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"In Your Corner" Status: Finished (8 Chapters + Bonus Chapter) Chapters: One / Two / Three / Four / Five / Six / Seven / Eight / Bonus Era: Thriller Rating: PG-13, no smut Tags: slow burn, strangers to friends to lovers, romance, hurt/comfort, mutual pining, mutual admiration, angst with a happy ending, idiots in love, he fell first but she fell harder, fluff "For The Cameras" Status: Finished (16 Chapters) Chapters: One / Two / Three / Four / Five / Six / Seven / Eight / Nine / Ten / Eleven / Twelve / Thirteen / Fourteen / Fifteen / Sixteen Era: Thriller + Bad (Thrad) Rating: PG-13 with eventual smut Tags: fake / contract relationship, slow burn, strangers to friends to lovers, romance, hurt/comfort, not actually unrequited love, mutual pining, mutual admiration, angst with a happy ending, idiots in love, fluff "Cat Got Your Tongue?" Status: Finished (5 Chapters) Chapters: One / Two / Three / Four / Five Era: Off The Wall Rating: PG-13, no smut Tags: enemies to lovers, slow burn, supernatural, shapeshifting, angst with a happy ending, eventual fluff, idiots in love, fluff "sugar (oh, honey honey)" Status: On Hold (currently rewriting it) Chapters: One Era: HIStory Rating: PG-13 Tags: sugar daddy / sugar baby, slow burn, strangers to friends to lovers, romance, hurt/comfort, mutual pining, angst with a happy ending, eventual smut, idiots in love

Oneshots / Twoshots / Drabbles: Name: still Info: Michael Jackson x fem!Reader, 1989. best friends. sickfic and what comes after Read: Part 1: still water // Part 2: still here

Name: One Small Crash for EO, One Giant Miracle for a Princess Info: Captain EO!Michael Jackson x Princess of a distant planet!reader Read: Click here

Name: exhale Info: Michael Jackson x fem staff!Reader, Bad tour in Japan, 1987. you and michael share a cigarette. (cw: smoking) Read: Click here

Name: "my name is michael jackson. you stole my heart. prepare for kisses." Info: Michael Jackson x celebrity fem!Reader, 1991. established relationship. movie night. fluff. drabble. (tw: past abusive relationship) Read: Click here

Name: off script Info: Michael Jackson x fem!Reader, HIStory tour Prague, 1996. drabble. michael hurts you before the show, then apologizes the only way he knows how. Read: Click here

Name: One Day In Your Life Info: Michael Jackson x popstar!Reader. You cover his song. He falls in love. Read: Click here

A/N: This chapter has a lot of dialogue and is very heavy on words and explanations. I tend to write this way when I have confession scenes, I tried cutting some parts out, but when I re-read it afterwards, it just didn't feel like my own writing anymore, so I kept it the way it was. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I still hope you like this chapter even if the dialogue's a lot! ❤️

March 1981 You leave him sometime after three am, when you know he’s fallen asleep, because staying longer than that makes you feel guiltier than ever. You slip out through the window the way you always do and when you arrive at home, you curl up in your own bed with maybe two hours left before sunrise. You don't sleep for a single second. You lie there staring at the blanket with your whole body curled up tight, replaying what you saw during the night before. The sobs that tore out of his lungs painfully, I'm so stupid, I'm so stupid, the way his hand went heavy against your back only after he'd cried himself dry. You try closing your eyes but the sounds just get louder in the dark. By the time the sun comes up and turns you back into your own shape on top of the sheets, you haven't rested at all. You get up anyway because the sun doesn’t care what kind of night you had. You stand in front of the bathroom mirror doing your makeup with unsteady hands, and it takes you longer today because there are two dark crescents under your eyes that no amount of concealer will fully cover. And when you finally look at your own reflection straight on, what you feel isn't sympathy for yourself. It's disgust. You did this.

A few months ago you'd have looked at the same reflection and felt nothing at all, or worse, felt something like satisfaction. Telling yourself that you'd successfully kept a man at arm's length who deserved to be kept there. You wouldn't have cared that he cried himself sick on his own studio floor. Now the thought of him lying awake somewhere in Encino believing nobody loves him is the only thing in your head and it’s the reason you feel disgusted while looking at your own reflection. You go to work anyway. You have to. Somewhere during the walk to the office, the decision you made last night comes up stronger this time. You don’t allow talking yourself out of it anymore. Today. You will go to Hayvenhurst today, and you will tell him everything. You will let it happen close to sundown on purpose, so he can watch it happen to you with his own eyes instead of just hearing about it secondhand from a woman he might think is making it all up. It pains you just to think through what that means. Because there's no possibility where this goes safely. Watching it happen with his own eyes solves the believing part because nobody can argue with what's standing in front of them. But it doesn't solve anything else.

He still has to process that the cat he's held every night since December, the cat he told he loved, the cat he cried into just last night, was you the entire time. Hearing every word. Keeping every secret. Letting him believe he was alone in a room when he never once was. That's not a thing the transformation fixes… if anything, seeing it happen only makes the betrayal more real, more undeniable and more impossible to soften. There is no outcome where you only lose half of him. If this goes badly, you lose all of it, both halves forever. And you decide, sitting at your desk turning a pen over and over in your hands, that it's worth the risk anyway. Because the alternative is letting him keep believing what he believed last night, and you cannot survive being the reason that belief goes on existing for even one more day. He spent months giving you the truest version of himself he's ever given anyone, innocent and unguarded and completely undeserving of the painful rejection. You owe him the truth. All of it. You just need John to give you a reason to go. The afternoon gets long and John's door stays shut, no folder to deliver and no errand to run, and by four o'clock the small hope you had has transformed into panic. You've planned the whole day around you going to Hayvenhurst. You cannot let the day end without finding a reason to go. So at four-fifteen you knock on John’s door.

"Is there anything that needs to go out to Hayvenhurst today?" John looks up, surprised at the question. "Not that I know of. Why?" And then you say it. The lie you’ve prepared for him. "I think I left a document there yesterday. One of the drafts. I should go get it before it gets mixed in with anything of his." John waves a hand, already back in his paperwork. "Go ahead. You've been in early enough lately, take the time. Just don't lose anything important." "I won't." Within minutes you’re out the door and find a taxi. It should take forty minutes to Encino at this hour, you know this route with your eyes closed. Except today the traffic on the boulevard is complete chaos, brake lights stretching out ahead of you as far as you can see, and every minute the car doesn't move is a minute you’re losing. You watch the meter climb higher as the sun starts to decline over the rooftops. And finally, you make the only decision you can in that moment: you hand the driver more money than the ride cost and then you're out of the car and running before he can even say something back. You run the rest of the way to Hayvenhurst. It’s only a few blocks.

