like they can ruin you on purpose even when they never would.”

Odessa’s breath caught sharply, because those were almost the exact words she had said without saying them, the fear beneath everything, the power of needing, the terror of being first on your knees.

Jaafar smiled faintly, sadly.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “See? Two peas in a pod.”

The phrase hit her with such tenderness that she nearly had to look away.

But she did not.

Not this time.

She looked at him — really looked at him — sitting beneath the light, stripped down to skin and honesty, no slick mouth to save him, no son in the room to soften the tension, no Malcolm to distract from the truth, no dinner table to hide behind.

And for the first time in a long time, Odessa saw not the man who had failed to see her, not only the man who had hurt her, not only the husband who had left too much unsaid.

She saw the boyishish fear beneath the beautiful man.

The loneliness beneath the confidence.

The prayer beneath the pride.

The ache behind the swagger.

She saw Jaafar.

She bit her lip and shook her head, not in refusal, not even in disbelief, but in that weary, trembling way a woman did when the truth had finally found the nerve to sit beside her and would no longer be ignored, and with a sigh that seemed to drag itself up from somewhere beneath her ribs, Odessa reached for the wine and took a long, unapologetic swig straight from the glass, letting the taste bloom across her tongue, rich and familiar and warm enough to steady her hands before it ever reached her blood.

Jaafar watched her.

He did not speak.

For once, mercifully, beautifully, dangerously, he did not speak.

His mouth, that slick, ruinous mouth that had talked her into laughter, arguments, forgiveness, and their son, stayed closed as Odessa set the glass down with a soft clink and reached for the hem of her shirt, her fingers curling into the fabric while her heart beat so hard she could feel it in her wrists, in her throat, in the tender hollow behind her ears.

If he wanted to be seen, then so would she.

Not admired.

Not desired.

Not worshipped like Aphrodite rising from the seafoam, all golden light and easy beauty, untouched by fear, untouched by motherhood, untouched by the strange grief of becoming both woman and vessel, wife and stranger, lover and ghost inside her own marriage.

Seen.

Properly.

Mercilessly.

Tenderly.

So she pulled the shirt over her head.

The fabric whispered upward, carrying with it the faint scent of her perfume, the warmth of her skin, the last easy layer of distance she had been hiding beneath since she stepped into the room, and she let it fall to the floor beside her bag without ceremony, without folding it, without pretending this was neat when nothing about them had ever been neat.

Jaafar’s breath changed.

Barely.

A small, quiet break in the rhythm of him, but Odessa heard it, and because she heard it, because she knew him too well not to, she lifted her eyes to his with a warning already forming behind them.

“Don’t.”

His jaw flexed.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

His gaze stayed on her face with effort, with discipline, with the kind of restraint that looked almost painful on him.

“I wasn’t.”

“Liar.”

That almost made his mouth twitch, but he swallowed it back, and something about that, something about Jaafar choosing silence when desire had always been another language he spoke too fluently, made Odessa’s chest ache in a way she had not prepared for.

Slowly, she reached for the next layer.

Then the next.

Each piece fell away from her like old skin, like armour undone one fastening at a time, like some mortal woman stepping out of the role everyone had given her and standing at last before the gods with nothing left to prove except that she had survived being loved badly and beautifully by the same man.

And Jaafar, who had come here to be looked at, sat beneath the classroom light and learned what it meant to look without taking.

He watched her shed the carefulness.

Watched her shed the wife who had come prepared to speak of divorce with her chin high and her pulse hidden.

Watched her shed the mother who packed Jalen’s lunches, remembered appointments, kissed fevers, folded tiny shirts, and still somehow managed to put herself back together before anyone could ask whether she was tired.

Watched her shed the woman who had stood in kitchens, bedrooms, hallways, and court-adjacent silences pretending she had not been waiting for him to ask the right question.

By the time Odessa stood bare before him, stripped down past clothing, past pride, past performance, past every pretty little defence she had used to make her hurt respectable, she did not feel like Aphrodite.

She felt like Psyche with the lamp trembling in her hand.

She felt like Persephone at the threshold, no longer pretending the underworld had only ever been a prison.

She felt like a woman who had spent too long being touched and not enough time being understood.

Jaafar’s eyes shone.

Not with hunger alone, though that was there, because he was still Jaafar, still the man whose gaze had weight and heat and memory, still the man whose confidence had once curled around her like smoke until she forgot how to leave the room; but beneath it, deeper than it, was something quieter, something close to grief, something that made his face soften as if he were not looking at a body he had once known, but at all the years he had failed to honour it properly.

“You said you wanted me to see you,” she whispered, her voice steadier than she felt, though her hand still hovered above the palette as if the brush had suddenly become too heavy to lift, as if the colour she needed did not exist in any tube of paint but somewhere inside her chest, somewhere raw and red and aching.

Jaafar nodded slowly, still silent, his eyes never leaving hers.

And that was what undid her most.

Not the way he looked at her body, not the tension sitting beneath his restraint, not even the memory of every moment where his hands had once known her better than language, but the silence, the way he let her speak without reaching for control, the way he sat there stripped down to skin and fear and love, letting her decide what truth would enter the room next.

“So…” Odessa breathed, her eyes shining as she looked at him properly, taking in the line of his shoulders, the vulnerability in his mouth, the softness he had always hidden beneath charm, the boy inside the man, the husband inside the ex, the father inside the lover, the godlike confidence and the mortal fear stitched together in one impossible body. “I see you.”

Jaafar’s throat worked.

“And you’ve never been more beautiful,” she whispered, the words leaving her before pride could dress them down into something safer, something smaller, something less capable of changing the air between them.

His face shifted then, not into a smile, not yet, but into something stunned and wounded and almost boyish, as if Apollo himself had been praised not for his light but for the shadow he had survived carrying.

“I see the man I love,” Odessa continued, and the confession trembled, but it did not break. “I see the one with the slick-ass mouth, the one who always thinks he can talk his way out of trouble and somehow talks himself deeper into it, the one who makes me so mad I forget I’m supposed to be mature, the one who knows exactly how to look at me when he wants me to soften, and I hate that it still works sometimes.”

A breath of laughter escaped him, fragile and disbelieving, but his eyes were wet now.

Odessa’s were too.

“I see the man who hurt me,” she said, softer, because love could not be honest if it skipped the blood. “And I see the man who is trying to understand how. I see the father who kisses our son like he’s a prayer. I see the husband who left too many things unsaid. I see the boy who got scared and called it pride. I see the man who wanted to be needed but was too afraid to ask.”

Jaafar lowered his head, one hand lifting briefly to his mouth, and Odessa knew him well enough to know he was trying to keep himself together.

She looked down at the palette then, at the red she had softened with white, at the colour no longer angry enough to be a wound and not yet gentle enough to be forgiveness, and she dipped her brush into it with a shaky hand.

“I see you, Jaafar,” she whispered again, touching the canvas, dragging the colour into the shape of him with more tenderness than she had meant to allow. “And I love you.”

The room went still.

Not empty still.

Full still.

The kind of still that came after a storm when the gods had finally stopped arguing and even the sea held its breath to see what would survive.

“I love you, Jaafar,” she said again, because the first time had not killed her, because saying it did not make her weak, because maybe the cruelest lie she had told herself was that love lost power when spoken aloud. “I love you angry. I love you hurt. I love you even when I wish I didn’t. I love you even when I’m standing here trying to prove I can live without you.”

His eyes lifted to hers.

“And I hate that too,” she admitted, laughing through the tears gathering at her lashes. “I hate that loving you still feels like standing in front of the underworld with pomegranate on my tongue, pretending I don’t remember choosing the fruit.”

Jaafar’s breath shuddered.

For once, he had no slick response.

No clever mouth.

No arrogance ready to save him.

He only sat there beneath the classroom light, beautiful and bare and utterly undone, while Odessa painted him in softened red, trying to capture the impossible truth of a man who had been both wound and balm, both Hades and home, both the reason she had run and the place some foolish, faithful part of her had never stopped trying to return to.

Jaafar stood at that moment, slowly, carefully, as if one sudden movement might frighten the confession back inside her chest, his eyes fixed on her through those lowered lashes, brown and wet and impossibly soft beneath the classroom light, and Odessa watched him rise to his full height with her breath caught somewhere between her throat and her heart, watched the man she had just painted in red and ache unfold from the stool like some god stepping down from marble, no longer hiding behind robe, humour, legacy, or that slick mouth she had cursed and loved in equal measure.

He came toward her with a quietness that made the room feel smaller, made the space between them feel sacred rather than empty, and when he stopped in front of her, towering over her at six-two to her five-eight, Odessa had to tilt her chin to meet his eyes, had to stand there with the brush still trembling in her hand and all her bravery scattered around her feet like discarded petals at Aphrodite’s altar.

For once, Jaafar did not smile like he had won.

He did not tease.

He did not say some smug, beautiful, infuriating thing that would have made her roll her eyes and pretend her pulse was not tripping over itself.

He only looked at her, really looked at her, as if every word she had just spoken had gone into him and rearranged something behind his ribs, as if her love had not made him proud but humbled him, as if being seen by her had stripped him down more completely than any robe ever could.

Then his hand lifted.

Slowly.

Carefully.

His fingers found her cheek with the kind of tenderness that almost hurt, his palm warm against her skin, his thumb brushing beneath her eye as though he could feel the tears she had refused to let fall, and Odessa’s eyelids fluttered despite herself, her whole body remembering him before her pride could decide whether remembering was allowed.

“Say it again,” he whispered, his voice low and unsteady, roughened by want but softened by something deeper than hunger. “Please.”

Odessa’s lips parted.

And God, there he was — the man with the confidence, the man with the nerve, the man who had once talked her right out of her good sense and into a love so consuming it had left them with a child who wore his face like proof — asking her, not taking, not assuming, not standing before her like Hades with a claim and a crown, but like Orpheus with his hands empty and his heart in his throat, begging for the song one more time.

“I love you,” she breathed.

Jaafar’s eyes closed for half a second, as if the words had struck him somewhere mortal.

Then he bent his head and kissed her.

Not with the arrogance she had expected from him, not with the easy victory of a man who knew he had been wanted all along, but with a reverence that made Odessa’s chest ache, his mouth meeting hers like a prayer finally answered after too many seasons of drought, his other hand coming up to cup her face fully as though he needed to hold her still not because she might run, but because he might fall apart if he did not have something sacred beneath his hands.

Odessa rose into it before she could think better of herself, her fingers curling against his chest, paintbrush forgotten, breath forgotten, every careful speech about separation and distance and divorce dissolving beneath the press of his mouth, because this kiss did not feel like an ending or even a beginning, not exactly, but like the first honest thing after a long war, like Persephone stepping out of winter with pomegranate still on her tongue, not innocent, not untouched, but choosing to bloom anyway.

Jaafar kissed her like he had heard every hurt and still wanted the woman who carried them.

Odessa kissed him back like she had spent too long pretending love was something she could survive by refusing to name.

Odessa made a soft, helpless sound against his mouth when Jaafar deepened the kiss, the kind of sound that seemed to leave her before pride could catch it, before sense could grab it by the wrist and drag it back down, and Jaafar answered it with a low breath of his own, one hand still cradling her cheek while the other slid firmly to her waist, pulling her into him like he had been starving quietly for this exact closeness and had finally, finally stopped pretending hunger was discipline.

The kiss changed then, not losing tenderness so much as letting heat rise beneath it, slow and inevitable as Helios dragging the sun over the edge of the world, his mouth moving over hers with the kind of confidence that made her remember exactly how dangerous he had always been when he stopped talking and let his body finish the sentence.

Odessa’s fingers clutched at him, first at his shoulders, then his chest, then anywhere she could hold because the room had begun to tilt around them, the easel forgotten, the canvas half-painted and bleeding red behind her, the confession still hanging in the air like incense offered to Aphrodite herself.

Somewhere beside them, the wineglass tipped.

It slipped from the small table with a delicate, fatal sound, hit the floor, and shattered.

Red wine spilled across the tiles like a second painting, dark and dramatic and entirely ignored.

Neither of them cared.

Neither of them gave a single damn.

Not Odessa, whose breath caught when Jaafar’s mouth left hers only long enough to drag one warm, reverent kiss along the corner of her jaw, and not Jaafar, whose arms tightened around her as though the crash had only reminded him how badly he needed both hands on her.

“Jaafar,” she gasped, startled and breathless, but whatever warning had been meant to follow never made it out.

Because he lifted her.

All five feet eight of her.

Like it was nothing.

Like she was weightless, though Odessa knew she was not, like he had been waiting years to remind her that he could still carry her when she forgot how to stand, and her thighs wrapped around his hips on instinct, immediate and familiar, locking around him with a remembered ease that made both of them go still for half a heartbeat.

His eyes lifted to hers.

There it was.

The old fire.

The old ache.

The thing that had made Jalen possible and made forgetting impossible.

Odessa’s lips parted, but Jaafar only looked at her, breathing hard, his hands firm beneath her as if she were something sacred and dangerous and entirely his to hold only because she had allowed it.

“You good?” he whispered, voice rough, checking her even through the heat of it, even with his mouth swollen from hers and his composure hanging by a thread.

Odessa stared down at him, at the man she had loved, hated, missed, painted, forgiven too early and too late and not at all, and something soft and reckless moved through her chest like Persephone reaching for the fruit again with open eyes.

“Yes,” she breathed.

That was all he needed.

Jaafar turned with her in his arms, carrying her across the art room while the music kept playing low through the speaker, Sonder wrapping itself around the quiet like velvet, the broken wineglass glittering behind them like some abandoned warning from the gods.

The couch sat against the wall beneath a row of unfinished student sketches, all charcoal faces and half-shaded hands, but Odessa barely saw it before Jaafar lowered them both down, careful despite the urgency, controlled despite the way his breathing had turned uneven.

She sank into the cushions with him over her, and for one suspended second they only looked at each other.

No Jalen.

No Malcolm.

No divorce papers.

No separation.

No carefully rehearsed speech waiting at the back of her throat.

Just them.

Jaafar and Odessa.

Two people who had spent too long circling the ruins of their own love like it was Troy after the fire, pretending there was nothing left worth saving while their hands kept reaching through the smoke.

Jaafar brushed his thumb over her cheek.

“I love you,” he said, not slick, not smug, not performing, just raw enough that it entered her like a vow.

Odessa’s eyes shone.

“I know,” she whispered.

His mouth curved faintly. “You gon’ say it back?”

Even now.

Even here.

That mouth.

That wicked, impossible mouth.

Odessa laughed breathlessly and pulled him down by the back of his neck.

“I love you, Jaafar.”

His eyes closed like the words hurt in the best way.

Then his mouth found hers again, and the room slipped away around them — the easel, the wine, the unfinished painting, the plans she had come to make, the ending she had meant to give them — all of it fading beneath the warmth of his body, the weight of his hands, the soft ruin of her own surrender.

And somewhere between the music and the red paint drying on the canvas, between broken glass and breathless laughter, between old hurt and the first fragile shape of forgiveness, Odessa stopped trying to leave the underworld.

For tonight, she chose the pomegranate.

Odessa Nichols and Jaafar Jackson — Jaafar and Odessa — had once moved through the world like two halves of the same myth, two peas in a pod if peas had been carved by some bored Greek god with too much time and a wicked sense of irony, bound together with the kind of familiarity that made separation feel less like a breakup and more like someone had tried to split a constellation down the middle and expected the stars not to remember where they belonged; and even after the relationship ended, after the titles changed and the lines were supposedly redrawn in clean, respectable ink, they had remained close, still best friends, still each other’s first call, still lingering in that dangerous, undefined space between what was over and what had never really learned how to die, a little too tender to be casual and a little too intimate to be innocent.

Odessa told herself it was because of Jalen.

That was the sensible explanation, the grown-woman explanation, the one she could say out loud without sounding like Penelope still weaving and unweaving the same lonely cloth while pretending she was not waiting for the same man to come home; because Jalen was their son, their beautiful baby boy, their bright-eyed, dimpled, impossible little miracle, and co-parenting required closeness, required communication, required her to answer Jaafar’s calls without letting her heart behave like some foolish girl standing at the edge of the sea, listening for Orpheus to start singing her name back from the underworld.

But the truth, the irritating truth, the truth that sat in her chest like a prophecy she had no interest in fulfilling, was that Jalen looked so much like his father it almost offended her.

After all those hours of labour, after all the sweat, the tears, the pain that had made her feel like some mortal woman cursed by Hera herself, after carrying that boy beneath her ribs and surrendering her body to the brutal, sacred work of bringing him earthside, Jalen had arrived with Jaafar’s face stamped all over him like Zeus had personally signed off on the resemblance — the same soft brown eyes that already knew how to get away with things, the same mouth that curved before trouble, the same lashes that had no business belonging to a baby boy, the same expression Jaafar wore whenever he was pretending not to be pleased with himself — and it pissed Odessa off in a way that was almost funny, because she had done all the labour only for their son to come out looking like someone had copied and pasted his damn daddy and handed her the receipt.