You are not waiting one more day for this. – When you reach the studio door you’re still out of breath, chest heaving and coat half off one shoulder from the run, but you don’t fix any of it before you knock. Your watch says half an hour. Maybe less by now. You don't think about the old lady, not even in passing. Her lesson doesn't cross your mind at all, the pride, the scales, the heart no voice can defend, none of it. You've stopped believing any of that can be undone a long time ago. You're not here to break anything. You're here because he cried into your fur last night believing nobody loved him, and you would rather lose absolutely everything than let him keep believing that. The door opens slowly. He looks terrible. Puffy-eyed and exhausted, the whole night still visible on his face. But he straightens the second he sees you, maybe an old reflex of composure kicking in even now, and his mouth actually falls open a little. He wasn't prepared for you to show up at his door. "I came to tell you something," you manage to say, and it comes out in pieces because there's no air left in you to say anything in whole sentences. "Are you okay?" He's already stepping aside to let you in, looking slightly worried. "You look–"

"I ran. There was traffic." You wave a hand. He doesn't understand, but he doesn't push either, he just watches you step past him into the studio, and you go straight to where you can see the window. The sky is a deep orange now. You have minutes left, not hours, and you know exactly how many minutes are left, because you’ve known every sunset for months now. You turn to face him. He looks so tired. You did that to him. "About yesterday," you start. "The way I left, I need to explain–" "You don't." He says it fast but gently, and it's exactly the wrong thing to say, because it makes your speech harder instead of easier. "You don't have to explain anything, okay? I've been thinking about it all night, and it wasn't fair of me to put that on you like that, out of nowhere. You don't owe me anything." His hands are moving in the air, his nerves kicking in. "If you don't feel the same way, that's… there's nothing anybody can do about that, feelings aren't something you can just… and I don't want things to get strange between us, because I know we'll still see each other, your job, and John, and I'd hate it if I made you uncomfortable coming here, so let's just forget I said anything, okay? It's fine. I promise it's fine. I've already forgotten it, I–" "Michael–"

"Because honestly it was probably a long time coming that I embarrassed myself like that, and I should've just kept it to myself–" You can see exactly what he's doing. He's filling the room with words because the alternative is silence, and silence right now would be unbearable for him, especially with whatever it is he thinks you’re about to say, so he's building a wall out of his own words instead. The window behind him has gone from orange to a deeper color. "Please stop talking." And he actually stops, mouth still slightly open with the next words he had been preparing to say, and for the first time since you walked in, he really looks at you. You take a breath. You don't have much time left, and what you have to say next matters more than anything you've ever said to him, so you make yourself slow down to say everything you’ve prepared. "I need to apologize to you," you say. "For everything. Not just yesterday… everything, from the very start." He opens his mouth. You shake your head, and he closes it again.

"I misjudged you the day we met. A year ago, at John's house… you said five words to me and went back to your conversation, and I decided in that exact second who you were. I decided you were arrogant and cold. That you looked down on people like me who were staff, because that's what I'd seen my whole life from people like you, or people I thought you were like, and I never once stopped to ask if I'd read it wrong. I was too proud. I've always been too proud, and I let that pride build a whole person out of a single exchange and then I punished you for months for being a person I invented." Your voice catches. You continue talking anyway. "I was cold to you when you tried to be kind. I refused your company, I ignored your music, I was rude to you in front of people so you'd feel small, and I knew what I was doing every single time, and I told myself you deserved it, and you never once deserved a single moment of it." A tear escapes your eye before you can stop it, rolling down your cheek fast, and you swipe at it with the back of your hand. "I called you a stranger once. Over a donut, in front of the whole office, after you saved me the last one. I have never been more ashamed of anything I've done to another person in my life. You are not a stranger. You have never been a stranger. You are the kindest, gentlest, most patient person I have ever known, and I looked directly at that for a year and called it arrogance because it was easier than admitting I was wrong."

You keep going even though your throat is burning up, because if you stop now you won't be able to start again. "You deserve so much better than what I gave you. You deserve the whole world, Michael. You never deserved to feel small by someone who never had the right to judge you in the first place." Another tear rolls down your cheek, and this time you don't bother wiping it away. "I am so sorry. I am so sorry for every single thing I ever said or did to hurt you, and I know sorry doesn't undo a year of it, but I need you to hear it anyway." Your voice starts shaking. "Please forgive me." You hang your head, unable to look into his eyes anymore, and the silence that follows feels unbearable. "I forgive you." The words come immediately without any hesitation at all, and when you look back up his eyes are shining too. His mouth is opening slightly like there's more he wants to say, but he closes it again, because he can see you're not finished and he waits. Another tear slips down at the sound of his forgiveness and something in your chest that's been tight for a year finally loosens. "Thank you," you say, and you mean it with everything you have. "And I need you to promise me something. Never let anyone treat you the way I treated you again. Not me, not your father, not anyone. You deserve nothing less than the best this world has to offer, and you need to know your own worth, Michael, so that nobody can ever again make you feel like less than that. Not for one more day of your life."

You take a deep breath. "It took me months to get past my own pride enough to say the word sorry to you. Months. And I finally said it, and I meant it, and I regret every single thing I ever did to make you feel unwanted around me." Outside the window, the orange sky has become darker, and you can feel the last of your time slipping through your fingers. But for one moment neither of you moves, because the apology and the forgiveness have both finally been spoken between you. You know you have only a few more minutes left. Not many. "I need you to know why I ran yesterday," you say. "You don't have to–" "Please. Let me talk." He closes his mouth and waits. You take a shaky breath. "It had nothing to do with you. I need you to understand that first, before anything else… it was never about how I feel. And it pains me more than you know that I made you believe otherwise. I've been racing time every single day I've spent with you. Every visit I cut short, every time I bolted for the door mid-sentence, every excuse I made… none of it was ever about wanting to leave you. I was running from something else."

You glance at the window again, then back at him. "What I'm about to tell you is going to sound insane. I need you to just wait, because in a few minutes you're going to see that it's true. When the sun goes down…" you trail off. "What happens?" His brow furrows in confusion. "I transform." Your voice is shaking. "Into Sunny." He stares at you. You watch him try to make sense of that sentence and failing, his forehead creasing deeper, his mouth opening and closing without being able to form any sentences. You keep going before he can try. You prepared this speech the entire day. "In December, after I dropped off paperwork here, I was walking back toward the main street to find a taxi, and I passed an old woman sitting on a bench a few blocks from here. She asked for change. I gave her some, and she offered to read my palm in exchange, and I let her, because I didn't think anything of it." Your hands have started shaking. You fold them together to stop it. "She told me I looked at people through the eyes of pride. That I'd spent my whole life assuming instead of asking whether I'd read someone wrong. And then she cursed me. She said I would learn what it means to have a heart no voice can defend. That by day I would walk as myself, and by night I would wear the shape of a creature that cannot speak. And that it would only break if someone came to know my heart beyond my face, and chose it still."

Michael doesn't say anything. He's just standing there, absolutely still, listening to every word, even though none of it is making any sense to him yet. You can see him not understanding and you can see him not stopping your speech either, because you're crying now, and whatever this is, it clearly matters to you, and that alone is enough to keep him listening. "Since that night, the moment the sun goes down, I become a cat. The moment it comes up, I'm human again. That's why I told John I have a sick grandmother, so nobody would ever expect me anywhere after dark. That's why I've watched the clock every single day since December, why I'm watching it right now." Your voice cracks. "I spent the first two months searching for that woman, trying to find her, trying to undo it. And one of those nights, my own legs took me here without my permission. I didn't decide to come to Hayvenhurst. I just ended up here, and I saw you in the garden, talking to the rabbits, and you found me, and you wrapped me in a blanket, and you named me Sunny." A broken laugh escapes you. "Which is the cruelest joke in the world. You named me after the very thing that runs my life." You stop and look up at him. His eyes are wide and unblinking, and he shakes his head slowly, like he’s trying to piece together all this new information.

You let out another quiet, broken laugh. "I know how this sounds. Believe me, I know. But it's the truth, and in a few minutes you won't have any choice but to believe it too." You continue, because there's no time left to wait for him to catch up. "Since that first night, I couldn't stop myself from coming back. Almost every night since December. And here's the part I need you to really hear… during the day, as myself, I was cruel to you. I was cold and rude, and I made you feel small on purpose more times than I can count. And then at night, as Sunny, I gave you everything I couldn't give you as a human, because my pride wouldn't let me be gentle with you in daylight, so I hoarded all of it for the dark instead. That was the only way I knew how to be affectionate with you without having to admit I was doing it." His breathing has gone shallow. You keep going anyway. "The night you told Sunny about the hospice, about the little girl who sang for you… I was there. I heard every word, and I cried with you, and I couldn't tell you a single thing back because I didn't have the words for it." You watch something shift behind his eyes, the memory surfacing in his mind. "The night your father came in and hurt me… I was there for that too. The bruise I told you I got from walking into a kitchen cabinet." You see it hit him this time, his whole face changing as the two memories collide into one. "It was the same bruise. I lied to you about where it came from because I didn't know how to tell you the truth."

"The candy," he says, barely audible, more to himself than to you. You nod. "I went to four stores to find it. Because I wanted to see you happy." "The smile." His voice is shaking now, disbelieving and believing at the same time. "You said… I told Sunny I wondered what your smile looked like, and the next day–" "The next day I smiled at you. Yes." He's shaking his head again, but slower now, as he connects the dots one by one. "Her eyes," he says. "I told her– I told you– you have her eyes." "You did." You see the realization of it all hit him like a truck as he almost stumbles. "I know how hard this has been to hear, and I know it's about to get harder to look at," you say, your voice going soft. "Living two lives at once nearly broke me. It made me short with everyone, unkind in ways I never used to be, and you always got the worst of it. Every time. You got the version of me that was starved and exhausted from carrying a secret I couldn't put down for even one hour, and it was never fair, and I am so sorry that the person who deserved my kindness most is the person I gave the least of it to."

"There's more," you say, and your voice is breaking apart now. "All those nights you told Sunny things, you told me things, Michael, real things, without ever knowing it was me. You never consented to that. You never had the chance to decide if I was someone you wanted to know that much about you, and I took it anyway, night after night, because you couldn't refuse an animal and I let you keep not refusing." A sob catches in your throat and you push through it. "I violated something I had no right to violate. I know that. I've known it for months and I kept coming back anyway, and I am so sorry, and I need you to know I understand exactly what I did, even as I'm asking you to forgive it." He doesn't move. He doesn't speak. He just watches you with his whole face open and vulnerable. "But all of it," you go on, "every single night, every secret you told a cat… it's how I learned who you actually are. Underneath everything I decided about you a year ago that was never true. It's how I found out you're gentle and funny, and so much kinder than anyone who's ever been treated the way you have still would be. And somewhere in all those nights, I–" You stop. You look straight at him. "I fell in love with you."

Michael goes very still. Whatever he expected you to say next, it wasn't this. His mouth opens slightly but no sound comes out, and his eyes search your face like he's checking for a joke because he’s not sure he can believe it yet. You watch the disbelief on his face transform into something softer, and for a moment he looks like he might say something because his lips are parted, and a breath catches in his throat, but nothing comes out. He just stands there, stunned into total silence, staring at you. "And that's why yesterday hurt so much to run from," you continue, because if you stop now you'll lose the nerve to finish. "Because when you finally said it to my face, all I wanted in the entire world was to say it back. I had it right there, I had you right there, and I had no time left, and there is nothing in this world that could have hurt me more than knowing you walked away from that moment believing you weren't loved. Not after I spent months learning exactly how loved you deserve to be." You wipe your face with the back of your hand, and more tears just come to replace the ones you clear away. "I'm sorry. For all of it. The entire year of cruelty, the months of taking without asking, letting you fall for two different people who turned out to be the exact same person and never telling you. I know sorry doesn't undo any of it. I'm asking anyway, because you deserve to hear it, and I need you to hear it before I…" You glance at your watch. You glance at the window.

"I'm still cursed," you say quietly. "That part doesn't change tonight. I thought about every possible outcome of this speech and I know there’s no version in which I don't lose you, in one way or another. But I need you to know something before all of this ends." Your voice wavers, and you let it as fresh tears pool in your eyes. "I'm glad it happened. All of it. The bench, the curse, the two lives… because it's the only reason I ever lost my pride long enough to see you clearly. To see the man you actually are instead of the one I decided you were in one afternoon. You deserve so much more than I ever gave you. I wouldn't trade that, even knowing how tonight ends." The window has gone almost black now. "In a minute, I'm going to turn," you say. "And I don't want it to happen without you hearing this first, so I'm going to say it as many times as I can before the time comes." You look straight at him. "I love you." Your voice cracks and you say it again anyway. "I love you." And a third time, quieter. "I love you."

He has unshed tears in his own eyes now, and he takes a step toward you, his hand lifting like he wants to reach for you, and you put your hand up to stop him. You wipe your face one more time with the back of your hand. "I love you," you say one last time, because it's true and because it will still be true in thirty seconds, in an hour, tomorrow, forever. And then you close your eyes, and you wait to become a creature with no voice. You count until ten. Nothing happens. You stand there with your eyes shut, every muscle braced for the lurch the way it’s happened every night for months. You wait for it. It doesn't come. A minute passes and still nothing, no jump, no shrinking, no loss of your own height. Two minutes. Three. The studio is quiet around you and somewhere outside a car goes by with its radio on, and you are still standing on two legs in the middle of the room with your eyes closed shut. You open them.

You look down first. At your hands and your fingers. Your own knuckles, your own ring, nothing small or furred. You look at the window, fully dark now, black behind the glass, the last rays of sun long gone. You look at your watch. Three minutes past today’s scheduled sundown. The one you checked twice on the ride over. "That's impossible…" Your voice comes out strange. "It's night. It's already night and I'm still–" You look at your hands again, as if they might have changed in the half-second you looked away. They haven't. You don't move for a long time after that. You're aware of Michael watching you and of him standing very still a few feet away, working through everything you just told him. But none of it really reaches you, because you're stuck on your own hands, on the watch, on the sundown that came and went and left you exactly as you were. "Hey." His quiet voice breaks whatever trance you've fallen into. You look up at him, and then back down at your own hands, and the full realization arrives at once: you didn't change, you're still you, still human and still standing here. And it hits you harder than the apology or confession did, and you start crying, unable to stop the sobs from tearing out of your lungs.

Your knees give away. You take one step toward him and they simply stop holding you up, and he catches you before you're falling, both arms coming around you fast. Still confused and completely lost, but holding you steady. "I've got you," he says against your hair. "I've got you, it's okay,” and you cry harder because you know that voice, it’s the voice he uses to talk to his rabbits, to stray cats, his 2am voice, and he’s using it for you in your human form for the first time. He walks you to the couch and lowers you onto it, and you sit there with your face in your hands still crying, still staring at your own fingers every time you look up as if they might turn into paws any moment. He doesn't say anything for a while. You can feel him beside you, and you know he needs the silence to make sense of everything you've just told him. When you finally calm down enough to speak, you look up at him. "I didn't turn." Your voice comes out small. "I don't know why. I don't know if it's broken, or if it's just… delayed, or if I did something wrong, and I know how that sounds, I know you have no reason to believe any of this without seeing it happen, but you have to believe me. Please." "I believe you."