“Mama, when’s Daddy gon’ be here?” Jalen whined from where he stood in the kitchen doorway, four years old and already carrying the dramatic impatience of a boy who knew he was loved too well to ever be truly ignored, his head full of dark curls springing wild around his face like some little cherub stolen from a Renaissance painting and dropped into Odessa Nichols’ house to test every ounce of patience she had left in her body.

Odessa sighed as she glanced at the clock on the stove, watching the minutes glow back at her in green numbers that somehow felt accusatory, as if time itself had decided to sit at her table and remind her that Jaafar was late, not horribly late, not irresponsibly late, just late enough for Jalen to notice, late enough for Odessa to feel that familiar tug in her chest, that ridiculous, ancient thing in her that still responded to his absence the way the earth might have responded to Persephone being gone too long, unsettled and quiet and pretending it was simply weather.

“He’ll be here soon, baby,” she said, smoothing a hand over Jalen’s curls as he dragged his socked feet into the kitchen, his little mouth pushed into a pout that looked so much like Jaafar’s it made her want to point at him and accuse him of emotional theft, because that boy had her stubbornness, yes, maybe her attitude, maybe even her tendency to make a situation larger than it needed to be, but his face, his expressions, the way his eyes softened when he wanted something — all of that belonged to his father, copied and pasted with divine disrespect.

Their family thing had always been dinner.

Not every night, because Odessa wasn’t foolish enough to confuse routine with reconciliation, and not so rarely that Jalen would ever have to wonder whether his parents could sit in the same room without the air changing shape around them, but three times a week, without fail, they gathered around the table like a tiny, stubborn kingdom refusing collapse, Odessa on one side, Jaafar on the other, Jalen between them like some golden-threaded offering from the Fates themselves, rambling through stories from nursery, half-remembered songs, the politics of who took whose crayon, and whatever grand injustice had happened on the playground that day.

Odessa had built that ritual with both hands, carefully and deliberately, because she wanted her son to grow up stable, as stable as possible, wanted him to know warmth without having to beg for it, wanted him to understand that love did not always look like two people living in the same house or sharing the same bed or wearing the same title, sometimes love looked like showing up on time with clean hands and patience, sitting at a dinner table even when the history between you was loud enough to rattle the silverware, and letting a little boy talk himself sleepy while the two adults who made him pretended not to notice how much they still knew about each other.

Usually, by the time Jalen’s stories began to slow and his eyelids started drooping over eyes that were entirely too much like his father’s, Jaafar would rise from the table with that quiet grace of his, rolling his sleeves up like some modern Apollo pretending he had not just walked in carrying sunlight and trouble in equal measure, and he would help with the dishes without needing to be asked, standing shoulder to shoulder with Odessa at the sink while the kitchen light warmed the side of his face and turned the steam from the water into something almost holy.

He washed, she rinsed.

That was their rhythm.

It should have been nothing, just water running, plates clinking, the soft domestic music of a family trying to be something steady despite everything that had fractured beneath them, but every now and then their hands would brush beneath the warm stream, his fingers grazing hers for barely half a second, so quick and ghostlike that Odessa might have convinced herself she had imagined it, might have tucked the moment away with all the other foolish things she refused to name, if not for the way Jaafar would be watching her when she looked up, his gaze low and heavy beneath those hooded lashes, as if he had felt it too, as if he had known exactly what he was doing, as if the whole kitchen had become the mouth of the underworld and he was standing there like Orpheus, daring her to turn around.

Right on time, as if the clock had been waiting on him the way the rest of the house always seemed to, the front door unlocked with the familiar turn of Jaafar’s key, that small metallic sound slipping through the hallway with the intimacy of something that had no business still belonging to him and yet did, because Odessa had never asked for it back and he had never offered to return it, and then he stepped inside with a bottle of wine in one hand and a packet of Starbursts in the other, because that was the maddening duality of him, the man capable of arriving with something grown and smooth and red enough to stain your mouth like a secret, while also remembering that their four-year-old had decided, with the conviction of a tiny king declaring law, that pink Starbursts were superior to every sweet ever made.

Jaafar’s eyes found Odessa’s almost immediately, as if she were the altar and he had entered the temple knowing exactly where worship belonged, and a grin pulled slow across his mouth as he lifted the packet in Jalen’s direction before placing the wine carefully on the cooler, his body moving with that easy, unhurried grace that made every ordinary thing look rehearsed by gods with too much vanity and too much time; but the grin did not last, not once his gaze truly settled on her, not once he took in the dress skimming her body like liquid midnight, the deliberate fall of her hair over one shoulder, the soft gleam on her skin, the sharp little click of her heels as she rose from the dining chair with the kind of elegance that could have made Helen’s face look like a footnote.

His brows furrowed.

Not dramatically, not enough for Jalen to notice, but enough for Odessa to feel the shift in him, the way his whole attention narrowed and sharpened like Artemis drawing back her bow, because Jaafar knew the difference between Odessa dressing beautifully and Odessa dressing for someone, and tonight she had the audacity to look like she had been carved out of temptation and then sent downstairs to ruin his evening.

“We’re going out for dinner?” he asked, shutting the door behind him with a carefulness that did not match the look beginning to settle over his face.

Odessa reached for her clutch from the counter and tried not to let the sound of his voice crawl beneath her skin like prophecy.

“No,” she said, and her tone was calm, almost too calm, the kind of calm women used when they had already rehearsed a conversation in the mirror and decided not to give a man too much of the truth at once. “I have plans… I was hoping I could skip tonight.”

The silence that followed was not loud, exactly, but it was heavy, a thick, invisible thing that slipped between them and pulled the warmth out of the kitchen, and Jaafar looked at her for one long moment, his hand still resting on the back of the chair, his expression caught somewhere between confusion and something darker, something possessive enough that Odessa felt her stomach turn traitorous.

“Plans?” he repeated, and there it was, that slight change in his voice, the soft scrape beneath the velvet, the warning tucked under the question. “Plans with who?”

“With Mr. Greyson!” Jalen chimed in before Odessa could so much as part her lips, his little face bright and pure and entirely too pleased with himself as he bounced on his toes, holding the packet of Starbursts Jaafar had handed him like he had just been entrusted with ambrosia from Olympus itself. “Teegan’s dad!”

Odessa closed her eyes for half a second.

Not because she was ashamed.

Not even because she was embarrassed.

But because children, sweet and beloved as they were, had the terrifying innocence of tiny prophets, always blurting out the one thing you would have paid good money to have swallowed by the earth, and Jalen, who could not yet tie his shoes properly without sitting on the floor and fighting for his life, had somehow managed to deliver the name with the theatrical clarity of Hermes carrying a message directly from the gods.

When she opened her eyes again, Jaafar was no longer looking at Jalen.

He was looking at her.

And if Odessa had been a weaker woman, if she had been the kind of woman easily undone by a man’s silence, she might have stepped back beneath the weight of it, because Jaafar did not yell, did not perform jealousy in the cheap, ordinary way some men did, did not puff up and beat his chest like some foolish mortal trying to prove himself to the gods; instead, he grew still, terrifyingly still, his gaze dragging over her in one slow, controlled sweep before returning to her face, and somehow that was worse, somehow that made the kitchen feel too small, like she had stepped into a myth and forgotten which god she had angered.

“Mr. Greyson,” he said, tasting the name like it had offended him personally.

Odessa lifted her chin. “His name is Malcolm.”

Jaafar’s mouth twitched, but there was no humour in it.

“Of course it is.”

“Don’t start.”

“I ain’t started nothing.”

“You’re about to.”

That made him look at her fully, and the old familiarity between them flared so hot and sudden that it could have been Hephaestus striking metal in a forge, because they knew each other too well, knew the rhythm of each other’s irritation, knew the exact angle of every almost-argument, every swallowed accusation, every sentence that meant more than the words it carried, and Odessa hated how quickly her body remembered the language of him, hated that even now, standing dressed for another man, she could feel Jaafar’s attention like hands she had no business missing.

Jalen, blissfully unaware that he had just walked barefoot through the ruins of Troy with a juice box in his hand, tore into the Starbursts and climbed onto his chair at the table.

“Mr. Greyson has a big car,” he announced proudly, as if contributing useful evidence to a trial.

Jaafar’s eyes flickered, briefly, dangerously.

“Does he?”

Odessa shot Jalen a look, gentle but pleading. “Baby, why don’t you go wash your hands before you eat?”

“But I washed them already.”

“Wash them again.”

“But—”

“Jalen.”

The boy sighed with the exhaustion of a man who had seen too much war for his age, sliding down from the chair with his sweets clutched to his chest, and as he wandered toward the bathroom, muttering something about everybody always making him wash his hands, Odessa heard Jaafar exhale through his nose, low and controlled, like a man trying to keep Cerberus leashed at the gates.

The moment Jalen was out of earshot, Jaafar leaned his hip against the counter and folded his arms across his chest.

“So you were just gone leave me here with our son and go on a date.”

Odessa blinked at him slowly. “It’s not a date.”

“It’s dinner.”

“Yes.”

“With Teegan’s dad.”

“Teegan’s dad has a name.”

“I heard it.”

“Then use it.”

Jaafar tilted his head, his eyes hooded now, that same look he got at the sink when their hands brushed and he pretended not to know he was making the air thin around her.

“I’m good.”

Odessa let out a humourless laugh as she turned away from him, checking inside her clutch for the third time because it gave her something to do with her hands that did not involve pointing at him or, worse, touching him. “You are unbelievable.”

“And you’re dressed like that for a man named Malcolm.”

She snapped her head up. “I’m dressed like this for me.”

Jaafar’s gaze moved over her again, slower this time, not disrespectful, never that, but too knowing, too intimate, too full of memory for a man who was supposed to be only her best friend and her child’s father, and when his eyes returned to hers, there was something in them that made her pulse stumble.

“You sure about that?”

Odessa’s lips parted, but nothing came out quickly enough, and she hated him for noticing, hated the way one corner of his mouth lifted as if he had caught her before she could hide, as if she were Eurydice glancing back and discovering Orpheus had been watching all along.

“I don’t need your permission to go out,” she said finally.

“I didn’t say you did.”

“You’re acting like it.”

“I’m acting like I came here for family dinner and found out from my four-year-old that his mama got plans with some man from school.”

“Some man from school is another parent.”

“Mm.”

“Do not ‘mm’ me.”

“I ain’t say nothing.”

“You said plenty.”

Jaafar pushed off the counter then, not quickly, not aggressively, but with that quiet, inevitable movement that made Odessa’s nerves spark before he even got close, and the space between them began to shrink until she could smell him, clean and warm and faintly expensive, the scent of him slipping past all her defences like a thief who still remembered where she kept the key.

He stopped just close enough to make a point.

Not close enough to touch.

Close enough to remind her that he could.

“Odessa,” he said, and her name in his mouth had always been a problem, had always sounded less like a name and more like something ancient being summoned from the sea, like Poseidon calling waves to heel.

She looked up at him despite herself.

“Jaafar.”

His eyes dropped to her mouth for one fraction of a second, so fast another woman might have missed it, but Odessa had spent years learning him, years cataloguing the small betrayals of his face, the way his restraint always cracked at the edges before the rest of him admitted anything.

“You like him?” he asked.

The question was quiet.

Too quiet.

Odessa’s fingers tightened around her clutch. “That’s none of your business.”

His jaw flexed.

There it was.

Not anger, not exactly, but something close enough to make the room tilt, something dark and male and wounded, something that did not belong to an ex-boyfriend who claimed he was fine with the way things were, something that made Odessa think of Ares standing at the edge of a battlefield, not yet swinging the sword, but already tasting blood in the air.

“You made it my business when you asked me to come sit in this house with our son while you go see him.”

“I asked you to have dinner with Jalen.”

“You asked me to take your place.”

“That is not fair.”

“No,” he said, voice dropping, “what’s not fair is you standing here looking like that and telling me it’s nothing.”

Odessa swallowed.

Outside the kitchen, the bathroom tap turned on, water splashing unevenly while Jalen sang to himself, some nursery rhyme broken into nonsense, and the sound should have softened the moment, should have reminded both of them of the delicate life they had built around their wreckage, but instead it made everything ache worse, because this was exactly why Odessa had rules, exactly why she kept pretending the boundaries were stronger than they were, exactly why she told herself three dinners a week did not mean anything except stability, except routine, except love shaped safely around their son.

But Jaafar was standing in her kitchen with wine on the cooler and jealousy in his eyes, and Odessa was dressed for another man while feeling her body respond to the one she had never truly stopped orbiting, and suddenly all her careful explanations felt as thin as paper offered to a flame.

“It is nothing,” she said, though her voice was softer now.

Jaafar studied her.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

That landed.

Not loudly, not cruelly, but directly, like an arrow from Apollo’s bow, clean and golden and impossible to dodge.

Odessa looked away first, and she hated that too.

Because the truth was simple and ugly and human: she had not told him because some foolish part of her had known he would look at her exactly like this, had known his face would change, had known the air would turn hot and old and familiar between them, and she had not trusted herself to stand in the middle of it without remembering what it felt like to belong to him.

Before she could answer, Jalen came running back into the kitchen with wet hands, leaving tiny droplets behind him on the floor.

“All clean!” he announced, holding both palms up like a victorious soldier returning from war.

Jaafar stepped back first.

Of course he did.

He always knew when to put the mask back on for their son, always knew how to tuck the storm behind his teeth and become Daddy again, warm and steady and safe, and Odessa watched the transformation with an ache so deep she almost resented him for it.

“Lemme see,” Jaafar said, crouching slightly as Jalen shoved his hands toward him. “You call that clean?”

Jalen gasped, offended. “Yes!”

“These hands look like they fought Medusa and lost.”

“What’s Medoosa?”

“A lady with snakes for hair,” Jaafar said, glancing up at Odessa for one brief second, his mouth curving faintly. “And a real bad attitude.”

Odessa narrowed her eyes.

Jalen turned to his mother with deep concern. “Mama, you got snakes?”

“Not yet,” she said sweetly, looking right at Jaafar. “But your daddy’s working very hard to make sure I grow some.”

Jalen gasped as if Jaafar had just informed him that his mother was one bad mood away from becoming an actual monster out of a storybook, his little eyes going wide before narrowing with grave, scientific suspicion, and Odessa had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing as her son tilted his head and studied the heavy fall of her hair over her shoulder, clearly searching for any sign of serpents beginning to sprout from her scalp like Medusa herself had decided to take residence in their kitchen between dinner and bedtime.

He looked at Odessa.

Then he looked at Jaafar.

Then he looked back at Odessa’s hair again, squinting harder, his face twisting with the seriousness of a tiny mythologist who had not yet learned how to pronounce “Gorgon” but had already decided he would defend himself if necessary.

“Mama,” he said carefully, “you don’t got snakes, right?”

Odessa lifted one brow and leaned down just enough for her curls to slide forward like dark silk.

“Not yet, baby.”

Jalen took one dramatic step back.

Jaafar laughed under his breath, warm and low, the sound slipping through the tension in the kitchen like sunlight catching on a blade, and for one treacherous second Odessa remembered exactly why she used to love making him laugh, why she used to collect those small sounds like offerings at an altar, why she once thought being loved by Jaafar Jackson felt like being chosen by Apollo and cursed by Aphrodite at the same time, all golden warmth and terrible consequence.

“Jalen, baby,” Jaafar said, bending slightly so he could kiss the top of their son’s curls, his hand lingering there with the easy tenderness that always managed to make Odessa’s chest soften no matter how badly she wanted to stay irritated, “why don’t you go set the table for us, yeah? You, me, and Mama.”

Jalen’s suspicion vanished in an instant, replaced by the bright importance of being given a task, and he nodded with the solemn pride of a little prince entrusted with preparing a banquet for gods and kings, clutching his Starbursts in one hand before scampering toward the dining room with the kind of thunderous footsteps only a four-year-old could create while weighing almost nothing.

Odessa watched him go, already opening her mouth before Jaafar had even turned back around, because she knew what he had done, knew he had shifted their son out of the room with the smoothness of Hermes slipping between worlds, knew he had cleared the air not because he wanted peace, but because he wanted privacy, and privacy with Jaafar had always been dangerous.

“I said I—”

“I heard you,” Jaafar cut in, his voice still quiet, still controlled, and somehow that made it worse than if he had raised it, because there was no carelessness in him now, no messy flare of temper, only that deep, deliberate certainty that made the room feel smaller around him. “And I’m telling you it ain’t happening. Sit your ass down, Odessa.”

For one breath, everything stopped.

The clock on the stove glowed.

The sink dripped once.

Somewhere in the dining room, Jalen dragged a chair with a terrible screech across the floor and began singing to himself as if his parents were not standing in the kitchen turning the air into something thick enough to drown in.

Odessa stared at Jaafar, her clutch still tucked beneath her fingers, her lips parted around a breath that had forgotten where it was supposed to go, because the audacity of him was almost impressive, almost mythic, almost worthy of its own damn tragedy, like Zeus himself had come down from Olympus in a black jacket and decided that because he still knew the shape of her heart, he had the right to command the rest of her too.