You look at him, hopeful. "You told me things nobody could have known," he says quietly. "Not John and not even my mother. Things I only ever said out loud to a cat in an empty room at one in the morning. I don't know how any of this is possible, but I know you're not lying to me." He sits down beside you properly and turns to face you, and you don't wait for anything else. You close the last of the distance and wrap your arms around him tight, burying your face in his neck, crying again. He holds you through it, one hand moving slow over your back the exact way it used to when you had fur instead of skin. He waits until you've stopped shaking. Until your breathing evens out against his shoulder. Then he gently peels you back by the shoulders, just far enough to look at you, and takes a breath. "You attacked Joseph," he says slowly. "To protect me." "I couldn't watch him treat you like that." Your voice comes out rough, but steady. "I couldn't just sit there." "You comforted me. So many nights." He swallows. "Even last night."

"I couldn't bear the thought of you heartbroken because I had to run." You look at him directly now, because you need him to hear the next part. "But I need you to understand, I never ran from you. Not once. I ran from the sun. From time. That's all it was ever about." You press your hands flat against your knees to keep them from shaking. "I need you to know I love you with everything I have. It's the truest thing I've said in longer than I can remember, and I've said so many untrue things these past months, so many lies just to keep this whole double life standing. But not that. Never that. Whatever happens after tonight, whatever you decide about the rest of it, I need you to believe that one single thing. My love for you is real." Something in his face softens at that. And you keep going anyway, because you're not finished. "I'm sorry," you say again, looking straight into his eyes so he can see your sincerity. "For taking those moments with you as Sunny and keeping them all to myself. Every night you cried, every night you laughed, every secret… I hoarded all of it like something I was allowed to have, and I was never allowed. I knew that the whole time and I kept coming back anyway." He softens more at that, and shakes his head slowly. "I'm still–" He exhales, searching for the right words. "I don't know how any of this can be real. But I don't think you're lying. You know too much. I've connected pieces of this myself before you even said half of it out loud. And you never did anything with any of it that wasn't kind. You never used one thing I told a cat against me. Not once."

He shakes his head again. "I just don't know where we go from here. I don't know what to do with any of this." You think of the old lady's words, and say them out loud. "'Only when someone comes to know your heart beyond your face, and chooses it still, will you be free.'" Your voice is quiet, almost to yourself. "'You'll understand when your pride is gone.'" You sit with that for a second. "Maybe that's why I didn't turn tonight," you say slowly, working it out as you speak. "Maybe the pride part… maybe apologizing to you, genuinely apologizing, finally after a year of not being able to, maybe that's the part that broke the curse. That part makes sense." You frown, shaking your head faintly. "The other part, I don't… I don't know how that part would already be true. Someone choosing–" "Maybe I did that part." You look up at him. "I fell in love with you a long time before you stopped being cruel to me," he says quietly. "Months before any of the kindness started. I chose your heart before you ever let me see it, before the smile, before the candy, before any of it. I chose it beyond whatever face you put on for me, because some part of me always knew there was something gentle underneath, and I wanted that so much, even when all I got was the face."

He holds your gaze steadily. "I think I chose your heart over all of it a long time ago. I just didn't know that's what I was doing." Your eyes fill again, and this time it’s because of happiness. You press the back of your hand to your face. "What happens now?" you ask quietly, once you've caught your breath enough to form the question. "Can you ever…" Your voice is shaking. "Can you forgive me for–" "I already have." You look at him, surprised by how immediate his answer is. "I know I should feel… I don't know, betrayed, maybe. Angry. People would probably tell me I should be." He shakes his head slowly. "But I'm not. I'm confused, and I don't fully understand any of this yet, and I probably won't for a while. But betrayed isn't it. You came here tonight already knowing you'd turn into a cat in front of me. You didn't know if the curse would ever break. You didn't know if I'd believe you, or if I'd never want to see you again after tonight, and you came anyway, and told me everything anyway, with absolutely nothing guaranteed to you in return." His eyes hold yours steadily. "That's not something a person does to take advantage of somebody. That's someone risking everything they have left. And I think…" he pauses, as if something just clicked in his mind, "I think that's actually what broke it. Not just the apology. The fact that you were willing to lose everything, right here, tonight, and you did it anyway."

You think about his words for a moment. It fits somehow, better than anything else you've tried to make sense of tonight. You nod slowly. "That must be it," you say quietly. "You're probably right." You lay your hand over his on the couch cushion, the same as the other day, and this time neither of you hesitates. His palm turns up beneath yours immediately, a clear invitation for you, and your fingers find the spaces between his. You don't pull away this time. You don't glance at the clock. You don't even check the window. You just sit there in silence with your hands joined. "Does this mean," he says eventually, with a voice that’s a little unsteady but hopeful, "you can stay longer now?" "I have all the time in the world." And there’s so much relief in those words that you both can’t help but laugh out loud. Aftwards, neither of you moves for a while. You just sit there, hands joined on the couch cushion, and let the silence fill the room. There's nothing left to explain and nothing left to confess, there is genuinely nothing you're keeping from him. And the quiet that comes after all that is finally comfortable. At some point, he gets up and moves toward the kettle on the other side of the studio. You hear the familiar sounds of him preparing tea and something in your chest squeezes, because you recognize exactly what he's doing. It's the same ritual as before. The same two mugs, probably. He comes back a few minutes later and sets one in front of you carefully with both hands. "Just tea," he says, sitting back down beside you. "I don't really know what else to do with my hands right now." "Tea's good." You drink it in silence mostly. Every so often one of you says something small while his hand finds yours again on the cushion between sips, and you rest your head briefly against his shoulder.

You don’t talk about what you'll tell John, or how any of this will work going forward, or what the curse being broken actually means now. That can all wait. Tonight is just the tea and the quiet, and the fact that when you finally get up to leave, hours later than you ever have before, he walks you all the way to the gate and doesn't let go of your hand until the very last second. – April 1981 Michael comes to your apartment for the first time on a weekend, two weeks after everything went down, which feels weird somehow… months of you going to him, and now here he is, folded onto your small couch looking delighted by how ordinary everything is. He's found your thick law books within ten minutes. "What's this one?" He's got your old copy of Black's Law Dictionary open on his lap, thick as a phone book, clearly delighted with himself. "Res ipsa loquitur." "The thing speaks for itself." You don't even look up from the dishwasher. "Used when negligence can be inferred just from the fact that an accident happened. You don't need direct evidence, the circumstances make the case on their own." He flips a few pages, unimpressed that you got it right, determined to find something harder. "Okay. Estoppel." "When someone's barred from arguing something because their previous actions or statements contradict it." You slot a stack of plates into the cabinet. "You can't claim one thing in court after you've already acted like the opposite was true."

"That was fast." "I do this for a living, Michael." "Voir dire." "Jury selection. Literally 'to speak the truth'. It's when the lawyers question potential jurors before a trial." You close the dishwasher with your hip. "Are you just reading down the page now?" "Maybe." "You're going to run out of words eventually." "I have a whole dictionary, actually." "Stop," you say, laughing despite yourself, swatting at the book as you pass him. "I mean it, put it down." He does not put it down. If anything your protest makes it better, and he flips forward with real purpose now, hunting for something that'll finally stump you, while you finish the last of the kitchen and come around to drop onto the couch beside him. You're a little smug about your streak, you'll admit that privately. You've spent your whole adult life being tested by someone, and it's almost fun to be tested by someone who's delighted every time you pass. "One more," he says. "Laches." You open your mouth. Nothing comes immediately. You know this one, you know it, it's sitting right there at the tip of your tongue, but the exact wording isn’t there, and you sit there a moment too long, frowning.

"Um." You frown harder. "Give me a second, it's… I know this one." He watches you struggle for a genuinely long five seconds, visibly delighted by your frown, and then, entirely too pleased with himself he says: "You were so confident before. What's the matter now?" he says. "Cat got your tongue?" The room goes very still. You look at him. He looks at you, and you watch the exact second it takes for him to realize what just happened. His own mouth slightly open, his eyes going wide as the memory arrives… the office, the folder in your hands, the joke that had once cut your mood like a blade because it was so devastatingly true. "Oh, no," he says. "Oh, I didn't even think, I just–" "Michael." "I wasn't trying to… I swear I wasn't being–" "Michael." You're laughing now, and it startles him out of the apology he's already prepared. "It's okay. I can laugh about it now." He stops and uncertainly checks your face. "I mean it," you say. "It's funny. It's actually funny, now that it isn't true anymore."

You reach over and take his hand off the dictionary, turning it over, and press a slow kiss to the back of it, right over his knuckles. "You have no idea how close that phrase came to giving me away that time." His ears go pink instantly. You’re both quiet after that, but it’s an easy quiet instead of awkward, and eventually he sets the book aside entirely and just sits there, his thumb tracing absent circles against your palm. "I miss her," he says quietly after a while. "Is that strange to say to you?" "No." "I miss the way she'd just climb up, and put her nose right here." He touches his own jaw, "Against the stubble, like she was trying to get warm. And I could just pick her up whenever I wanted and carry her around like she weighed nothing." He shakes his head slightly, almost embarrassed by how much he misses her. "I know that's a strange thing to grieve. I got the actual version. I got you. But I miss the dumb little things too." You look at him with a soft expression, because you understand exactly what he's grieving. You've grieved pieces of it too. The ease of a body that could climb into someone's lap without a single thought behind it. "You know what hasn't changed, though," he adds, before you can say anything. "I can tell you things. All of it, the same way I told her. That part's still exactly the same. Actually it's better, because now you can tell me things back."

And it's true. In the weeks since, you've told him everything you never told anyone of yourself. Your father, the drama during your third semester, the grandmother lie you finally get to retire. He's told you things twice over now, the version he already gave Sunny and then the fuller version of it all that he gives you now. Nothing's actually gone. "I could do some of it," you say slowly, testing his reaction to the idea. "The dumb little things." He raises an eyebrow. "What?" "I could lay on you. Rub my face on your stubble." You keep your voice light and teasing, but you feel your own pulse get faster as you’re saying it. "I have the general skill set." He laughs, but you can sense the genuine interest underneath the laughing. "Go on, then," he says, leaning back against the arm of the couch, half-daring you, half-hoping. So you do. You climb over him carefully, one knee finding the cushion beside his hip, and settle down onto his chest without giving him your full weight, similar to the way Sunny would curl on top of him.

He goes still under you and his breath catches in his throat, and you tuck your face into the warm scratch of his jaw the way you did a hundred times in another body, nuzzling in and feeling him laugh softly at the familiarity of it. "This is insane," he murmurs, his hand coming up slowly to rest against your back. "This is completely insane, that you can just… do that now." "Are you complaining?" "Never." You lift your face just enough to look at him from above. You’re close, closer than you've been since the couch at Hayvenhurst, and you don't move the rest of the way. You just wait with your eyes asking the question your mouth doesn't need to. He answers by lifting his head those last few inches himself, closing the distance he's been waiting months to close, and pulls you the rest of the way down with him. The kiss is impossibly soft and tender, just an innocent press of lips, and when you finally part he doesn't let you go far, keeping one hand at the back of your neck, keeping you close enough that you can feel his next words right against your mouth. "Say you love me."

You laugh, breathless, and he doesn't look embarrassed about asking at all. There's something different with him tonight, a layer of shyness that came off somewhere in the past two weeks. "I love you," you say. You press a kiss to his cheek for it, the exact gesture he used to give a cat a hundred times over, and he grins up at you, already asking again before you have a chance to move away. "Say you love me again." "I love you." Another kiss, his jaw this time. "Again." "I love you." His forehead. "One more." "I love you, Michael." His nose, which makes him laugh, ducking his head like he can somehow hide from a kiss he's actively requesting.

"Again," he says, quietly now. It’s become less of a game and more like he just wants to keep hearing it, keep feeling you say it against his skin. "I love you," you murmur, and this time you kiss him properly and slowly on the mouth, and he sighs into it, like months of hoping and waiting and rehearsing fake phone calls have all led to exactly this: a cluttered apartment, a forgotten law dictionary somewhere on the floor, and you saying it again and again until neither of you is counting anymore.

Edit: A Bonus chapter will definitely come! :) Thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to your comments. This chapter was not proof-read, but I still hope you like it. I am thinking of writing a bonus chapter with pure fluff in it, but not sure. if you'd like me to, please let me know and I will write it ❤️

then came the music. nearly two hours were spent hunched over your stereo with a blank cassette tape, carefully recording songs from your record collection. you’d made the perfect playlist–upbeat, kid-friendly, long enough to last the whole party– and tested it twice on your portable boombox to make sure the sound was good enough for the park.

and the presents… oh, god, the presents. the pile tipped over when you’d finally gotten around to tugging your closet doors open. you knew khalil would be overjoyed when seeing them tomorrow, but tonight? you were regretful. your fingers were callused in the spots where the scissors pressed against you and you’d pulled at least twenty pieces of tape from random parts of your body. 

it didn’t help that you kept having to toss presents under the bed and play innocent when your door would creak open and khalil, the little shit, would poke his head in– asking questions that made your eyes twitch. 

“mommy, would you rather have tentacles for arms or tree trunks for legs?”

“mommy, what’s the worst smell in the world?”