Then her eyes narrowed.

“Excuse me?”

Jaafar did not move.

That was the thing about him, the infuriating thing, the beautiful thing, the thing that had ruined her for ordinary men long before she was willing to admit it: he never crowded unless he meant to, never barked unless he had already decided he could stand behind the bite, and right now he stood in her kitchen with his shoulders relaxed, his jaw set, and his eyes dark beneath those hooded lashes, looking at her like he had drawn a line in the marble and dared her to cross it.

“You heard me.”

Odessa laughed once, but there was nothing light in it, nothing playful, nothing that could be mistaken for surrender.

“Oh, you must’ve lost your mind on the drive over here.”

“Maybe.”

“No, not maybe,” she said, taking one step closer, her heel clicking against the floor with sharp little judgment. “Definitely. Because I know you didn’t just walk into my house, with a key you still have because I am apparently too kind and too forgiving for my own good, and tell me to sit my ass down like I’m one of your little backup dancers waiting for instructions.”

Jaafar’s mouth twitched.

Wrong move.

Odessa saw it and lifted her chin, because the smile, small as it was, felt like a match being struck near dry grass.

“You think this is funny?”

“No,” he said, though his eyes said he was enjoying her fire too much, the same way ancient men in old stories loved to admire the flame right before it burned their palace down. “I think you’re pretty when you’re mad.”

Her stomach betrayed her before her pride could stop it, doing one stupid, humiliating little turn, and she hated him for it so completely she almost forgot how to speak.

“That is not going to work on me.”

“It already did.”

“Jaafar.”

“Odessa.”

Her name came out of him softer than the rest, but somehow heavier, like he had not said it so much as placed it between them, and it landed with the weight of every late-night call, every hospital room whisper when Jalen had been born, every family dinner where their hands brushed over dishes and neither of them admitted that the contact had lit them both up like Prometheus had stolen fire all over again.

She looked away first, furious with herself for it.

“I have plans.”

“I know.”

“With Malcolm.”

“I heard Jalen.”

“And you are going to stay here and have dinner with your son like we agreed.”

“Our son,” Jaafar corrected, and there was no gentleness in it now, only the low, immovable reminder that whatever had ended between them, whatever titles had been stripped from their relationship and buried in the ruins, Jalen still stood between them like a living vow neither of them could ever break. “And no, I’m not staying here so you can walk out dressed like Aphrodite on revenge day and sit across from some school dad who probably been waiting months for you to give him the time.”

Odessa blinked at him.

“Aphrodite on revenge day?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“So do I.”

The words were simple, but his tone made them feel like a warning carved into stone, the kind some doomed hero might ignore right before the sea swallowed him whole, and Odessa could feel herself standing at the edge of something she had been avoiding for months, maybe years, the edge of the truth that their breakup had never fully taken, that whatever lived between them had not died so much as gone underground like Hades with a stolen bride and waited for the right season to rise again.

She gripped her clutch tighter.

“You do not get to be jealous.”

Jaafar’s jaw flexed.

There it was.

A crack.

Small, but real.

“I don’t?”

“No,” she said, and now her voice had lowered too, because Jalen was in the next room and because the truth between them always sounded more dangerous when spoken softly. “You do not. You don’t get to stand here looking at me like that because another man wants to take me to dinner. You don’t get to act like you have some claim because we had a baby, because we had history, because we still know each other’s favourite foods and old passwords and the side of the bed we like. You don’t get to come here three times a week, wash dishes with me, brush your hand against mine like you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, then turn around and decide you have authority over my life because you don’t like what I’m wearing.”

Jaafar’s eyes moved over her face slowly, and for once, he did not have an answer waiting on his tongue.

Good, she thought.

Good.

Let him stand there with it.

Let him feel what she had been carrying, let him feel the absurdity of trying to be best friends with the man who still looked at her like he remembered the map of her body and the weather of her moods and the shape of every dream they once made together before life, pride, and pain turned them into two people sharing custody of a love neither of them had buried properly.

But then Jaafar exhaled, slow and measured, and when he spoke, his voice had changed again.

“I’m not jealous because we had a baby.”

Odessa went still.

He stepped closer, and though he still did not touch her, the nearness of him pressed against her senses until the whole kitchen felt like it had been built around this exact moment, around Jaafar standing in front of her with his voice low and his eyes fixed on hers as though she were the only mortal thing left on earth.

“I’m jealous because you’re mine.”

Her breath caught before she could stop it.

Jaafar saw.

Of course he saw.

He had always seen too much.

Odessa recovered quickly, but not quickly enough.

“I’m not yours.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth again, slower this time, not hidden, not accidental, and when he looked back up, the heat in his eyes was almost enough to make her forget the name Malcolm entirely.

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“No,” he said, soft and certain. “Because you want it to be.”

The words struck something in her, something tender and stubborn and still bleeding beneath all the years of pretending she was fine, and Odessa hated how badly she wanted to argue, hated how badly she wanted to prove him wrong, hated that some part of her felt seen instead of cornered.

From the dining room, Jalen called out, “Mama! Daddy! I put forks!”

Odessa closed her eyes for one second, grateful for the interruption and devastated by it at the same time.

Jaafar did not look away from her.

“Good job, baby,” he called back, his voice warming instantly for their son, even though his eyes stayed locked on Odessa’s like the rest of him belonged to her and always had.

Jalen yelled, “Can I have two Starbursts before dinner?”

“No,” Odessa and Jaafar said at the same time.

Silence.

Then Jalen sighed, long and offended. “Y’all always say no together.”

The absurdity of it almost broke her.

Almost.

Jaafar’s mouth softened at the corner, and Odessa felt the ghost of a laugh press against the back of her throat, but she swallowed it down because laughing with him was too easy, because falling back into rhythm was always too easy, because that was the problem, really, the problem had never been that they did not fit, it was that they fit so well they kept mistaking the burn for warmth.

She looked back at him, calmer now, though her pulse had not slowed.

“You can’t just tell me not to go.”

“I know.”

That surprised her.

Her brows drew together. “Then why did you?”

Jaafar looked at her for a long moment, and the arrogance slipped just enough for something rawer to show beneath it, something tired and honest and painfully young, the same boy she had once loved before the world made them careful.

“Because I didn’t know how else to say don’t.”

Odessa’s throat tightened.

She hated that.

She hated him for saying it that way.

She hated the softness it dragged out of her, hated that one honest sentence from him could undo more than all his confidence ever could, hated that the man had the nerve to stand there looking like a god who had finally remembered he was capable of bleeding.

“Jaafar…”

“No, let me say it,” he said, voice still low, but not hard now, not commanding, and somehow the gentleness was more dangerous than the jealousy had been. “I know I don’t have the right to tell you what to do. I know that. I know we not together, and I know you can go to dinner with whoever you want, wear whatever you want, smile at whoever you want. I know all of that, Odessa.”

She held his gaze.

“But?”

His eyes dropped for the briefest second, then returned to hers.

“But I’m standing here looking at you, and I’m thinking about another man sitting across from you, watching you laugh, watching you touch your hair, watching you do that thing where you pretend you’re not enjoying the attention even though you know exactly what you’re doing, and I can’t act like it doesn’t bother me.”

Odessa’s face warmed despite herself.

“I do not do a thing.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” he said again, and this time there was a faint smile in his voice, but it faded just as quickly as it came. “And he doesn’t get to learn it before I say what I should’ve said a long time ago.”

The kitchen felt too warm.

Odessa’s clutch suddenly felt stupid in her hand, like a prop from a play she no longer remembered auditioning for, and she looked down at it just to avoid looking at him, because there were moments in life where a woman could feel the gods gathering above her balcony, leaning over Olympus with their wine cups in hand, waiting to see whether she would choose pride or ruin.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

Jaafar stepped closer again, and this time his fingers lifted, not to grab her, not to force her, but to touch the side of her wrist where her pulse was beating too fast beneath her skin, his thumb resting there with such careful restraint that the tenderness of it nearly hurt.

“I’m saying don’t go.”

Her lips parted.

His thumb brushed once over the inside of her wrist.

“I’m saying stay here. Have dinner with me and our son. Let him tell us the same story three times and get rice on the floor and pretend he doesn’t need a bath when he absolutely does. Let me wash the dishes after, and you rinse, and then when he falls asleep, we can stop acting like whatever this is between us isn’t still standing in the middle of the room every time we breathe too close.”

Odessa swallowed hard.

The image hit her with terrible force because it was not grand, not dramatic, not some sweeping declaration made beneath lightning or laurel trees, but ordinary, domestic, painfully possible; dinner, dishes, their son sleepy and happy upstairs, Jaafar in her kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, the old rhythm waiting for them like Penelope’s unfinished weaving, asking whether this time they would stop undoing what their own hands kept making.

“And Malcolm?” she asked, though the name already sounded distant, almost foolish, like a mortal man mentioned in the middle of a war between gods.

Jaafar’s face tightened, but he kept his voice even.

“You can call him.”

“Can I?”

His eyes darkened again, but he nodded once.

“You can do whatever you want.”

Odessa studied him, searching for the trick, the command beneath the permission, the male pride waiting to rear back up and bite, but what she found instead was worse, because it was restraint, real restraint, the kind that cost him something, the kind that made his earlier arrogance feel less like control and more like panic wearing armour.

She looked toward the dining room, where Jalen had started arranging forks in what sounded like a deeply chaotic pattern.

Then she looked back at Jaafar.

“You were out of line.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get to talk to me like that.”

“I know.”

“And if you ever tell me to sit my ass down again like I’m some child—”

“You gon’ throw something at me?”

Odessa smiled sweetly.

“I’m going to change the locks.”

Jaafar’s expression shifted, quick and wounded enough that she knew she had landed the hit exactly where she meant to.

Then, because she was not cruel, or because she was cruel in a more complicated way, she added, “Maybe.”

His eyes narrowed.

“Odessa.”

“There you go saying my name like it’s a warning.”

“It is.”

She lifted her chin.

“And there you go thinking I’m scared of you.”

Jaafar leaned in just enough for his voice to drop into the private space between them, rich and low and threaded with that old intimacy that had no respect for titles or distance.

“You were never scared of me.”

“No,” she whispered, because suddenly anything louder felt impossible. “I wasn’t.”

For one suspended second, neither of them moved, and Odessa thought of Persephone standing between spring and the underworld, one foot in sunlight and one in shadow, knowing that return did not always mean rescue and staying did not always mean surrender, and perhaps that was the trouble with love like theirs, perhaps it had always been both pomegranate seed and open door, both curse and choice.

Then Jalen shouted, “Daddy, I put a spoon for the Starbursts!”

Jaafar blinked.

Odessa blinked.

“A spoon?” Jaafar called back.

“Yes!”

“For Starbursts?”

“Yes, Daddy!”

Odessa pressed her lips together, but the laugh escaped anyway, soft at first and then fuller when Jaafar looked at her with exasperated fondness spreading across his face, and just like that the spell changed shape, not broken, not gone, only folded carefully into the warm, messy life around them.

She pulled her phone from her clutch.

Jaafar watched her but did not speak.

Odessa stared at Malcolm Greyson’s name for a moment, thumb hovering over the screen, and she told herself she was making this choice for Jalen, for dinner, for stability, for the family ritual she had built so carefully with both hands.

But when she typed out an apology and said she could not make it tonight, when she placed the phone facedown on the counter and saw Jaafar’s shoulders loosen in the smallest possible way, she knew better.

Jaafar knew better too.

The smugness tried to return to his face.

Odessa pointed one manicured finger at him before it could fully arrive.

“Do not.”

He lifted both hands, innocent as a man who had never sinned once in his life.

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“You breathed arrogant.”

His mouth curved.

“You know how I breathe now?”

“I know everything about you, unfortunately.”

Something soft passed over his face then, so quick it almost hurt to catch it.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You do.”

Odessa looked away before that could become too much, smoothing her dress as she turned toward the dining room.

“Come on, then. Since you ruined my plans.”

Jaafar reached for the wine on the cooler, his voice following her like warm honey poured over trouble.

“Nah, baby,” he said. “I saved dinner.”

Odessa stopped in the doorway and looked back at him over her shoulder, all silk hair, sharp eyes, and wounded pride, beautiful enough to make men start wars and foolish enough to pretend she had not already started one in him years ago.

“Keep talking,” she said, “and you’ll be eating alone.”

Jaafar’s gaze dropped over her once, slow and satisfied, before returning to her eyes.

“No I won’t.”

And Odessa hated — hated — that he was probably right.

With a sigh that carried more irritation than surrender, Odessa rolled her eyes and took her seat at the table, lowering herself into the chair beside Jalen with all the dignity of a queen returning to a throne she had not agreed to occupy, while Jaafar settled across from her with that quiet, maddening ease of his, looking entirely too comfortable for a man who had stormed into her evening like Poseidon kicking up waves because some mortal dared sail too close to his waters.

Jalen, completely unaware that his parents had just narrowly avoided turning the kitchen into the opening scene of a tragedy, launched immediately into his story about Ms. Renee and how she had cut playtime short that day, his little hands moving wildly as he described the injustice, his fork forgotten beside his plate while his curls bounced with every scandalised shake of his head.

“And then she said we had to come inside, Mama,” he said, eyes wide with betrayal, as if Ms. Renee had not merely ended playtime but stolen fire from mankind and blamed him for it. “And I wasn’t even done with my truck.”

Odessa made the correct sympathetic sound, though her attention kept slipping, traitorous and unwilling, to Jaafar.

Because Jaafar was staring at her.

Not glancing.

Not looking.

Staring.

He sat there across from her with one arm resting loosely near his plate, his eyes hooded and heavy beneath his lashes, listening to his son with half a smile while watching Odessa with the other half of himself, and the duality of it was infuriating, the way he could be fully present for Jalen’s tiny heartbreak over stolen playtime while still managing to make Odessa feel like she was the only other thing in the room worth studying.

She met his stare with her own because she refused, absolutely refused, to be the first one to look away, not when he was sitting there smug and beautiful and far too sure of himself, not when the whole evening had already tilted toward him in ways she had not authorised.

So she lifted her fork slowly.

Too slowly, maybe.

Petty enough to know exactly what she was doing.

Her eyes remained on his as she wrapped her lips around the fork, tasting the warmth of the lasagna she had made for them, the sauce rich with tomato and garlic, the cheese soft and melted, the pasta layered the way her mother had taught her years ago, and across the table Jaafar’s expression did something so subtle, so quick, that another woman might have missed it.

Odessa did not.

She saw the way his jaw shifted.

Saw the way his gaze dropped for one dangerous second.

Saw the way his fingers tightened around his glass before he lifted it to his mouth as if water, wine, or whatever mercy existed in the cup might save him from the consequences of looking too long.

Good, she thought, swallowing with a calmness she did not feel.

Let him suffer a little.

Let him sit there in the house he still walked into with a key, at the table they still shared three nights a week, across from the woman he had just told not to leave, and remember that jealousy was not the only weapon available.

Jalen huffed dramatically and stabbed at his lasagna with the seriousness of a boy avenging himself on the concept of indoor time.

“And Teegan said Ms. Renee was being mean, but Ms. Renee said no, she was being safe, but I think she was being mean-safe.”

Odessa nodded like this was a legal distinction worth respecting. “Mean-safe is very serious.”

“It is,” Jalen insisted.

Jaafar’s mouth curved, but his eyes never left Odessa’s face for long.

“And what do you think about that, Mommy?” he asked, his brow lifting, his voice smooth enough to pass as innocent if innocence had not already fled the room with its sandals in hand.

Odessa’s lashes lowered slightly.

There it was.

That little game.

That dangerous little line they both knew better than to touch in front of their son and yet somehow kept circling like two ancient enemies meeting beneath a truce flag, hands clean, knives hidden, both of them smiling because the battlefield remembered their footprints.

She set her fork down with care, leaned back a fraction, and looked him over in a slow sweep that was nowhere near as accidental as she would have claimed under oath.

“I don’t know, Daddy,” she said, her voice sweet enough to make the word sound like honey poured over a blade. “What do you think about it?”

Jaafar’s eyes darkened.

Not enough for Jalen to catch.

Enough for Odessa to feel it.

Enough for the air between them to tighten like a bowstring pulled back by Artemis herself.

“I think,” Jaafar said, dragging the word out just slightly as he cut into his lasagna, “someone’s been bad, that’s what I think.”

Jalen gasped immediately, hand flying to his chest like he had been personally accused before Olympus and all its judging gods.

“Me?”

Jaafar looked at his son then, and the shift was instant, warm and playful, his smile widening as he shook his head. “Not you, man.”

Jalen squinted, suspicious again. “Then who?”

Odessa reached for her glass, her expression smooth despite the heat crawling up her neck.

“Yes,” she said, eyes still on Jaafar. “Who?”

Jaafar leaned back in his chair, his gaze returning to her with the slow satisfaction of a man who knew exactly how close he could get to danger without calling it by name.

“Somebody who knows better.”

Odessa gave him a polite smile so sharp it could have drawn blood.

“That sounds like projection.”

“That sounds like guilt.”

“That sounds like you need to focus on your food.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I can do two things.”

“That would be a first.”

Jalen looked between them, chewing with his mouth puffed slightly, his eyes bright and curious as though he had stumbled into some adult ritual he did not understand but deeply wished to investigate.

“Daddy, what’s pro-jection?”

Jaafar’s grin widened. “It’s when Mama tries to act like I’m the problem.”

Odessa’s mouth dropped open.

“Absolutely not.”

Jalen frowned thoughtfully. “But sometimes you are the problem.”

Jaafar froze.

Odessa pressed her lips together.

For a single glorious moment, silence sat at the table like a crowned goddess.

Then Odessa laughed, unable to stop herself, the sound slipping out of her before she could tuck it away, and Jalen beamed at having won a case he did not even know he was arguing.

Jaafar looked wounded.

Genuinely wounded.

“You hear this?” he asked Odessa, pointing his fork toward their son. “You been teaching my child propaganda.”

“Our child,” Odessa corrected smoothly, lifting her chin. “And he has eyes.”

Jalen nodded with his whole body. “I got eyes.”

Jaafar looked at him. “You got a bedtime too.”

Jalen’s mouth fell open in horror. “Daddy!”

“That’s right. Keep choosing sides.”

“I’m not choosing sides,” Jalen said quickly, because even at four, he understood self-preservation when bedtime became a weapon. “I love both y’all.”

Odessa softened instantly, reaching over to wipe a dot of sauce from the corner of his mouth with her thumb. “We love you too, baby.”

Jaafar watched her do it.

And there it was again, that change in him, softer this time, less heat and more ache, as if seeing Odessa mother their son still struck some hidden place inside him that he had never found language for, as if the sight of her tenderness made him feel the weight of all the things they had built and broken and somehow kept alive anyway.

For a moment, the tension loosened.

Not gone.

Never gone.

But loosened enough for the room to breathe.

Jalen returned to his story with renewed passion, explaining that Ms. Renee had promised extra playtime tomorrow, but he was not sure he trusted her because grown-ups “be saying stuff,” which made Odessa choke softly on her water while Jaafar had to look away toward the window like he was seeking divine intervention.

“Where did you learn that?” Odessa asked.

Jalen shrugged. “I know things.”

Jaafar nodded solemnly. “He does.”

“He’s four.”

“Four-year-olds know things.”

“Not that.”

Jalen pointed at Jaafar with his fork. “Daddy says grown-ups be saying stuff.”

Odessa slowly turned her head.

Jaafar lifted both brows, innocent as Narcissus pretending he had not been staring at his own reflection for half the afternoon.

“What?”

“You are contaminating my baby.”

“Our baby.”

“Do not correct me while you’re guilty.”

“I ain’t guilty.”

“You are always guilty.”

“Now that sounds like projection.”

Odessa narrowed her eyes as Jaafar’s mouth curved again, and she hated how easily he pulled her back into this, hated how quickly the table became theirs again, how Jalen’s laughter sat between them like a small sun, how their banter moved with the old rhythm of a song they had never forgotten the words to.

It was dangerous.

That was the trouble.

Not the arguing, not the jealousy, not even the way Jaafar looked at her like he still had some claim carved into the marrow of him.

The danger was how easy happiness still felt when they stopped fighting it.

The danger was that family dinner did not feel like an act.

It felt like memory.

It felt like prophecy.

It felt like the Fates had taken one look at Odessa’s careful boundaries and laughed while spinning their golden thread around the three of them anyway.

Jaafar must have felt it too, because as Jalen bent over his plate, trying to scoop an impossible amount of lasagna onto his fork, Jaafar’s gaze softened across the table.

Not smug.

Not possessive.

Just there.

Steady.

Familiar.

A little ruined.

Odessa looked away first, because that version of him was harder to withstand than the jealous one.

The jealous one she could fight.

The arrogant one she could insult.

The one who sat across from her with quiet love in his eyes while their son got sauce on his sleeve was the one who made her feel like Eurydice at the mouth of the underworld, knowing one look back could cost her everything and wanting to look anyway.

“Mama,” Jalen said suddenly, breaking through the quiet with the urgency only children possessed. “Are you still going with Mr. Greyson?”

The fork in Jaafar’s hand paused.

Odessa felt it without looking.

That stillness.

That listening.

The whole room seemed to lean toward her answer.

She wiped her mouth with her napkin, taking her time because she would rather walk barefoot through Hades’ halls than let Jaafar know how much weight the question carried.

“No, baby,” she said at last. “Not tonight.”

Jalen brightened immediately. “So you staying?”

“I’m staying.”

“With me and Daddy?”

Odessa’s eyes lifted against her will.

Jaafar was watching her.

Again.

Always.

“With you and Daddy,” she said, and the words landed softer than she intended.

Jalen cheered like he had personally negotiated peace between Sparta and Athens, throwing both arms into the air before Jaafar caught his wrist gently and reminded him that people with sauce on their hands did not celebrate above cream walls.

Odessa smiled despite herself.

Jaafar smiled because she smiled.

And that annoyed her enough to restore balance.

“Don’t look so pleased,” she told him.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m eating.”

“You’re gloating.”

“I’m enjoying the lasagna.”

“You’re enjoying yourself.”

Jaafar tilted his head, eyes low and warm as he looked at her across the table.

“I can do two things,” he said again.

Odessa held his stare, refusing to blink, refusing to let him see that one sentence had pulled heat through her like lightning summoned by Zeus himself.

Jalen, oblivious and delighted, shoved another forkful into his mouth and mumbled, “Mama’s lasagna makes everybody happy.”

Jaafar’s gaze did not move from Odessa.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It does.”

And Odessa, despite every wall she had built, every boundary she had named, every excuse she had folded neatly and placed between them like shields, felt something in her chest soften with a terrible, traitorous ache.

Because this was what she had been afraid of.

Not Jaafar’s jealousy.

Not his commands.

Not the old desire that still sparked between them whenever their hands brushed over dishwater or their eyes caught too long across a table.

She was afraid of this.

The three of them.

Dinner warm on the plates, their son laughing between them, Jaafar sitting in her house like he still belonged there, and Odessa realising with a slow, painful clarity that maybe he had never fully left.

Soon enough, as if the evening had been following some quiet, sacred rhythm known only to their little family, Jalen’s eyes began to droop over his plate, his lashes lowering in slow, uneven blinks while his belly sat full of lasagna and warmth and all the safety Odessa had worked so hard to make feel ordinary, his curls falling across his forehead as he tried, with very little success, to continue telling them about Ms. Renee, Teegan, and the unfinished business of tomorrow’s extra playtime.

Jaafar saw it first.

Of course he did.

He had always been good at noticing their son’s tired signs, the softening mouth, the heavy head, the stubborn little hand still gripping his fork as if sleep itself were a rival he could defeat through sheer determination, and without making a performance of it, without asking Odessa for permission or making Jalen feel like a baby for being exhausted, Jaafar rose from his chair with that familiar quiet grace and came around the table.

“Come on, little man,” he murmured, slipping one arm behind Jalen’s back and the other beneath his knees before lifting him from the chair as easily as if the boy were still the newborn he had once held against his chest with shaking hands and wonder-struck eyes. “You fought a good fight.”

Jalen made a sleepy sound of protest, his cheek already sinking into the curve of Jaafar’s shoulder, one little hand curling weakly into the fabric of his father’s shirt.

“I’m not sleepy,” he mumbled, though the words barely survived the journey out of his mouth.

Jaafar kissed the side of his head, smiling into those soft curls that looked so much like his own it still felt, to Odessa, like some elaborate joke the gods had played on her after labour. “I know, man. You just resting your eyes aggressively.”

Odessa stood too, slower than she needed to, smoothing the front of her dress as she followed them down the hall, her heels clicking against the floor of her home in a steady, delicate rhythm that felt too loud in the hush that had settled after dinner, like the echo of Persephone walking through marble halls between seasons, half in the world she built for herself and half pulled toward the shadowed place that still knew her name.

She watched Jaafar carry their son.

That was always the part that undid her, no matter how many walls she had built, no matter how many times she reminded herself that co-parenting did not mean wanting, that stability did not mean surrender, that a man could be a good father and still not be hers.

Because Jaafar loved Jalen in a way that was impossible to resent.

He loved him without laziness, without vanity, without treating fatherhood like some occasional crown he could wear when the audience was watching; he loved him in the small, ordinary ways, in lunchbox notes and remembered Starbursts, in knowing which dinosaur pyjamas were acceptable on which days, in learning how to detangle curls with more patience than Odessa had expected from him, in carrying their sleepy boy to bed three nights a week like it was not a favour, not a duty, but an act of devotion performed at the altar of the life they had made together.

Jalen’s room glowed softly when Odessa pushed the door open, the night-light spilling a golden crescent across the floor, touching the little books stacked beside his bed, the stuffed animals arranged in a chaotic army near the pillows, the toy truck abandoned beneath the window as if it too had grown tired from the long injustice of Ms. Renee’s shortened playtime.

Jaafar lowered him onto the bed with a gentleness that made Odessa’s throat tighten.

He moved like he was handling something holy.

Like Jalen had been delivered to him by the Fates wrapped in golden thread and one wrong movement might wake every god in Olympus.

“Arms up,” Jaafar whispered.

Jalen, half-asleep and entirely boneless, obeyed just enough for his father to tug the blankets around him, and Odessa leaned against the doorway, arms folded loosely, watching the way Jaafar tucked their son in with quiet precision, pulling the comforter beneath his chin, smoothing it over his small body, then brushing the curls back from his forehead with the kind of tenderness that made the whole room feel softer.

Jalen blinked up at him, fighting sleep with the last scraps of his little strength.

“You comin’ tomorrow?” he asked, voice thick and sweet.

Jaafar’s face softened completely, the guarded man from the kitchen gone, the jealous man from dinner gone, the man who had told Odessa to sit down like he still had the right swallowed whole by the father kneeling beside his son’s bed.

“Yeah,” he said, his thumb moving once over Jalen’s temple. “I’ll be here in the morning. I’m taking you to school, remember?”

“And Starbursts?”

Odessa made a sound from the doorway.

Jaafar glanced back at her with a look that was far too amused for someone on thin ice, then returned his attention to their son. “We’ll discuss that with management.”

Jalen’s brows pulled together. “Who’s management?”

Jaafar tilted his head toward Odessa without looking away from him.

“Your mama.”

Jalen sighed, long and tragic, as if Odessa had personally robbed him of a thriving confectionery business. “Mama always says no.”

“Because Mama loves your teeth,” Odessa said from the doorway.

Jaafar smiled, and Odessa hated the warmth that flickered through her at the sight of it, hated how fatherhood sat on him like something ancient and earned, hated that even after everything, watching him with their son still made some foolish, hopeful part of her ache like Demeter waiting for spring.

Jaafar bent down and kissed Jalen’s forehead, lingering there for a second longer than usual, his hand smoothing those dark curls back one last time before he spoke in that low, steady voice their son trusted more than anything.

“I love you, little man.”

Jalen’s eyes were already closing. “Love you, Daddy.”

“Be good for Mama.”

“I am good.”

Odessa and Jaafar looked at each other.

Even half-asleep, Jalen sensed the judgement.

“I’m mostly good,” he corrected, and Jaafar’s laugh came out quiet, tucked safely into the dimness of the room.

“That’s fair.”

Odessa stepped inside then, crossing to the other side of the bed so she could press her own kiss to Jalen’s cheek, breathing in the clean, warm scent of him, baby shampoo and dinner and the sweetness of sleep, and for one moment the world narrowed down to the three of them around that little bed, Jaafar on one side, Odessa on the other, their son tucked safely between them like the living answer to a question neither of them had been brave enough to ask.

Jalen caught her fingers before she could pull away.

“Mama,” he whispered.

“Yes, baby?”

“You staying too?”

Something in her chest folded.

Jaafar looked up at her.

Odessa felt his gaze immediately, not sharp now, not smug, but quiet and waiting, and she hated how much the simple question seemed to hold, hated that children could reach into the middle of a room and pull out the truth with both hands without even knowing they had done it.

“I’m staying,” she murmured, squeezing Jalen’s little hand. “I’m always staying.”

That seemed to satisfy him, and within seconds his breathing began to deepen, his fingers loosening around hers as sleep finally claimed him, soft and total, carrying him away from grown-up tension, from unfinished dinners, from parents who still did not know how to stand close without becoming mythic about it.

Jaafar stayed kneeling for a moment after Jalen was asleep.

Odessa noticed that too.

The way he watched their son as if he were memorising him again, as if fatherhood still surprised him, as if no matter how many times he carried that boy to bed, some part of him could not believe the world had trusted him with something this precious.

Then he rose carefully, his movements soundless, and Odessa followed him out of the room, pulling the door almost closed behind them until only a narrow strip of golden night-light spilled into the hall.

For a second, neither of them spoke.

The hallway felt different now, quieter, heavier, stripped of Jalen’s chatter and the clatter of plates and the easy excuses they used to keep themselves from staring too long at what remained when their son was asleep.

Odessa’s heels made a softer sound now as she walked back toward the kitchen, and Jaafar followed a step behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him at her back, close enough that every nerve in her body seemed to wake with irritating loyalty.

“He loves when you put him to bed,” she said finally, because it was safer than saying anything else.

Jaafar’s voice came from behind her, low and even. “I love putting him to bed.”

She glanced back at him over her shoulder.

There was no joke in his expression.

No smirk.

No possessive edge.

Just honesty, simple and unguarded, and somehow that was worse than everything else, because Odessa had prepared herself for Jaafar’s arrogance, for the jealousy, for the old flirtation that moved between them like a familiar storm, but she had not prepared herself for the softer blade of him, the one that slid between her ribs without making a sound.

“He asked if you were coming tomorrow,” she said.

“I am.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“You’re busy.”

“I’ll move things around.”

“Jaafar—”

“I said I’m coming.”

The words should have annoyed her.

They almost did.

But there was no control in them this time, no command meant to pull her into place, just a father’s certainty, the immovable devotion of a man who would rearrange whatever needed rearranging because his son had asked for him before sleep and Jaafar had promised.

Odessa swallowed the softness before it could show.

“Fine.”

He hummed behind her, and she knew without looking that he was smiling.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Sound pleased.”

“I’m not pleased.”

“You are always pleased with yourself.”

“I have reasons.”

She stood in the kitchen for a moment after they came back down the hall, the hush of the house settling around them like a veil drawn gently over something sacred, something unfinished, her fingers resting on the edge of the counter as if she needed the cool stone beneath her palm to remind herself where she was, because there was something about seeing Jaafar put Jalen to bed that always loosened her from the inside out, always left her softer than she wanted to be, more vulnerable than she liked, as though motherhood had made her heart fertile ground and Jaafar, infuriatingly, still knew exactly where to step.

The table remained cluttered with the remnants of dinner, half-empty glasses, abandoned forks, the baking dish that still smelled faintly of garlic, tomato, and melted cheese, the whole room carrying the warm aftermath of family, and Odessa exhaled as she moved toward the sink, slipping her clutch onto the counter and reaching for the first plate with the quiet instinct of habit, because somebody had to do something practical before the silence between them turned dangerous.

She had barely turned on the tap before she felt him.

Not heard him.

Felt him.

That quiet shift in the air, that unmistakable warmth at her back, that awareness of Jaafar drawing close enough for her body to register his presence before her mind had caught up, and her shoulders stiffened for the smallest second just as his hand reached around hers, long fingers brushing lightly against her own where she held the plate beneath the stream of warm water.

“I got it,” he murmured, his voice low by her ear, too close, far too close, the words gliding over her skin like dark honey.

Odessa swallowed and kept her eyes on the sink, on the water running over porcelain, on anything that was not the broad shape of him settling behind her with all the slow inevitability of a tide coming in.

“I can wash a plate, Jaafar.”

“I know you can.”

His tone carried that quiet smile she did not need to see to hear, and before she could step aside or gather herself into something firmer, something less susceptible, he moved even closer, slipping fully behind her until the length of him pressed lightly, then unmistakably, against her back.

Odessa went still.

Every inch of her.

Because there was close, and then there was this.

This was not an accident.

This was not two people reaching for the same dish at the same time.

This was Jaafar standing behind her at the sink as if the kitchen belonged to a life they had never fully put down, his chest warm against her back, the line of his body fitting against hers with a familiarity so seamless it made her stomach turn traitor, made her pulse stumble against her throat, made something ancient and stubborn inside her lift its head like a sleeping creature disturbed.

“Jaafar,” she said, and even to her own ears the word sounded thinner than she would have liked, more breath than warning.

His hands slid around hers again, one brushing her knuckles as he took the sponge from the sink, the other steadying the plate beneath the water, and though his touch was light, so light it could have been called innocent by anyone who had not known him the way she did, Odessa knew better.

Jaafar did not touch without intention.

Never had.