“mommy, if broccoli was a drink, would you drink it?”

when really, he’d just wanted to catch a glimpse of the presents he could hear you preparing from his room next-door. you’d finished wrapping by the time he’d prepared a fourth question, thank the lord, because you were one ‘mommy’ away from driving him to his grandmother.

by ten o’clock, you’d collapsed on the couch, the boombox sitting heavy on the coffee table in front of you, swearing to yourself that you would never do this again– and then switching to ‘not for another year’ because who were you kidding? you’d be right back in this position on khalil’s seventh birthday. 

in a moment of weakness, you prayed that you’d have someone by your side by that point– to love you and your son so graciously that every daunting task you faced alone these days would feel like a walk in the park with him. your feet ached double time just thinking about not having it. your back ached. your soul ached.

but saturday morning came anyway, whether you were ready or not.

you woke to khalil already bouncing around each room in his birthday excitement, his little feet thundering down the hallway. sitting up in bed, your brain works overtime, running through your checklist within five minutes of being conscious. the cake sat safely in the fridge. the decorations were ready. khalil’s outfit was pressed and hanging on his closet door. your mother and younger sister, in their respective cars, would be at your apartment in a matter of hours to help haul items to the park. everything was prepared.

except, you’re faced with a whole new dilemma. one that you’d thought of once and didn’t think of again. 

how would you warn the people coming?

your family– your mom, your aunties, your cousins– they were huge michael jackson fans. your mother had a framed thriller poster hanging in her living room, for god’s sake. your cousin had traveled to a different country to see him in concert. if michael jackson walked into that park, to your party, unannounced… well, you didn’t want to ponder too long over what might happen.

but, if you told them…

you slouched over, holding your forehead in your hands. it was a lose, lose situation! you could already see it: your auntie calling her church friends. your cousin bringing her college friends. word spreading like wildfire until your son's small-ish, intimate birthday party turned into a mob scene. michael would be swarmed.

no, you absolutely couldn’t risk it. 

though, impulsive un-wanted thoughts crowded you seconds later… picturing your mother fainting! her falling to the floor at the mere sight of him. 

you reached for the phone on your nightstand, then hesitated. your mom would still lose her mind if you told her now. she’d probably faint the second the words left your mouth, and then she’d faint again when actually at the park, before michael had even gotten there– just imagining him walking up. 

but your older brother… maybe you could at least tell him. and then make him promise not to say anything. you dialed his number before you could talk yourself out of it.

“yeah?” his voice was groggy, annoyed.

“marc, it’s me.”

“girl, it’s seven in the morning. why are you–”

“shh. i need to tell you something,” you paused at the sound of a creaking door, looking up as khalil bounces in and makes himself comfortable on your bed. you lovingly roll your eyes– he definitely got his nosey tendencies from you. “and promise me you won’t tell another soul.”

a pause. then, suspicious: “... what did you do?”

“i didn’t do anything–” you took a deep breath. “don’t tell mama, okay? she’d fall out before she even makes it to the party.”

“oh, god, (name). don’t tell her what? spit it out, i ain’t got all day.”

“that… michael jackson is coming.”

silence.

then a rather loud snort of laughter. you jerk the phone away from your ear when another burst of laughs follow and khalil gives you a wide-eyed, questioning look. you shake your head before bringing the phone back to your ear. “i’m serious, marc.”

khalil leans up to put his two cents in: “yeah, michael is coming, uncle marcus!”

“michael jackson.” your brother’s voice is flat, disbelieving. “michael. jackson. is coming to khalil’s birthday party. in a random ol’ oakland park?”

“well, yes.” you emphasize.

“the michael jackson.”

“marcus–”

“nah, nah, hold on.” he was fully awake now, and you could hear the grin in his voice. “you’re tellin’ me that my knucklehead sister is a personal friend of michael jackson?”

“i didn’t say we were friends, i just–”

“well ya gotta be close-close to come to the family function!”

“i’m being serious.”

“and so am i! i’m just trying to understand how you and mike got so tight. did y’all meet at the grocery store? did he help you reach something on the top shelf?”

“khalil spoke with him in a bakery yesterday and invited him, and he said yes, and i needed to tell someone– but don’t tell mama because you know how she is–”

“wait, really?” marcus questions, and your shoulders relax from their tense positioning. he was finally listening. “i won’t tell mama… as long as you don’t tell her that i met prince at the doctors office and he’ll be there as well–”

“my god! i’m not joking, marcus.”

“neither am i. you see, me and prince? we go way back–”

“oh, go fuck yourself.” you give up, pinching the bridge of your nose before you flinch– hand flying to cover your mouth when you remember your son is in the room. “why did i even call you?”

“you needed to tell somebody about your little fantasy. so when your ‘close friend’ mike jackson doesn’t show up, are you gonna blame traffic, or–”

“goodbye, marcus.”

you slam the phone back onto its base, feeling like you’d aged thirty years. 

as you piggyback khalil to the kitchen, you hope that your brother keeps this to himself– whether he believed you or not.

khalil sits at the table and carefully sketches something you couldn’t decipher– continuing the drawing he’d started the night before. as you go to open the cabinet holding your cookware, both of your landlines ring out, shrill in the otherwise peaceful moment. you sigh, turning to answer the one in the living room. 

if you knew one thing, you knew your brother was terrible at remembering details. it just had to be him calling back, wondering when the party started.

you snatch up the receiver. “you already forgot, huh? it’s at two o’clock, ya jive turkey.”

silence.

then, soft and distant, like they were multiple feet from the phone, came the sound of your name. your stomach drops. that wasn’t marcus. it was much too quiet.

“oh– yes, this is she?” you straightened, suddenly very aware of how you’d just answered. there was a rustling sound, like the phone being adjusted, and then his voice came through clearer. unmistakable.

“hi. i’m sorry to call so early. i’ve been trying to reach you.”

michael.

for the second time that morning, you slam the phone down– hanging up without a second thought. you press a hand to your chest, your heart pounding and blood rushing. you’d just called him a fucking jive turkey… and then proceeded to hang up in his face. you were so damned embarrassed. you half-hoped you would faint right then and there, for just a second's relief from your poor decisions.

you paced back and forth, the cold of the hardwood flooring seeping through the threads of your socks– jumping and turning when the phone began to ring again. you stared at it like it might bite you.

one ring.

two… 

three…

on the fourth, you squeezed your eyes shut and snatched it up, your voice coming out breathless and ashamed. “i am so sorry, i thought you were my brother, i didn't mean to–”

a soft laugh interrupted you. quiet but amused, without a doubt. “it’s okay,” michael affirmed gently. it was crazy, how you could hear the smile in his voice. “my own brothers have called me much worse.”

you pressed your palm to your forehead, cringing while he pokes fun at you. “i’m so embarrassed. i just… wasn’t expecting–”

“i know. it’s alright. really.”

you exhaled shakily when you realize you’d been holding your breath, turning to press your back against the wall. you take a few beats to collect yourself before speaking again. “um– thank you… for yesterday. at the bakery. you didn’t have to do that. the cookies, the cake– all of it. it was really kind of you, michael.”

“oh,” he sounded almost bashful. “it was nothing.”

“it wasn’t nothing,” you insisted, pulling the phone cord and releasing it– watching it spring to its resting position. “it meant a lot. to khalil. to me.”

“i’m very glad.” there was a pause, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “well, i won’t take up too much of your time, i swear. i know you’re probably terribly busy today. i just had a question…”

you bit your lip, waiting patiently on the other end. only to be met with static. “...michael?”

“right. yes.” theres a muffled sound– clearing his throat, maybe? “i wanted to make sure i had the right address. riverside park, right? near the playground?”

the way he pronounces ‘right’–the ‘t’ overly enunciated– successfully distracts you. it plays on repeat in your mind before you realize you hadn’t yet replied. “yes, that’s right.”

if he notices your pause, he doesn’t mention it. “and it starts at two?”

“yes.”