He lowered his head slightly, not enough to crowd her, just enough that his breath stirred the hair near her ear, and suddenly the simplest act in the world, washing a dish in a quiet kitchen after putting their son to bed, felt less like domestic routine and more like standing at the edge of some old Greek myth, one of those stories where a woman turns around only once and changes the rest of her life forever.

“You were about to start without me,” he said softly.

“I thought that was the point of you doing the dishes.”

“It is.”

“Then why are you on me like this?”

That made the barest hint of a laugh rumble through his chest, and because that chest was pressed to her back, because the sound travelled through him and into her, Odessa felt it in a way she absolutely did not appreciate.

“I’m washing dishes,” he said.

“You are not just washing dishes.”

“No?”

“No.”

His fingers grazed over hers again as he guided the sponge across the plate, slow and deliberate, his forearm brushing lightly against her waist, and Odessa hated the way her body responded, hated the instinctive little intake of breath she could not quite suppress, hated that she could still recognise the language of him even in silence, even in something as stupidly innocent as soap and warm water and his body behind hers.

“No,” she repeated, quieter this time, because repeating herself felt safer than admitting the truth, which was that she could barely think with him this close, barely remember why she had spent so much energy building rules around a man who could undo them by pressing his mouth too near her ear and pretending to be helpful.

Jaafar rinsed the plate, then set it on the rack, his movements unhurried, almost lazy, as if he had all the time in the world and no reason to fear what nearness might do to either of them.

When he reached for the next dish, he did not move away.

If anything, he settled more firmly behind her, one hand bracing briefly against the edge of the sink beside hers while the other passed her the glass, his fingers dragging over her palm with a touch so fleeting and so deliberate that Odessa’s eyes fluttered closed for half a second before she could stop herself.

That, apparently, was all the encouragement he needed.

His mouth did not touch her, but it hovered perilously near the curve of her neck, close enough that she could feel the heat of him there, close enough that the little hairs on her skin rose in response, and when he spoke again, his voice came rougher, lower, like something dragged up from the bottom of him.

“You always smell good.”

Odessa opened her eyes.

Her hand tightened around the glass.

“This is exactly why I almost went to dinner.”

He hummed, not offended, not even surprised, his hand covering hers briefly as he turned the glass beneath the water.

“No, it ain’t.”

“No?”

“No,” he said, and she could hear the smile in it, could hear the certainty, that maddening male certainty that made her want to elbow him and lean back into him at the same time. “You almost went to dinner because you were trying to prove something.”

“And what exactly would I be proving?”

His chin nearly brushed her shoulder then, not quite there, but near enough that her entire body sharpened around the absence of contact.

“That you can.”

Odessa’s throat tightened.

“And I can.”

“I know you can.”

The thing about Jaafar was that he never sounded threatened when he should have, never sounded small or insecure in the ways other men did when jealousy got hold of them; instead, he sounded calm, almost reverent, as if even his jealousy had the audacity to believe it was justified, as if the gods themselves had whispered in his ear that Odessa Nichols had always been a little bit his ruin and he was only acting in accordance with divine instruction.

He took the glass from her and set it aside, and when she reached for the next plate, his hand slid over hers again, larger and warmer, guiding rather than grabbing, but the contact lingered this time, his fingers threading loosely between hers for one suspended second beneath the running water before releasing.

Odessa’s breath caught.

She could feel his smile now, not because she saw it, but because his whole body seemed to know when she faltered, seemed to lean into that small victory with sinful patience.

“You keep doing that,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Acting like you don’t know what you’re doing.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he shifted just enough that she felt the solid line of him more completely at her back, chest to spine, thigh to thigh, not trapping, not forcing, just there, close enough to make denial impossible.

“Maybe I know exactly what I’m doing,” he murmured.

The plate nearly slipped from her hand.

Odessa set it down with more force than necessary and gripped the edge of the sink, because at least the sink was inanimate, at least the sink was not Jaafar Jackson with his mouth near her ear and his body fitted behind hers like some answer she had spent years refusing to write down.

“Your son is asleep down the hall,” she whispered.

“Our son,” he corrected automatically, and the tenderness in it almost made things worse, because it was one thing for a man to flirt with heat behind his teeth, but Jaafar always had the nerve to braid tenderness into desire until she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. “And I know.”

Odessa closed her eyes briefly.

“Then behave.”

His hand slid to her waist.

Not possessive.

Not harsh.

Just a warm, steady hold through the fabric of her dress, thumb resting there as if he had remembered the exact place it belonged, and a shiver went through her so cleanly she could not hide it.

Jaafar felt it.

Of course he did.

His breath left him in something almost like a laugh, though gentler, more dangerous.

“Odessa,” he said softly, and her name sounded like an invocation in his mouth, like he was summoning not just her attention but every version of her that had ever loved him, every version that still did in secret and in spite of herself. “If I wasn’t behaving, you’d know.”

Her grip on the sink tightened until her knuckles ached.

She should have moved then.

Should have stepped away.

Should have told him to finish the dishes himself and gone upstairs to take pins from her hair and wash off the makeup she had put on for another man.

Instead, she stayed where she was, trapped less by Jaafar than by the terrifying truth of her own desire, by the fact that his hand on her waist felt less like intrusion and more like memory, by the fact that standing with him like this in the warm light of her kitchen felt so dangerously close to home.

He let the silence stretch between them, rich and taut as a drawn bowstring, while he reached around her for the final plate, his arm brushing the front of her body in a motion so simple it should not have felt intimate and yet did, because everything with Jaafar did, every glance, every passing touch, every shared task transformed by history and hunger into something larger than itself.

Then, very gently, he took the plate from her hands and set it aside.

The water kept running.

Neither of them moved.

His hand remained at her waist.

His other braced beside her on the counter.

Odessa could feel the rise and fall of his breathing against her back now, slow and deep and controlled in the way only a man already fighting himself could be controlled, and for one wild, humiliating moment she thought of Hades and Persephone, of pomegranate seeds and shadowed bargains, of women who swore they would not go back and found themselves lingering anyway at the threshold.

“You looked beautiful tonight,” he said at last, his voice quieter now, stripped of teasing, stripped of performance, leaving only truth behind.

Odessa stared at the stream of water pouring into the sink.

“I was going somewhere.”

“I know.”

“With someone else.”

“I know that too.”

“And you still stood behind me like this?”

Jaafar’s fingers flexed slightly at her waist, barely there, but enough.

“Yes.”

That single word travelled through her like a lit match.

Slowly, before she could talk herself out of it, Odessa turned her head just enough to look at him from the corner of her eye.

He was already looking at her.

Those hooded lashes.

That heavy, impossible stare.

That face her son had stolen outright.

And because she turned, because she looked, the space between them shifted again, her cheek nearly brushing his, the angle so close that one more inch would have become something else entirely.

“Why?” she asked, though the answer already lived in the pulse beating madly beneath his hand.

Jaafar did not pretend not to understand.

His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth, then rose again.

“Because I’ve had to watch you all night,” he said, low and honest and ruined, “and this is the closest I’ve been allowed to get.”

The words landed somewhere deep.

Somewhere dangerous.

Odessa’s breath left her slowly, her pride and her longing pulling at each other like rival gods fighting over one miserable mortal heart, and for a second she could not do anything but stand there in the centre of her kitchen with Jaafar behind her, his body warm against hers, his hand steady at her waist, the sink full of clean dishes and unclean thoughts.

“Jaafar,” she whispered.

“Jaafar,” she whispered, and it came out too soft to be useful, too tender to be a warning, too full of everything she had spent months dressing up as discipline and distance and “for Jalen’s sake,” when really the truth had always been standing behind her with one hand on her waist and the other braced beside her like he had never accepted the idea of leaving her alone in the first place.

His mouth curved near her ear.

Not against her skin.

Not yet.

But near enough that Odessa felt the shape of his smile like an omen.

“There she go,” he murmured, his voice low and warm and entirely too pleased with itself. “That’s the way you used to say my name when you were trying to act like you had sense.”

Odessa’s eyes opened slowly, her fingers still curled around the edge of the sink, the tap running hot enough to steam the air between them, and she hated how her body betrayed her before her mouth could defend her, hated the way her spine softened by half an inch against his chest as if some stupid, ancient part of her had heard him and answered, had lifted its face like a flower turning toward Helios in the morning.

“I still have sense,” she said, though the words were not nearly sharp enough to cut anything.

Jaafar hummed as if he was considering it, as if he was a judge on Olympus and she had just presented a very weak argument beneath marble columns and divine scrutiny.

“Mm,” he said, dragging the sound out until it became a touch all by itself. “Barely.”

Odessa turned her head a little more, not enough to give him the full satisfaction of her face, but enough to let him see the narrow look in her eyes. “You came into my house, scared off my plans, told me to sit my ass down, flirted through dinner in front of our child like you were raised by wolves, and now you’re calling me senseless?”

“I ain’t scare off nothing,” he said smoothly, his thumb still resting at her waist, slow and steady through the fabric of her dress. “That man lost fair and square.”

Odessa’s mouth fell open.

“There was no competition.”

Jaafar’s eyes dipped to her lips with such calm audacity that it made heat climb up her neck before he even spoke.

“That’s why he lost so bad.”

She stared at him.

He stared back.

And God, that was the problem with Jaafar Jackson, the ancient, impossible, unreasonable problem, the reason she had ended up with his baby in the first place and had been mad about it ever since, because the man had a mouth so slick it should have been registered as a weapon and a confidence so quiet it never looked like arrogance until it was already wrapped around your throat.

He did not chase like desperate men chased.

He did not beg like uncertain men begged.

Jaafar wanted with the patience of Hades, the certainty of Apollo, the nerve of Zeus in somebody else’s house, and the beauty of a man who had learned far too early that women noticed when he walked into a room and had somehow, cruelly, decided not to abuse it loudly.

No.

He was worse than loud.

He was calm.

He was the kind of man who could stand behind Odessa at her sink, body pressed to hers in a kitchen that still smelled like lasagna and family and bad decisions, and make seduction feel like a conversation they had been having for years.

“You’re real confident for somebody who’s supposed to be my ex,” Odessa said, though her voice had dropped, and both of them heard it.

Jaafar’s smile deepened.

“There you go using that word again.”

“Ex?”

“Mmhm.”

“That’s what you are.”

His hand left her waist only to move slowly, lazily, to the counter on the other side of her, caging her in without ever making it feel like a trap, his forearms bracketing her body while his chest stayed warm against her back, while his breath touched the side of her neck like a promise he had not yet decided to keep.

“Baby,” he said, and the word slid through her so cleanly her eyes almost closed again, “I’m Jalen’s daddy, I got a key to your house, I know where you keep the extra foil, your son sleeps better when I tuck him in, you still buy my cereal even though you don’t eat it, and you just cancelled dinner with a man whose name I already forgot because I looked at you too long.”

Odessa swallowed.

He tilted his head slightly, his cheek nearly brushing hers.

“Call it what you want.”

Her heart struck once, hard.

“You are so full of yourself.”

“Nah,” he murmured. “I’m full of memory.”

That landed so deeply she hated him for it.

Because memory was exactly what stood between them, not just the sweet kind, not just the pretty things dipped in gold and kept in the safer rooms of the mind, but the kind with teeth, the kind that remembered arguments and slammed doors and tears wiped quickly before the other person could see them, the kind that remembered the day they called it quits and still somehow ended up on the phone that same night because Jalen had a cough and Odessa knew Jaafar would want to know.

Memory had ruined the shape of goodbye.

Memory had kept his key on her ring.

Memory had bought his cereal.

Memory had made her dress up for Malcolm Greyson with the secret, wicked hope that Jaafar might suffer a little.

And Jaafar, infuriatingly, had noticed all of it.

“You think because you know me, you can just come back in here and talk your way into whatever you want?” she asked.

His voice softened, but the confidence did not leave it; if anything, it settled deeper, quieter, more dangerous.

“No,” he said. “I think because I know you, I know when you’re done running.”

Odessa’s breath caught.

Outside the kitchen, the whole house had gone still, Jalen asleep down the hall, the world beyond the windows dark and indifferent, and suddenly the room felt less like a kitchen and more like some secret chamber beneath the earth where Persephone stood with pomegranate juice on her lips, pretending she had been stolen when some part of her had reached for the fruit herself.

She turned fully then, because standing with her back to him had become impossible, because if she did not look at him she would drown in the sound of his voice, and Jaafar let her move only enough to face him, his arms still around her on either side, his body still close, his eyes dropping over her with that slow, devastating appreciation that made her remember exactly why she had once forgotten every sensible thing her mother had ever taught her.

Odessa lifted her chin.

It was self-defence.

They both knew it.

“I’m not running.”

Jaafar looked down at her with a tenderness that made the arrogance worse, because he did not look like a man trying to win an argument anymore, he looked like a man looking at something he had already chosen and had simply been waiting for the right moment to say so.

“You went and made plans with somebody else on family dinner night,” he said. “You were running in heels.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“You liked the heels.”

His gaze dipped to them and climbed back up, slow enough to be disrespectful and reverent at the same time.

“I loved the heels.”

“Jaafar.”

“I love the dress too,” he added, because apparently he had no interest in survival. “I love the way you did your hair. I love that little attitude you had when I walked in and caught you trying to leave. I love that you thought I was going to sit at that table with our son and eat your lasagna while you let some man look at you across a restaurant like he had even earned the right to know what you sound like when you laugh for real.”

Odessa’s mouth parted, but no words came out.

Jaafar leaned closer, his voice dropping into the space between them.

“And I love that you came back home before you even left.”

Her chest rose against his.

“You are impossible.”

“I’m honest.”

“You are arrogant.”

“I’m sure.”

“Of yourself?”

His smile was slow, almost sinful.

“Of you.”

That was worse.

That was so much worse than if he had said yes, because Jaafar had always known how to make confidence sound like devotion, how to take his own certainty and lay it at her feet until it felt less like ego and more like faith.

Odessa looked away, but he followed the movement with his eyes, patient, hungry, not rushing, not pouncing, because he knew, damn him, he knew the rhythm of her too well, knew that if he pushed too hard she would bite just to prove she still had teeth, knew that what undid Odessa was not pressure but inevitability.

“You don’t get to decide I’m yours again because you got jealous,” she said.

“I didn’t decide tonight.”

Her eyes flicked back to his.

Jaafar’s face had gone serious now, the playfulness still there at the edges but no longer leading, no longer shielding him.

“I been deciding,” he said. “Every family dinner. Every school run. Every time Jalen asks why I don’t stay over and you look at me like you want me to answer wrong. Every time I leave this house and sit in my car for ten minutes before I drive off because walking out feels stupid.”

Odessa went still.

The words came quietly, but they struck hard, one after the other, arrows from Apollo’s golden bow, bright and impossible to dodge.

“I been deciding when you call me because he has a fever and you try to sound calm but I can hear you scared,” Jaafar continued, his gaze searching hers now, not slick, not teasing, just open in a way that made her want to turn away and step closer at the same time. “I been deciding when you fall asleep on the couch after he goes down and I cover you with that ugly blanket you swear is cute.”

“It is cute,” she whispered automatically.

“It’s hideous.”

“It is not.”

“It looks like something Athena made while she was mad at fabric.”

Despite herself, despite the pressure in her chest and the heat still blooming between them, Odessa laughed, one soft, unwilling sound that broke from her like light through a cracked door.

Jaafar smiled immediately.

“There she is.”

The tenderness in it almost ruined her.

She pressed her lips together and looked at his chest instead of his face, because looking at his face was how women in myths got turned into statues or stars or cautionary tales, and Odessa had no interest in becoming a lesson sung by poets who did not have to deal with the consequences.

“You can’t just say things like that,” she murmured.

“I can if they’re true.”

“And what do you want me to do with it?”

Jaafar’s hand lifted slowly, giving her every chance to move away, and when she did not, his fingers brushed beneath her chin, not forcing her face up, only asking, only reminding, only touching with the kind of confidence that said he already knew her answer but respected her too much to take it without hearing it.

“Look at me.”

Odessa hated that she did.

Hated that her chin lifted into his hand like it remembered him.

Jaafar’s eyes softened.

“I want my woman back.”

The sentence sat between them, simple and devastating.

No metaphor.

No trick.

No shield.

Odessa felt it in her knees.

She felt it in the place behind her ribs where she kept the things she did not have language for.

She felt it in every version of herself that had ever loved him, from the reckless young woman who had once let him kiss her against a door like the world was ending, to the exhausted new mother who had placed Jalen in his arms and watched Jaafar cry so quietly she pretended not to notice.

“You don’t get to say that like it’s easy,” she said, but her voice trembled just enough to betray her.

Jaafar’s thumb brushed once along her chin, barely there.

“I didn’t say easy.”

“You said it like you already know you’re getting what you want.”

His mouth curved, that confidence returning in a slow, wicked flicker.

“Because I remember how I got it the first time.”

Odessa’s eyes widened.

“Jaafar.”

“What?”

“Do not.”

“I ain’t even said nothing.”

“You said enough.”

“I said I remember,” he murmured, leaning closer until his breath warmed the corner of her mouth. “You remember too.”

Odessa did.

God help her, she did.

She remembered too much.

She remembered the first time his confidence had crossed the line from charming to catastrophic, the night that had eventually become Jalen, the night she had sworn she was only going to stop by for an hour because Jaafar had asked her to listen to something he had been working on, and she had shown up in leggings and a cropped sweatshirt with her hair tied up, already suspicious because his voice on the phone had been too smooth, too pleased, too “come over when you get a chance” in that way that meant he had plans but wanted her to believe she had made them.

She remembered him opening the door before she knocked, leaning against the frame like Hermes himself had brought him bad intentions wrapped in a pretty face, his chain catching the low light, his smile slow as summer honey, his eyes dropping over her once before he said, “You came quick,” and she, foolish, doomed thing that she was, had rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t start,” as if he had not already started from the moment he picked up the phone.

She remembered the music playing low, remembered him pretending to care about her opinion on the track when really he had spent the entire time watching her mouth form words, remembered how he had sat beside her on the couch close enough that their knees touched, his arm stretched along the back cushions like it had nowhere else to go, his fingers occasionally grazing the ends of her hair until she snapped, “Are you listening or are you just looking at me?” and he answered, calm as prophecy, “Both.”

She remembered laughing because he was ridiculous.

She remembered him smiling because he knew she was weakening.

She remembered telling him he thought he was slick, and him saying, “I don’t think, baby,” in that low voice of his, “I know.”

That was how it happened.

Not all at once.

Never all at once with Jaafar.

It had been a slow siege, a Trojan horse rolled right up to the gates of her common sense, all pretty words and patient hands and that infuriating certainty that made her feel chosen before she had even surrendered, and by the time she realised the city was burning, she had already been kissing him like she had lit the match herself.

“You talked too much then too,” Odessa said, dragged back to the present by the heat of him in front of her.

Jaafar’s grin spread.

“And it worked.”

“It did not work.”

“Jalen is four.”

Odessa gasped, slapping a hand lightly against his chest before she could stop herself, and Jaafar caught her wrist against him, laughing under his breath, his eyes bright with triumph and memory.

“You are so nasty.”

“I’m factual.”

“You are not factual.”

“I am looking at living proof,” he said, nodding down the hall toward their son’s room with a smile so smug and so fond that Odessa wanted to both hit him again and kiss the arrogance off his mouth. “Little man came out with my whole face because even the universe knew I put in work.”

Her mouth dropped open.

“Jaafar Jackson.”

“What?” he asked, innocent as a god standing in the ruins of a city he absolutely destroyed. “You said show your sources. I got one asleep down the hall.”

Odessa stared at him for one long second before laughter broke from her, startled and helpless, and Jaafar’s expression changed the moment he heard it, softened with pleasure so open it made her chest ache.

That was another problem.

He loved making her laugh.

He always had.

Even when they were fighting, even when they were hurting, Jaafar had always looked at her laugh like it was something he had earned from the gods, something more valuable than gold, more dangerous than fire, more necessary than breath.

“You think you’re funny,” she said, trying to recover.

“I think you’re laughing.”

“I’m laughing because you’re insane.”

“Long as you’re laughing with me.”

There it was again.

The turn.

The way he could take a joke and make it mean something before she was ready.

Odessa’s smile faded slowly.

His hand still held her wrist against his chest, and beneath her palm she could feel the steady beat of him, warm and real and too familiar.

“You hurt me,” she said quietly.

Jaafar’s face changed at once.

No slickness.

No grin.

No defence.

“I know.”

The answer was too immediate to be rehearsed, too heavy to be easy.

Odessa looked at him, and for a moment the whole kitchen shifted, the flirtation settling into something deeper, something with roots, something that had been waiting underneath all the heat like the bones of an old temple buried beneath flowers.

“You don’t get to flirt your way past that,” she whispered.

Jaafar nodded once.

“I know.”

“And you don’t get to touch me like this and say you want me back like the hard part is over.”

“I know that too.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” he said, and the certainty in his voice was not arrogance now, but commitment, solid and quiet as stone beneath a river. “I know I gotta earn you again.”

Her throat tightened.

Jaafar took a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer.

“But I’m not about to stand here and pretend I don’t want to.”

Odessa’s eyes burned before she could stop them, and she hated that, hated that she could be standing in a dress meant for another man, in the kitchen she had built for herself and her son, with her ex pressed close enough to ruin her breathing, and still feel like the truest thing in the room was the ache in Jaafar’s voice.

“I want to take you out,” he said. “I want to pick you up from your own house like I don’t still have a key. I want to sit across from you somewhere nice and watch you pretend you don’t like when I stare. I want to bring you flowers even though you’re gonna say they’re excessive and then put them in the middle of your table anyway. I want to argue about nothing on the drive home because you think I drive too smooth when I’m showing off.”

“You do drive too smooth when you’re showing off.”

He smiled.

“I want to come back here and kiss Jalen goodnight if he’s still up, and if he’s not, I want to stand in this kitchen with you and not have to act like touching your waist is a mistake.”

Odessa’s breath shuddered.

Jaafar leaned in slightly, his forehead almost touching hers.

“I want Sundays. I want mornings. I want the ugly blanket and the cereal and your attitude when I load the dishwasher wrong on purpose just so you’ll fuss at me.”

“You load it wrong on purpose?”

“Sometimes.”

“Jaafar.”

“I like when you fuss.”

“You are sick.”

“I’m in love.”

The words knocked the breath clean out of her.

Odessa went silent.

Jaafar did not rush to fill it, did not laugh, did not soften the blow with a joke, though she could see the effort it cost him because his confidence was not gone, exactly, but it had bent its head to the truth, had taken off its crown and stood bare before her.

“I’m in love with you,” he said again, quieter this time. “Still. Been. Ain’t stopped. Tried to be mature about it, tried to tell myself being close was enough because we got Jalen and I didn’t want to mess up what was working for him, but then I walked in tonight and saw you dressed like that for somebody else, and something in me said stop playing before you watch another man take your place because you were too proud to say you wanted it.”

Odessa blinked fast, pride clawing hard at her softness.

“You don’t even know Malcolm.”

“I don’t need to.”

“He could be nice.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“He could be good for me.”

Jaafar’s eyes held hers, steady and unflinching.

“He could be good,” he said. “He can’t be me.”

Odessa’s lips parted.

There it was.

That confidence again.

Not loud.

Not cruel.

Just absolute.

The same confidence that had gotten her pregnant in the first place, not because it overwhelmed her, not because it robbed her of choice, but because it made choosing him feel inevitable, like stepping into a river she already knew would carry her, like reaching for a pomegranate seed with her eyes wide open and pretending she had not wanted the underworld to bloom.

“You are so sure,” she whispered.

Jaafar lifted her wrist and pressed a kiss to the inside of it, soft enough to be reverent, lingering enough to be dangerous.

“I’m sure of what I feel,” he said against her skin. “I’m sure of what we are when we stop lying. I’m sure of the way you look at me when you forget to be mad.”

Odessa’s eyes fluttered despite herself.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed.

His smile returned, smaller this time, smug but tender, wicked but warm.

“And I’m sure,” he added, voice dropping, “that if I kissed you right now, you’d kiss me back.”

The kitchen tilted.

Odessa’s pulse thundered beneath his mouth.

“You don’t know that.”

Jaafar lifted his head.

Those hooded eyes found hers.

“No?” he asked.

“No.”

His gaze dropped to her lips.

“Then tell me not to.”

Odessa’s breath caught.

The silence stretched.

Not empty.

Full.

Full of the water cooling in the sink, the dishes drying in the rack, their son sleeping down the hall with his father’s face and his mother’s stubbornness, the wine unopened on the counter, the packet of Starbursts abandoned near Jalen’s place at the table, the whole evening gathered around them like the gods had taken their seats and gone quiet.

Odessa should have said no.

She had every reason to.

Pride.

Fear.

Memory.

Hurt.

Malcolm Greyson, poor man, somewhere in the world thinking he had merely been rescheduled, unaware that he had briefly been cast as a mortal obstacle in a myth that had begun long before him and would not remember his name by morning.

Odessa should have said no.

Instead, she whispered, “You are so annoying.”

Jaafar smiled like victory had just entered the room wearing her voice.

“That ain’t no.”

“Don’t be smug.”

“I’m trying.”

“You’re failing.”

“I know.”

And then he kissed her.

Not rushed, not rough, not the greedy kind of kiss a man used when he was trying to prove possession, but slow, confident, certain, the kind of kiss that arrived like an answer both of them had been pretending not to know, his hand sliding from her wrist to her waist while the other came up to cradle the side of her face with a tenderness so familiar it hurt more than the heat did.

Odessa meant to hold herself still.

She really did.

For one proud, useless second, she stood there with her hands hovering between them as if she might still choose dignity, as if dignity had ever survived Jaafar’s mouth.

Then he tilted his head, deepened the kiss by the smallest degree, and she folded.

Not dramatically.

Not weakly.

Just honestly.

Her hand curled into his shirt, her body leaning into his, and Jaafar made a low sound against her mouth like he had been holding his breath for months and had finally found air again.

That sound almost ruined her.

Because it was not smug.

It was relief.

It was want.

It was a man coming home to something he had no right to call home yet, but intended to earn with both hands.

When he pulled back, it was barely enough to speak, his forehead resting near hers, his breath warm against her lips, his confidence shining through the softness in his eyes like sunlight through storm clouds.

“See?” he murmured.

Odessa’s eyes were still closed.

“Do not say something slick.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

“I was just gonna say,” he whispered, brushing his thumb along her cheek, “that’s how I got you the first time.”

Her eyes opened.

He grinned.

There he was.

Wicked.

Beautiful.

Absolutely unrepentant.

Odessa shoved at his chest, but Jaafar caught her close again before she could get far, laughing quietly as she glared up at him with swollen lips and offended pride.

“You are impossible,” she breathed.

“And you still kissed me.”

“You kissed me.”

“You kissed back.”

“I was startled.”

“For that long?”

“Jaafar.”

“Odessa.”

She hated him.

She loved him.

The tragedy of it was that both things had learned how to sit at the same table.

He looked down at her, grin softening, and suddenly his voice gentled again.

“Let me take you out tomorrow, just us.”

“You trying to be useful now?”

He glanced at her, eyes warm, mouth wicked.

“Baby, I’ve always been useful.”

She pointed at him.

“Do not start.”

Jaafar looked toward the hallway where their son slept, then back at her with a grin that was pure trouble dressed in tenderness.

“Too late,” he said. “I started four years ago.”

Venus let out a breathless exhale, soft and broken at the edges, as the low thrum of synths and bass from whatever playlist Jaafar had decided to put on rolled through the room like heat beneath the floorboards. Which artist it was, she could not have told you. Not right then. Not while her limbs felt syrupy and useless, not while her thoughts had gone soft and fogged-over, turning to static beneath the weight of him, beneath the scent of his skin, his cologne, his sweat, all of it filling her lungs until the rest of the world felt far away and unreal. Her ring — that pretty, damning little symbol of a life she had been moments from choosing — had somehow tangled in his dark curls, catching faintly in the low light, and the sight of it there, caught in him instead of sitting obediently on her finger, made something deep in her chest twist with a guilt so sharp it almost felt like desire.

The tattooed J on her hand disappeared and reappeared beneath the fall of his dark curls, the ink half-hidden against him as though even her skin had been telling the truth long before her mouth was brave enough to. Venus let out one more shuddering sigh, her fingers flexing almost helplessly, the curl of her ring catching briefly in his hair while her eyes fluttered shut. For a moment, all she could feel was him — the warmth of him, the weight of him, the terrible intimacy of knowing that even the smallest mark on her body had always seemed to point back to Jaafar.

“Baby, baby mmm,” she whined as she felt the familiar coil in her belly tighten, the sheet beneath her skin wet from their previous escapades… how long had it been, one hour…two? Maybe three, she didn’t know anymore, and she couldn’t find it in her to care any longer, not while his tongue flattened against her, sucking her clit into his mouth and his fingers curled just right; right into that spot he knew all too well. 

Before, she would’ve put a hand over her mouth in an attempt to muffle her moans, to maintain some sense of the dignity she knew he was sucking out of her; she would’ve tried harder to be Venus Taraji Hamilton, to keep the façade up just to say he hadn’t completely taken over all of her being, even though they both knew otherwise. 

Jaafar lifted his eyes slowly, his mouth still close enough to her skin that every word felt less spoken than breathed into her. The synths hummed low around them, bass rolling through the suite like a second heartbeat, and Venus could still feel the faint pull of her ring caught somewhere in his curls, her tattooed J brushing against him as though her body had been betraying her in ink long before she ever learned how to say his name without lying.

Venus let out a shaky laugh, but there was no strength in it. Her hand moved to his face, thumb smoothing over his eyebrow, then down the warm line of his cheek, touching him with a tenderness that made the room feel suddenly too quiet, too honest, too full of all the things they had spent years dressing up as timing, age, friendship, and common sense.

“You love me, baby?” he asked, and there it was again — that confidence, that impossible, arrogant softness, like he already knew the answer but wanted the pleasure of hearing her surrender it.

Venus swallowed, her eyes glossy as she looked down at him.

“Jaafar…”

“No.” His hand slid over her hip, firm and slow, holding her there like he had no intention of letting her run from the question. “Don’t ‘Jaafar’ me. Not tonight.”

Her lips parted.

He smiled faintly, dark curls brushing against her fingers. “Dilo.” Say it.

Venus’s breath hitched.

“Te amo,” she whispered. I love you.

Jaafar went still beneath her hand.

For all his ego, for all his mouth, for all that golden, god-touched confidence he carried like Apollo dragging daylight behind him, those two words did something to him. They stripped him down to the boy who had loved her too young and the man who had waited too long, left him staring up at her like he had finally heard the prophecy in full.

Venus touched his face again, softer this time.

“Te amo, Jaafar.” I love you, Jaafar.

His eyes darkened, not with triumph alone, but with something deeper, something almost wounded by the sweetness of being right after years of starving for it.

“Again,” he murmured.

Venus gave him a breathless, disbelieving smile. “You’re so greedy.”

“For you?” His mouth curved. “Always.”

Her smile trembled.

“I love you,” she said, switching back to English like the truth had become too large for one language. “I love you, Jaafar.”

He exhaled slowly, his fingers tightening against her hip, and for once, Venus saw the confidence falter just enough to reveal the devotion beneath it.

He had been at it all morning.

All morning, Jaafar had woken with the kind of insatiable need that felt less like desire and more like devotion, the kind that pulled him from sleep with one thought already burning clean through him: Venus. His wife. His woman. His altar and his ruin. Everything else had fallen secondary before he could even pretend to care — the calls, the schedule, the world waiting beyond the walls of their room — all of it reduced to distant noise beneath the singular, consuming purpose of pleasing her.

There was something almost religious in it, something ancient and Roman, as if he were no longer merely a man but a soldier kneeling at the temple of Venus herself, offering his mouth, his hands, his patience, his breath, anything she would take from him. He wanted her undone and cherished, breathless and safe, spoiled beyond reason until the only thing she could remember was that she was loved by a man who had made her pleasure his empire and crowned her its goddess.

Because that was what she was to him now.

Not almost. Not someday. Not the woman he had chased through years of bad timing and pride and other people’s names.

His wife.

And Jaafar, arrogant as he had always been, loved that word with a dangerous sort of satisfaction. Wife. It sat in his chest like victory, like conquest, like a laurel wreath pressed into his hands by the gods themselves. It made him greedier. Softer. Worse. It made him want to spend entire mornings proving that the ring on her finger had not simply changed her name, but had given him permission to worship her out loud, without restraint, without shame, without the old ache of wondering whether she would run before he finished loving her properly.

Slowly, he descended back to his altar, pressing kisses down the soft plane of her stomach as if every inch of her deserved reverence before he dared return to the place where he had chosen to worship. His eyes flickered briefly toward the mirror across the room, catching the reflection of them there — Venus laid out beneath him, breathless and adored, and Jaafar bowed between her thighs with all the devotion of a man offering himself at the feet of his goddess. He wanted her to see it. Wanted her to witness the ruin and reverence on his face, the hunger, the patience, the absolute surrender he laid bare before her, because loving Venus had always felt like prayer, but being allowed to love his wife like this felt like religion.

He sucked on her clit, pulling it back before releasing; then he moved down to her pussy, running the tip of his tongue through the edges of her lower lips. Her back arched off the bed as she shut her eyes, and the sounds of her ecstasy resonated through the room, the finest harmony Jaafar’s ever heard in his life. 

“Such a pretty pussy,” he whispers to himself as he adds two fingers and eats at her at the same time. As she shut her eyes, with every deep moan her chest rose, gasps resonating through the space, and yet it still wasn’t enough air in her lungs as the coil wound tighter and tighter, her belly clenching as she finally released for the umpteenth time that day. She let out a squeal as she felt him go in for more, shuffling away on the bed, managing to make it a few inches away before he pulled her back in by her hips, tossing her thighs over his shoulder as he dropped his briefs, revealing the thick throbbing girth Venus had taken time and time again. 