“and… khalil likes mickey mouse?”

you blink, a smile tugging at your lips. what kind of question? “well, yes. did y’forget that fast? he only mentioned it a million times yesterday.”

“right. of course.” a small chuckle. “and… does he like balloons?”

“what kid doesn’t like balloons?”

another pause. “and… cake? he likes cake?”

“michael, i’m starting to think you just called to hear yourself speak.”

“no… no. not myself, at least.”

your heart skips, stutters, and fully stops. not himself. the words hang in the air between you and you blink– mind spiraling in a dozen directions at once. you instantly rationalize it, telling yourself that you were reading too much into those two words. that whatever he’d meant by it absolutely wasn’t what you were thinking.

“actually,” michael speaks again, moving past it faster than you can. “i do have another question. just one more.”

you hum into the receiver, not trusting your voice quite yet.

“will you already be at the park by one o’clock?”

you’d grown suspicious immediately– with a hint of childish amusement at the fact that he’d said ‘o’clock’. “i will be… why?”

“i’ve kind of… planned to send something to help.”

“help? help with what?”

“with the party, of course.”

you sputtered down the line, “michael– you’ve already done so much. you genuinely don’t need to–”

“i want to.”

“but you’ve already paid for the cake, a-and the cookies, and you’re coming to the party, which is already more than–”

“it’s really not a big deal.”

“except it kind of is,” you sass back. “you–i mean this in the most respectful way– you barely know us. why are you doing all of this?”

silence.

you could only hear him breathing on the other end, slow and steady. 

“well… i have my reasons.”

you paused, waiting for him to continue and sighing when he doesn’t. “may i ask what they are?”

“no, you may not.” he replies simply.

the way he said it–so matter-of-fact– made you laugh despite yourself. you bring a hand to your mouth in an attempt to muffle it. “okay,” you repeat, “okay. fine. you win that one.”

“thank you.” he’s smug, smiling at the sound of your giggling as he says it.

“by the way, khalil hasn’t stopped talking about you. he’s wished for time control super-powers, just to fast forward to his party. to seeing his ‘friend michael’ again.”

“i’m looking forward to it too,” michael’s voice is noticeably softer– something vulnerable and genuine threading through it. “it’s been… a while since i’ve done something like this. something so…” he trailed off, searching for the word. “...normal.”

your chest tightened. you didn’t know what to say to that. didn’t know how to respond to the weight of what he’d just shared with you. the tiny hint of loneliness he felt, on a deeper level than most.

“well, i’m–or, uh, we’re really, really glad you’re coming.”

“yeah, i am too.”

by the time the two of you hang up just a few minutes after, your heart is racing just like the start of the call– though this time not from embarrassment. it was something else entirely.

hours later, you stand in the approximate middle of the park area you'd claimed. it was perfect in terms of spacing: big enough for khalil’s audience, but not so big that the decorations seem sparse. 

you watch the scene unfold around you. red, white, black, and yellow balloons bobbed in the breeze, tied to every available surface. streamers twisted overhead between the trees, creating a canopy of colors that catch the afternoon sun. luckily, the weather had been on your side– the highest temperature it’d been since november's start.

life sized face-in-hole cutouts of various mickey mouse characters stand guard between the main area and playground; a separate, carefully ornamented section for photo opportunities. 

each table had been adorned with tablecloth, centerpieces set up and felt caps with two black ears and a ‘mickey mouse club’ patch scattered throughout. at one table, your mother had a full spread of food that she’d spent all morning preparing– fried chicken, potato salad, baked beans, mac and cheese, and a towering stack of your grandmother’s sweet cornbread. at the biggest table, under the shade of a tree, sat khalil’s birthday cake and cookies with every present surrounding it.

khalil was living his best life, and his party hadn’t even started yet.

he darted between the tables in his button up, his favorite blue jeans, and bright yellow shoes he’d demanded to wear because mickey wore the same. you hated them with a passion– they squeaked with every step he took. he was a blur of excitement, barely able to contain himself.

“khalil, boy, slow down before you trip and bust your head open!” your mother called out, balancing a tray of cups in one hand while adjusting a streamer with the other.

“i’m fine, grandma!” he shouted back, already halfway across the grass– running from who knows what and to who knows where.

both your brother and sister set up the drink stations, laughing about something you couldn’t quite hear. a few of your friends and cousins were scattered around the area, setting up games, arranging chairs, and hanging the last bit of decorations.

and your grandmother? well, she sat in a folding lawn chair beneath the shade of an oak tree, fanning herself with a church fan and watching everyone else work. ‘y’all got it under control, i’m just here to supervise’ she’d said.

you check your watch, 12:56, as your stomach twists with nerves.

khalil had been so good about keeping michael’s arrival a secret. you’d sat him down before loading him and everything else into your tiny car, explaining that it was a surprise for everyone else, and he’d nodded so seriously– like you’d just entrusted him with classified information. he hasn’t slipped up yet. every time someone would arrive and ask him what he was most excited about, he’d just grin and say, “everything!”

when you take a step toward the drink table, you stop– the low rumble of an engine making you glance toward the parking lot. 

it was a sleek black suv, it’s tinted windows reflecting the sunlight as it pulled into a spot near the edge of the lot. the driver's door opens, and a man you don’t recognize steps out.

he was tall, dressed in a plain black polo and slacks, moving with efficiency to the back of the suv and popping the trunk: revealing three rather large, matte black boxes stacked neatly inside. 

you blinked.

and slowly, you started walking over to him, your shoes crunching against the gravel. he didn’t notice you at first–too focused on adjusting one of the boxes– but when you got within a few feet, he looked up and smiled.

“excuse me,” he started, voice polite and professional. “are you–” he glanced down at a slip of paper in his hand, “–the mother of the birthday boy?”

you nodded, a little breathless. “yes, that’s me.”

“great!” his smile widened. “then i’m in the right place.”

you glanced past him at the boxes, your curiosity piqued. “what… what’s in those?”

“party favors,” he states. as if that explained everything.

“party favors?” you echo, stepping closer. “can i–?”

“of course.” he steps to the side and gestures to the open trunk. you lean in, lifting the lid of the top box just enough to peek inside…

at rows of beautiful wrapped favor bags, each one tied with satin ribbon and topped with a handmade mickey mouse tag. but it wasn’t just the presentation– it was the contents. you could see the edges of coloring books, plush toys, puzzles, sticker sheets, and what looked like small wooden trains. everything was high-quality, thoughtful, and clearly chosen with care. your throat tightened. 

“oh my god…”

it had only been a little over twenty-four hours and he’d had all of this prepared.

the man chuckles next to you, breaking you from your spiraling thoughts. “mr. jackson wanted to make sure the kids had something special to take home.”

you couldn’t speak. couldn’t do anything but stare at the boxes, your vision blurring slightly as tears pricked at the corners of your eyes.