“I think you can do better, my love, matter of a fact, I know you can do better than that… show me.”

Venus shuddered as she felt the blunt head of him push into her, the gold of their rings clinking together as he intertwined their fingers. Venus’ eyes flickered to the mirror, watching as he pulled back slightly and pushed in further. She watched the bead of sweat drip down his hairline, the way his gaze never left her face as he watched her watch him. 

His other hand reached up to caress her cheek, bringing her gaze back to his as he brought their lips together, his tongue intertwining with hers as he began his slow, deep strokes into her, ensuring she felt how much he loved her. He watched the way his dick disappeared and reappeared into her, covered in her release, everytime he pulled out he was coated with more and more of her, creating a sticky mess between them as the wet sounds of flesh meeting flesh was heard through the room.

“You hear that?” Venus whispered

“You making her so happy baby, can you hear her?”

“Yeah? What’s she sayin’?”

“She wants you to feed her baby.”

Jaafar chuckled low against her skin as he nuzzled into the curve of her neck, his breath warm, his mouth lazy with satisfaction as he pressed a kiss to the bruise he had left there late the night before. The mark bloomed faintly beneath his lips, tender and possessive, a little secret written into her skin while the morning rays spilled gently through the curtains, bleeding gold across the sheets and cocooning them both in a warmth that made the rest of the world feel distant, unnecessary, and far too loud for the quiet devotion of their room.

“Yeah? You not gon’ run from it this time, my love? You gon’ take it?”

Venus nodded, nothing but whines and moans leaving her lips, and Jaafar gently wrapped his hand around her throat, pressing down firmly but gently. 

“Usa tus palabras, Venus.” “Use your words, Venus.”

“Yes, Jaafar, ‘m gon’ take it I swear,” Venus whined as she felt the familiar coil grow tighter and tighter in her lower belly before it finally snapped; she let out a loud whine of Jaafar’s name, one that would’ve had their neighbours banging the wall if they hadn’t moved last month. Without warning, Venus wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, pulling him down to her with a need that felt almost clumsy in its urgency. Jaafar caught her at once, chuckling softly against her mouth before the kiss deepened, their tongues meeting in that familiar rhythm they had always found too easily, that old, dangerous dance her body remembered even when her mind was too fogged and overwhelmed to keep up. She tried to match him, tried to give back the same slow confidence he poured into her, but all she managed was a soft, helpless whine against his lips, her fingers tightening at the nape of his neck as if he were the only thing keeping her anchored.

“You love this pussy baby?” Venus whispered against his lips, the question barely more than breath, soft and trembling where their mouths still touched.

Jaafar let out a low sound, somewhere between a hum and a groan, his hand tightening at her waist as his forehead rested against hers. “Mhm.”

Venus’s fingers slid into the curls at the nape of his neck, holding him there, keeping him close enough that there was nowhere for either of them to hide.

“Then show me,” Venus whispered.

And Jaafar did.

Not with haste, not with the careless hunger of a man trying only to take, but with the trembling devotion of someone who had spent years turning want into patience and patience into prayer. He held her like Rome itself could fall beyond the bedroom walls and he would not turn his head, like empires could burn, senators could weep, marble temples could split beneath thunder, and still the only kingdom worth saving would be the woman beneath him, breathing his name like it belonged in her mouth by divine right.

For a while, there was no room for anything else.

No ringing phones. No forgotten obligations. No world outside the curtains. Only the warmth of morning wrapped around them, the low music spilling through the room, the soft gold of daylight touching her skin, and Jaafar above her with his forehead pressed to hers, undone in that beautiful, dangerous way only Venus could make him. He looked less like a man then and more like Mars at the end of battle, not conquered, never conquered, but willingly disarmed at the altar of the goddess he loved most.

“Venus,” he breathed, and her name sounded like both warning and worship.

Her hands tightened at his back, her body arching into the vow of him, into the weight of everything they had survived to get here — the years, the running, the other people, the almosts, the ring she had once worn for another man, the red thread that had stretched and tangled and still refused to break.

Jaafar’s breath fractured.

His eyes found hers, dark and glossy with devotion, and for one suspended second he looked almost startled by the force of his own love, as if even he, arrogant as he was, had not expected to be brought this close to ruin by his wife.

Then he surrendered.

It was not loud. It was not crude. It was not something that could be reduced to the body alone. It moved through him like the Tiber swelling past its banks, like a temple flame catching wind, like every vow he had ever made in silence finally finding somewhere sacred to land. His mouth parted against hers, his grip tightening as though he needed to anchor himself to the earth, and Venus felt him give himself over completely — not as conquest, but as offering.

As promise.

As husband.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

They simply stayed there, breath tangled, foreheads touching, the room cocooned in gold around them. Venus opened her eyes slowly and found him already watching her, his face softened by something deeper than satisfaction, deeper than pride, deeper even than desire.

There was reverence there.

Awe.

The kind of love that looked almost painful to carry.

Jaafar brushed his thumb across her cheek, his voice rough when he finally spoke.

“You feel that?” he whispered. “That’s me loving you.”

Venus’s lips trembled.

And because there was nothing left to run from, she pulled him closer, kissed the breath from his mouth, and let the morning close over them like a blessing from the gods.

As a child, the world was her oyster. It was easy to find ways to entertain herself. During the spring and summer, sticks were wooden poles, and the dirt was the foundation of her newest Barbie home.

In the winter seasons, the snow was nothing but a reminder that her ice castle was a few feet away in the backyard, with three round servants with carrot noses as her allegiance.

During the fall, she sat on the back porch sipping cinnamon lattes while a YouTube video with a tutorial for a crocheted blanket she was determined to utilize (she didn’t). 

But life came along. Boys. Fashion. Friends. College. Real life. A tidal wave of distractions drowned her, and the things that calmed her nervous system were nothing but forgotten memories in a locked treasure box in the depths of her mind. 

After divine realization hit her like a rock against a windshield, she decided to pivot. Social media applications are no longer stored on her phone. Morning walks instead of scrolling. Reading instead of reality television. And most recently? Cooking.

Learning to cater to her body for its longevity brought joy. Whether it be with a glass of sweet wine, she’d waltz around her kitchen with wine in the background, flipping through cookbooks she’d thrifted and browsing food blogs, or massaging her flesh with expensive body oil she stopped waiting for a special occasion to use. 

When she grew comfortable with the basics—side dishes, dicing techniques, wine pairings—she got the courage to do what many Black women had seemed to take an interest in—hosting. She was an introvert by nature, and the thought of presenting her home was daunting. Yet, after months of holding off, she hosted her first event to welcome spring.

It was what most would consider a success. Four guests who raved about the decor and the entree—creamy lemon chicken breast with sautéed mushrooms over a bed of garlic mushrooms with a side of roasted asparagus—paired with the finest moscato she could find in an Aldi grocery store. 

But now, months later, what she hoped to be a successful follow-up had seemingly fallen through the cracks. Lack of community bred insecurity of her ability. Had they lied to her? No. Schedule changes. Travel plans. Family emergencies. Valid excuses, reasonable for accommodation, but as she stared at the decor she’d hauled out of her storage closet, she felt defeated.

Her guest list had shrunk from eight to two, which included herself and one other person who confirmed their attendance immediately after receiving the invitation. With her guest count dropping like flies, she felt inclined to follow up. 

Sloan:

Hey. It seems the majority of the party is unavailable tomorrow. I don’t want you to come all this way for just you and me. I’ll let you know when the next dinner is. Sorry. 

She sighed heavily and slapped a hand over her face, thinking about having to dig through her storage closet again. 

J. Jackson:

I don’t mind. Unless you do. 

You were looking forward to it. Happy to be a guest, if you’ll still have me. 

And there it was. The kindness and consideration that never failed to make her heart leap and her soul dance. She’d never admit it to anyone else, but Jaafar had to be one of her top five favorite people on the planet. How did he manage to climb the ranks in just two years of friendship? She didn’t know. 

She waved her manicured thumb over the screen. Just as she prepared to type, he sent another message.

J. Jackson:

What do you need? 

She replied, You don’t have to worry about that.

J. Jackson:

I’m not worried. What do you need? 

Her thighs clenched. Her heart thumped. Her stomach flipped. He wanted to see her. Wanted to spend time with her—one-on-one in an intimate setting. Dinners in hole-in-the-wall restaurants in busy New York were one thing; they were often surrounded by others. This would be different. 

They’d be seated at her quaint dining table covered by a satin tablecloth she’s gotten during her last visit to New York. The candles would be strategically placed on the table, the flame bright enough to emphasize his brown eyes as he looked into hers. 

Would she feel his breath when he sighed, or would her foot bump against his under the table? Maybe he’d trail his finger along her forearm until the hairs on her skin were soldiers—standing at attention.

“Get a grip, Sloan,” she muttered, shaking her head as she stared at her phone, trying not to look too excited to say yes. 

Sloan:

Attached PDF — dinner grocery list 

Thank you. I owe you. 

J. Jackson:

;)

She hadn’t expected her pulse to quicken at the thought of him moving through her kitchen with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, quietly commanding the space…or the slew of groceries at her step the next morning. Brown bags everywhere—stuff on her list and then some. Including a bouquet of red roses with a note attached to the top. 

J. Jackson:

I hope you still like roses. See you tonight.

That was an admission she made a year ago under the influence of one too many lemon drops she gulped like water after an embarrassing breakup with a man who couldn’t remember her favorite color. And yet, Jaafar, though not a lover, seemed to remember everything. 

She remembered the night he came to comfort her in the midnight hour. When the liquor seemed to give her the comfort she desperately craved. When he sat next to her—tired from flying, still in his hoodie and sweatpants from the airport—and listened to her ramble drunkenly. 

“He couldn’t remember my favorite color. And then,” she groaned like she had a splitting headache. “He tried to apologize by sending me lilies. I’m allergic to lilies, Jaafar. What a fool.”

Jaafar hummed. She couldn’t tell if it was amusement or intrigue. Maybe both by the way his eyebrow quirked and the corner of his lip twitched. “Baby blue, right? And roses—I pay attention.” 

Reese. The nickname her mother bestowed upon her. An elongation of her name, Sloan, and an ode to her favorite candy. It was a nickname that wasn’t said by anyone else but the two of them—the most important people in her life. 

And roses. The flower she kept in almost every room of her humble abode—on the kitchen island, on the side table by the front door, and even in the bathroom. 

She never said it. But he saw it. 

Sloan tipped the martini glass back, and her head followed. She reached for the margarita shaker and refilled her glass generously. Jaafar’s eyes followed her manicured hands as they cuffed the shaker firmly. His tongue slid over his lips, and he lifted his eyes to meet her hooded ones. 

Sloan sighed heavily and pursed her lips. “And if you remember that, why couldn’t he?” 

Jaafar inhaled deeply and relaxed further into the couch, legs spreading and arm tossed behind her head. He turned to face her, eyes focused on everything she had to offer. 

From her raised edges due to her body temperature rising, red eyes from a dangerous concoction of liquor and tears, and her lips that were cracking from the intensity of the tequila she sipped like water out of a straw. 

“People remember what’s important to them, Sloan. You of all people should know that.”

Her throat went dry at the memory. She chalked it up to drunken babbling and buried it deep within the confines of her mind. Only now, after this gift, had she remembered that it even occurred.

He stayed with her that night. Peeled the stiletto heels she bought in college off her feet before she stumbled and collapsed against the floor. She remembered how gentle his touch was. His fingers. Her ankle. The quiet of the night.

And when she uttered those dreaded words, he held her hair while she gagged over the toilet, whispering sweet somethings into her ear. He wiped her makeup off. Kept his eyes on her face when she asked him to help her change, despite wanting nothing more than to prove his imagination wrong. 

He stayed in the guest room, wanting to be nearby in case she needed anything beyond the aspirin and large glass of water he had left on her nightstand. And when she stumbled out of bed toward the bathroom once more, he was by her side, eyes heavy and body exhausted, but no complaint. Jaafar had a track record of showing up for her, even in the most inconvenient times. The dinner was no different. 

She buried the memory to preserve her sanity. Because if she lingered on the way his fingers hooked around her ankle, or how he comforted her while she gagged over porcelain, she’d be forced to come to terms with the fact that she wanted him then, and she wanted him now. 

Sloan shook herself out of la-la land—her sweet escape—and grabbed the groceries. The bags crinkled in her grip. The potent smell of organic broccoli tickled her nostrils. She winced as the crisp morning air hit her cheek, but the neighborhood traffic carried the sound away. She stepped into her home, her coffee run long forgotten. 

The hours passed quickly. She set the last rose in the vase and stepped back to admire it. The primary centerpiece on a table set for two. A perfect contrast against the black of the satin tablecloth and the soft gold of the flatware. 

Her heart thumped in rhythm with the soft melody playing in the background. The sun dipped below the horizon, and every shadow seemed to wait for him. And then she heard it—a shuffle at the door. 

Her stomach flipped. He was here.

And he belonged in a magazine. On a billboard beside the most beautiful of models. Scratch that—he was the most beautiful. An Apollo-esque beauty no other man or god could attain. A deity made flesh, clothed in rich, black cotton, toed in suede boots, sprinkled in sultry French cologne she recognized by its woodsy notes. 

He was here.

Present and consuming despite not entering her realm. The crinkle of flowers intentionally wrapped in brown paper (her preference)—petals near bloom and blood red. 

A delicate smile found its way to her lips. It was practiced. She wanted to grin as wide as she did at 15 when she had gotten her braces removed, and she was relieved of the horrific nickname, Metal Mouth—traumatizing. 

“More flowers?” Sloan questioned. 

He shrugged. “Didn’t have any in the bathroom.” 

Sloan paused. He noticed. He did something based on a recognized pattern and never asked for permission. Always acted. Then, the 15-year-old grin resurfaced like baby photos her mother posted on her birthday every year—inevitable and borderline embarrassing, but Jaafar welcomed it like she beamed sunrays. “You’re crazy,” she murmured, nose crinkling as she inhaled the budding flowers. She thanked him and accepted his flattery with grace. 

“Smells good,” he complimented once he entered her home—her sanctuary. Sloan hummed her appreciation, the contralto of her voice blending with rhythm and blues’ most soothing melodies. 

His eyes followed each fraction of light that bounded off the art and familiar artifacts in her museum-like home. Victorian era-esque portraits of Black men and women in white dresses like angels, military uniforms like generals, and the most scandalous lingerie like the enticing creations they were. Black excellence. Black beauty. 

His eyes fell to the glass dish on the side table on top of a stack of pre-loved books from thrift stores and years of hoarding literature from her younger years—Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, the Birds of Opulence, Head Off and Split. Stunning novels and African Appalachian poems on display. Candy, she’d dubbed “the type you’d find in your granny’s purse,” stared at him tauntingly. Red cinnamon disks—his favorite. 

His rustling in the candy dish drew a boisterous laugh from her. Sloan turned the corner with the flowers in a thrifted vase. “I  knew there was a reason my gut told me to refill the candy. Excuse me.” The skirt of her dress—that satin slip dress he was convinced she wore for him—brushed against his hand. His fingers clenched, and the candy wrapper between his lips was no longer the priority.

He tucked it in his pocket and decided the hypnotic sway of her hips would fulfill his sweet tooth. For now. 

Jaafar’s footsteps were heavy as he inched toward the kitchen. It was pristine. Freshly cleaned. Lavender and hints of lemon-scented bleach danced beneath his nostrils, coupled with the unmistakable aroma of perfectly sautéed mushrooms. He nearly purred. 

Over his shoulder, he saw the intimate setup in the dining nook. The usual mahogany dining table had been pushed aside. An understudy took its place. Smaller. Not as strong, but intentionally closed in black linens and accessorized with gold and ivory. Gorgeous. 

“Oh,” Sloan gaped as she shuffled into the dining nook. “Dinner should be ready in a second. Wine?”

Her eyes cut toward the two large wine glasses beside the gold flatware she’d purchased in Italy. Jaafar’s fingers held the stems firmly, and he followed her path. He fought like hell to keep his eyes on the stainless steel handle of her fridge as she bent over to retrieve a chilled bottle of half-drunken wine from the deepest crevice of her overly filled fridge. 

“Is red okay?” She asked, though more to herself than him. She fisted the bottle's neck firmly, her blood-red nails a stark contrast to the deep green of the bottle. 

Ménage à trois. How ironic. 

The air grew thicker than morning dew. Sloan poured the wine slowly. Her shoulders curled, and her knees trembled beneath a gaze that grew increasingly heavy. 

The glass tapped against her teeth as she took a long draw, her throat bobbing as she gulped. Brown irises found deep red. Slowly, teasingly, like it was testing him, a stray droplet that escaped her nude-painted lips, trailed down her chin. He caught it with his thumb and tongued it clean. Sloan’s chest heaved. His dark eyes remained on hers.

“Tastes good.”

Silence. 

Sloan gave the straightest smile she could muster, hoping her thoughts didn’t show on his face. What was he doing? Her teeth chattered as her lips twitched. Her brown eyes landed on a spot behind his head—a small chip from bumping into the wall after one too many lemon drops. He might have been there, now that she thought of it. Not the point, she told herself. 

She opened her mouth, but was interrupted by her phone buzzing along the island. The food was done. “Get settled. Hopefully, the food is as good as it smells.” It better be. 

As she stepped away, wine still in hand and hips moving with the brisk air of her apartment, he drank in every movement of her body until she turned the corner. 

Jaafar sat at the dining table, legs spread and back against the cushioned chair he was sure she’d thrifted at the mom-and-pop store a few blocks over. He rocked one, two, three times on the legs of the chair, then lowered it, positive the ghostly whisper was her scolding him for playing in the chair like a child. 

The setup was intimate. Beautifully so. Like a stage with a spotlight prepared for two lovers preparing for their scene. His fingertips circled the base of the candle holder—gold and slightly stained from use. He shook a piece of dry wax from his finger. The centerpiece was the star of the show—24 luscious red roses seated in a black, matte vase—the roses from yesterday. Jaafar chuckled lowly—a piece of him in the home of her. He liked it that way. 

“Okay,” Sloan sang as she balanced two plates in stuttering hands. “Tried a new recipe, so I hope it’s good.” She placed the plate in front of him, but his attention wasn’t on the spectacularly plated dish—it was on the shimmer from her body oil that had her skin glimmering like fresh water kissed by the sun. 

Jaafar hummed absentmindedly and toyed with the napkin beneath the polished flatware, eyes laser-focused on the young woman who began cutting into her dish. 

“I have no doubts,” he said after some time, loading his fork with the softest garlic mashed potatoes his taste buds had ever encountered. "How's the project?"

Sloan cleared her throat and tried her best to keep her esophagus from constricting around a piece of chicken that hadn't gone down properly. "Project?" She reached for her wine and took a small sip. 

Jaafar raised an eyebrow. "The one at work? The curation?" Sloan’s eyes blew wider than the sky—shock. What did she think of him? That he was a man who let all the words that her voice graced flow from one ear out the other. He’d never take advantage of her presence. 

Sloan’s teeth bit at the rim of the glass. “It’s going.” Her voice was muffled. “My boss threw more money my way, which is a plus. Assigned two assistants who actually have a background in history or art history—another plus. But, we’ve got a long way to go.”

A world-renowned museum curator, she was. Rooted in authenticity, transparency, and ancestral empowerment. The largest names in the circles of history, art, and archival science sought her out. A brilliant mind shelled by warmth clothed in silk and robed in grace. 

Jaafar’s low hum opened a can of worms he hoped she wouldn’t try to reseal. Soon, she flailed her arms wildly as she vented about the poor experience she had with the customer service staff who failed to recognize her as the curator. 

“It wasn’t that I thought I was special,” she huffed. “We deserve to be recognized as leaders in these spaces, too, you know? Not knocked down a couple of pegs due to perpetuation of harmful stereotypes that’ve been forced on us for how long—since the beginning of time? Please…”

She rambled on about the intersectionality of Black representation in the archival space, her voice sliding up and down a scale of inflection as the fork twitched in her palm from her hold. Jaafar sat straighter, eyes narrowing, ears open to the rant, underlying message in it all—I deserve to be appreciated. And she did, gosh, she did. She deserved nothing less. Nothing less than being erected as something pure, holy, and divine before the nations.

“—and then,” Sloan emphasized, trading her fork for the wine that caught her attention. “Had the nerve to say you should be grateful. Grateful? Grateful.” The wine ran down her throat like a warm drink. Jaafar’s eyes lingered on her throat, the way it bobbed slowly, the way her chest expanded subtly, as she swallowed. He was jealous. Of wine. Of liquid grapes and sugar. Of a substance that had the privilege of touching her insides like— “So, that’s how the project is going.”

His fingers gripped the stem of the glass. He took a sip—long and hearty. He’d need it. His eyes met hers over the rim, and he fought like hell to swallow the low sound in his throat. Especially when her leg slid off her knee, and her foot grazed his calf. Jaafar inhaled deeply, the noise muffled by the glass. He cleared his throat. “Intimidation makes people say crazy stuff. You’re not physically intimidating. You’re rooted, settled. That’ll throw anybody that’s not secure off their game. Just..keep doin’ what you’re doin’.”

Her rant slowed, softened by the wine and small bites of mashed potatoes. She spoke more slowly now, her words dragged out, and her volume dropped three notches, but not the passion behind it. Jaafar watched her over the rim of the glass, his leg dropping just slightly.

Then: “You know what your problem is?”

Sloan’s lips hovered over her fork. They closed over a piece of steak. She chewed slowly, swallowed, and cocked her head to the side. “Excuse me?” 

Jaafar’s mouth twitched. Just slightly. Not quite a smile. Not a straight face. “You keep explainin’ after you already made sense. What you already know makes sense.”

Sloan stilled. 

“You do this thing—“ his index finger circled the rim of the glass. “—where your voice gets higher when you start thinkin’ people misunderstood you.”

Her breath hitched. 

“Then your fork starts movin’ too much.” His eyes flickered briefly toward her hand. “And you start getting’ ready to apologize for bein’ upset before anybody even asks you to.”

Flustered. Caught. Exposed. 

Because he studied her. Laid her on the canvas of his mind and dissected her until revelation came like manna from heaven. Lovingly. Quietly. Sloan laughed softly, her nerve endings firing rapidly. “You analyze everybody like this?”

He leaned backward then, tailored fabric stretching over his thighs. Just enough for the leg of her chair to slot itself between hers, just enough for the instep of her foot to drag down his shin like temptation—slow, relaxed, devastatingly sure “No,” he answered. A breath. “Just you.”

Sloan’s shoulders straighten a fraction. In a way, he’d only been able to tell from years of studying the finest script imprinted beneath mahogany skin and written on bone. Her foot stilled. Fingers curled against the side of the chair. She stood slowly. “Right…”

Satin whispered against her ankles as she sauntered toward the kitchen counter. Jaafar tilted his head. Distracted. Or avoidant. Maybe both, he thought as she began dropping dishes into the sink and wiping imaginary crumbs from the counter onto the floor. He twisted his lips and stood, the candlelight bending toward his shadow as he moved toward her.

One step.

Two steps.

Three—

Sloan’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. Rose like heat and settled in her throat. He was close. So, so close. But he didn’t touch. Looked, gosh, did he look. At the soft waves in her freshly pressed hair, glimmering from her honey-scented shampoo and conditioner, at the way her pulse jumped beneath gold jewelry, at the crease of her dress as it rode up her thighs as she shifted on her feet. Not once did he touch.

“And then,” he dragged. “You get to cleaning what’s already clean.” The sponge hit the water with a soft sigh. Her nails tapped the edge of the skin again as she gripped it, knuckled white, and French tips blinking under ambient light.

“I do not,” she said lowly. So lowly that her words rode a tremble that did nothing to support the wall she sought to erect. Not when his praise swept the foundation from beneath her.

Jaafar hummed then, his eyes briefly moving around the room before dropping toward her crown of dark hair. The fullness that she ran her fingers through. He lowered himself a fraction, enough for the tip of his nose to meet the tip of her ear. Notes of something sweet—jasmine, orange, and vanilla musk—overwhelmed his senses. His eyes fluttered and he swallowed a groan. “You smell nice.”

Sloan relaxed. Shifted backward. Unknowingly, maybe. Purposefully, he couldn’t assume. Dark waves brushed against the skin uncovered by his shirt. His fingertips curled into his palms. She turned, just enough for the line of her jaw, her blood-stained lips, to come into view. “You do, too.”

Satin whispered against cotton as she turned. Her hips pressed against the edge of the counter. He remained still. Unphased. Unmoved. Her eyebrows softened, dropping as the corners of her eyes lowered. Who was he that she’d become so…internally undignified in his presence? Could it have been the underlying messages only his eyes spoke? Perhaps how he never reached, but somehow always took a piece of her and held it tightly. Maybe his soul had already become one with hers, and her mind hadn’t caught up.

Her chin dropped, and she smiled. A soft, gentle thing. Like she’d received a revelation she hadn’t fully believed yet. And maybe she didn’t. Or perhaps she did. The smoothness of her neck met his gaze as she stood straight once more. Decisively. She excused herself, her fingertips grazing his waist as she slid away.

Sloan paused in the doorway. She looked over her shoulder once. He was there—grounded, unmoving, fighting what he’d never said aloud. She bit her lip. “You comin’?”

His boots kissed the floor—one, two, three times. They were close. Back to chest. Her hand found his, lacing her fingers through his as she led him toward her bedroom, her sanctuary, away from the candles that bent their light in reverence, the wine that shed a tear of perspiration, and the food that’d been abandoned without remorse.

Because what happened once the bedroom door closed was the focus. She was the focus. Focus draped in the softest satin and the finest gold. She moved languidly, as if she had all the time in the world. And still, it wasn’t enough. Not enough to capture the art that’d left its post and stood before her, manifest as Sloan Matthews.

Jaafar leaned back, the crown of his head pressed against the headrest of the chair. One hand lingered lazily across his thigh, while the other settled beneath his chin, knuckles dragging beneath his clenched jaw.

Her heels slid off her foot—open toe and glimmering beneath the lamp’s low light—and hit the floor with a dense thud. Steady fingers moved toward the straps of her dress, hooking around the fabric. The left fell. The right slid. Jaafar sat up. “Nah. Slow.”

Slow. The clock ticked four times before the right strap fell. Light fabric whispered against the planes of her body. Dipping below the curve of her chest, sliding down her waist, and dropping past her hips. It pooled at her feet like seafoam, like the room had acknowledged the goddess wrapped in pearls. And a goddess, she was.

Sloan rolled her head to the side, fingertips clamoring as she stood there. Waiting. He was thinking. About what, she didn’t know. His eyebrows furrowed, then relaxed. His shoulders, strong and grounded, tensed along with his jaw. Restraint. A masterclass act.

But how long would restraint delay movement?

Sloan’s feet dragged against the carpet. She moved. Slowly. Closed the gap between them. His gaze remained on her face. Searching. Seeking. For consent, probably. For a sign of discomfort, absolutely.

And still, she entered his space. Slotted herself between his legs like she belonged there and smiled. Slow and purposeful. She trailed her index finger along his arm, watching as he leaned into her touch. “You’re so controlled.” He moved toward the edge of the chair without thinking, granting her access to his dark curls. He exhaled shakily as her palm rested on the nape of his neck, fingers carding through his hair. “So disciplined. Earnest.”

She cradled his jaw like the finest of China. Gently. Intentionally. Jaafar leaned into her wrist. She smiled again, her breath catching for a moment. She moved then, her thumb pressing the tension from his eyebrow. “Relax…”

The clock ticked. The lamp’s light fluttered. They exhaled together.

“Jaafar,” Sloan whispered. He lifted his eyes. “You can touch me, baby.”

Baby.

He responded the only way he knew how. Intentionally. Quietly. Never rushing. Never taking more than he was given. He started low—his thumb tracing the scar from a childhood surgery on her knee. Then her thighs, heavy from the strength needed to walk through the world. And her hips. Full of love with growth stitched like satin in the flesh. Sloan let out a sound. Something between a sigh and a cry, because it was intense. Being caressed with care, without the pressure of giving more than she was prepared to.

It was only then that he looked at her. Really looked at her. From the slope of her lips to the curve of her breasts, the piercing in her navel, and the softness of her thighs. He blinked once; his eyes glazed over with an emotion he’d not yet named. Reverence, maybe. Gratitude, honestly.

Jaafar rose a fraction. Enough for his mouth to meet hers. Sloan’s chest fell forward, a fall from grace to grace. She moved before thinking. Raised her leg until it curled around his hip. He welcomed it, reveled in it, as she pressed her body against his. An exchange of warmth—an eternal flame lit by two awaiting souls.

They broke away for a moment. Just one.

Sloan sighed, her thumb swiping the lipstick that’d stained his lips.

He turned his head. “Leave it.”

The corner of her mouth lifted. “Yeah?” He nodded, eyes blown wide with devotion. She mirrored his movement and claimed his lips again.

She didn’t let go of him when the kiss ended. Instead, she rested her forehead against his and breathed. One hand stayed curled at his jaw; the other slid down his arm, fingers finding his wrist.

“This chair,” she murmured, not quite a smile.

Jaafar exhaled softly. “Yeah.”

She stood first—slow, deliberate—and he followed instinctively, like her movement unlocked something in him. His hands stayed at her waist as they crossed the short distance to the bed, like he was afraid he’d lose her if he let go.

He barely made it to the bed before she was kissing him again, slower this time. Deeper. Like she finally understood the language he spoke. She pulled back just enough for her breath to ghost over his mouth. “Love you,” she murmured, still kissing him between words. “So much.” A pause. Her lips brushed against his again, and her thighs tightened around his hips. “You know that?”

It hit him at once.

The restraint. The waiting. The carefulness he’d worn like armor—all of it racked. His hand tightened at her waist, breath stuttering out of him like a prayer he hadn’t known he was holding.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I know.”

-

It wasn't like Michael was new to the environment, he and his brothers got their start from performing in strip clubs in the midwest, but none of them were as magical as this. In fact, unlike the clubs his father had booked him when he was the age of a kindergartener, this club didn't suffocate him at all, he didn't feel like he was unsafe, he felt free.

Quincy came up to his side as they waded deeper into the building, he grinned and leaned down to whisper in Michael's ear, "Still feelin' hesitant?"

Mike let out a breathy laugh, "Nah, m'feelin great, Q." He smiled bright, nodding at a group of ladies who eyed him up and down.

"Good, cause I got the best seats in this place." He nodded up to the second floor where he saw a small area blocked off. It sat in the center of the second floor balcony, providing a view of the entire club. The room was clothed in red velvet and silk in a variety of different oranges. There was the swankiest looking couch he had ever seen and a chair that was the shape of a literal hand. The table that sat in the middle looked like it was made out of disco ball fragments and fairy dust. There were large plumes of pink feathers that clung to a large floor lamp. It was the most overwhelming yet mesmerizing room he had ever laid his eyes on.

Quincy led Michael to the spiral stairs that led up to the second floor. Michael paused halfway up them, his body telling him there was something he was missing. He scanned the crowd below him, everyone had resumed all of their previous activities. He saw people dancing, people talking and laughing, people drinking, smoking. It was almost too vast to look at. But his eyes raked across the sea of people before being drawn like a magnet to her.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

You stood with your girlfriends against the back wall of the club. They were on their 5th round of whatever the drink of the night was. You think it's some sort of tequila based drink that was so sweet you couldn't even taste the alcohol. It wasn't really your style, no you opted for an espresso martini and whatever substance was in the small compact mirror in your hands. Maybe it was the dangerous mix of alcohol and drugs in your system but you felt a pair of eyes on you. Your eyes scanned the crowd as best you could.

One of your friends tapped your shoulder, pulling you away from your search. She held her drink in one hand, her other hand lingering on your shoulder, "You're up next, babe." She pointed to the elevated stage where the current DJ was wrapping up.

Excitement fills your body like a rush of adrenaline. You sniffled slightly and tucked the compact into your bra, thanking your friend and giving her a playful wink as you made your way to the stage. You fluffed up your hair, and smoothed out the tight little dress you had stepped into back at your apartment.

As you took your place behind the booth, getting things set up to your liking you felt the familiar return of the eyes from before. You ignored the feeling as you placed the headphones around your neck, you typically would have actually put them on your head, but you had spent forever fluffing up your hair and getting it to sit just right. Your hand held one side of the headphones up to your ear, your other hand quickly fiddling with certain dials and indicators. The table felt so good beneath your fingers, you could feel the energy slicing from the hundreds of wires into the soft pads of your fingers.

You queued up a few songs before the stare came back. It felt purposeful at this point, like whoever was staring at you wanted your attention, wanted to make you nervous. But it also felt thick, like this person was using all their energy to make you look at them. And shit, it was working. You glanced up from the mixer, eyes somehow knowing exactly where to look. They trailed straight up in front of you and into the VIP box in the balcony.

There he stood, dressed in fitted bell bottoms that hugged his thighs perfectly, and a long glittery flowing shirt that plunged almost all the way to the waistband of his pants. He leaned against the balcony, skin shining beautifully under the rainbow of colorful lights. His big brown doe eyes locked onto yours.

Either your incredibly intoxicated brain was pulling a prank on you, or Michael Jackson was staring straight into your soul like he had already conquered it.

With the way he was looking at you, it wouldn't be long until he did.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

Michael watched you move effortlessly through the crowd and up into the dj booth. His eyes raked over your body more times than he would like to admit. He wanted to commit your figure to memory, everything from your chunky gold heels to the bold turquoise makeup look that made you look less human and more siren. Oh you were absolutely poisonous.

He had been silently praying to God that you would look his way, that you would spare him even a single glance.