“yo, there’s more stuff?”

you turned to find marcus standing behind you with a dumbfounded look and can only bring yourself to nod in reply. when the man asks where he should put everything, marcus steps forward to grab one of the boxes and directs the man to follow him. as they walk off, you hear marcus grumbling– something about a ‘heavy ass box’ and ‘the hell did she find the money for this?’

you stand there in the parking lot for minutes after, one hand pressed to your chest, trying your hardest to process what was happening to your life.

by 1:50, the party favors were set up on a separate table, arranged in neat rows that immediately caught the attention of every kid who walked by. more guests had arrived– friends from khalil’s school, neighborhood kids, a few of your coworkers with their families, your own family members. the park was filling up, the air thick with laughter.

khalil still vibrated with energy, bouncing from group to group, showing off the one birthday present you’d let him open early and talking a mile a minute. at one point, he climbs onto one of the park benches, standing on his tiptoes to get a better view of the parking lot. his little hands pressed to his forehead like a visor, head swiveling left and right as he scanned every car that passed.

“boy, get–!” your grandmother starts, but khalil cuts her off.

“i’m looking for someone!” he shouts back, not moving an inch. you fix him with a look and a pointed “khalil”. he steps down immediately, shouting an apology before giggling and running back to his group of friends. 

by 2:15, the party is in full swing and you breathe a little easier.

kids run wild across the grass, their laughter echoing through the park as they chase each other around the trees. the tables were crowded with adults all talking, plates piled high with food in front of them. the boombox you’d set up earlier was playing a mix of motown and pop hits, the music blending seamlessly with the ambient noise of the party.

you’re sitting near your intermediate family when two cars pull in.

once again, sleek and black, with windows tinted so dark you couldn’t see inside. your stomach swoops and your heart stutters, because you know who's inside without needing to see it.

your mother leaned closer to you, squinting. “now who is that in that fancy car?”

you open your mouth. and close it immediately.

the driver’s side door of the first car opens, and out steps who you still believe is michael’s bodyguard, dressed in a dark suit. he steps around to the back door and it seems to open in slow motion, though it might just be your mind playing tricks on you. 

a black baseball cap appeared first, tilted just slightly to shade his face– curly hair falling around his shoulders. big hands grip the edge of the door as he hefts himself out. mother nature, the world, must love and cherish him, because he rises to his full height in the very middle of unfiltered sunlight– clouds above him overlapping and breaking perfectly. he looks angelic– dressed in a red long-sleeved button up, tucked into black slacks with a belt securely buckled around his waist. 

complete silence falls over the park and you cringe, waiting.

the first shout comes within a few seconds, “what the fuck?”

the rest trailing shortly behind: “bitch, is that michael jackson?!”, “oh my god–”, “that ain’t–! wait, that is–!”, “mama, that’s michael jackson–!“

the shouts erupted from every direction, voices overlapping in a cacophony of disbelief and pure, uncensored joy. adults jumped to their feet, hands flying to their mouths, pointing, grabbing each other’s arms. kids froze mid-run, their eyes going wide.

and khalil–

“MR. MICHAEL!” he shrieked, jumping up and down so hard his mickey ear felt cap flies off of his head. “mr. michael, you came! you really came!”

you stand up, though you’re not sure why. you’re positive there’s nothing you could do to calm everyone down. your brother must be the only other one quiet, and when you look at him you see it’s because he’s pre-occupied giving you a slack-jawed, wide-eyed look. you’d rub the fact that you were right in his face if your attention didn’t drift back to michael.

who’d, obviously, heard all of the chaos.

you could see it in the way his shoulders tensed, the way his head dipped slightly– and for a second you worry that this was a terrible idea, that your little event has already scared him away… but then he slowly looks up– his face holding the biggest, most breathtaking smile you’d ever seen. so wide and real and bright.

michael brings a hand up and gives a general, small and shy wave; then brings that same hand up to cover his face when the shouts get louder. you start your walk towards him, fully prepared to tell him to stay over there just until everyone’s initial shock wears off– especially your mom, who’d begun to loudly babble while twisting her body side-to-side and throwing her head back, intermittently shouting ‘lord!’ ‘oh good lord!’.

but you stop in your tracks when michael and his bodyguard walk to the car parked behind them and open each of the back doors. 

“this isn’t real…” bringing a hand up to cover your open mouth when fucking mickey mouse and donald duck step out. the kind you’d see at disney world, with the oversized heads and perfectly tailored outfits and the big, cartoonish gloves.

khalil is the first to dart across the park, shouting ‘no way, no way, no way!’ before he crashes into the legs of michael– who stumbles before he brings a hand down to pat khalil’s back, laughing. khalil moves onto mickey and donald, jumping and talking animatedly with his arms. every kid in the party makes it to them shortly after, a stampede of tiny bodies and high-pitched screams. some of them made a beeline for michael, shouting his name, reaching for his hands. but most of them ran straight for mickey and donald, their little faces lit up with the raw delight.

by the time the crowd of kids, michael, his bodyguard, and the characters in costume make it over to the party area, you still haven’t recovered. you can’t move, you’re not too sure if you’re breathing, and you can feel trembles throughout your whole body as you watch michael saunter your way– his smile wide and very proud of himself. 

the happiness on his face only grows when he finally comes to stand in front of you, his hands tucked into his pockets, head tilted just slightly as he speaks your name, “hi. you look–”

“michael, i…” you cut him off, your voice shaky. “am so… upset.”

his smile drops instantly.

“wait– what?” his brows burrow, genuine confusion flickering across his face. “why? did i– did i do something wrong?”

“i’ll never, ever, in a million years have the funds to repay you for this!” you whisper as you gesture openly around the two of you.

michael steps closer, shaking his head. “that isn’t why… i mean, i don’t expect–”

but before he can finish, your uncle appears out of nowhere to dap michael up, clamping a hand on his shoulder and pulling him away from you. “michael jackson!” he exclaims, “i’ll be damned. lemme get a picture with ‘ya, son.”

and just like that, he’s whisked away into the crowd, glancing back at you over his shoulder with an apologetic smile as your uncle drags him to where a small group of your family sits with multiple digital cameras. 

the party continues in a blur of segments–games, cake cutting, present opening– and through it all, michael tries.

god, does he try.

you’re refilling the drinks when he sidles up beside you, his hands clasped behind his back, his voice quiet. “hi. again. about what you said earlier–”

“mr. michael!” khalil’s voice cuts through. when you both turn, he’s waving a heavy-looking stick in the air– and when you look down there are three kids tugging on michael’s shirt-sleeve, begging him to come see the piñata.  he promises that he’ll be right back, but your family continues to have other plans for him.

a little later, you’re standing by the food table rearranging the trays, when he appears again.

in that sweet, soft tone of his, he starts, “i’m sorry, i’ve been tryin’ to make my way to you for the longest. are you busy–?”

“michael!” one of your cousins call out, waving him over. “group photo!”

he exhales slowly. he can’t say that he hates being so in demand, no. your family are all so funny, so down to earth and genuine, but there’s nothing he wants more than to just get to know you better.

you bite back a smile at the slight slouch in his shoulders as he walks away.

it happens again when you’re folding up empty chip bags. and again when you’re wiping down the tables. and again when you’re trying to find a way to keep khalil’s stubborn mickey ears attached to his head.

every single time, someone interrupts. an older auntie asking if he’s single. a kid wanting to play tag. hell, your grandmother at one point demands he sit beside her so she can “get a good look at him.” you watch from afar as your she calls someone with a polaroid over to get a picture of him for her.

and every single time, michael glances back at you with the same pitiful pout.

by the time khalil sits down to open his presents, the sun is starting to dip lower in the sky. for the first time, michael and his bodyguard–bill, you’d finally learned his name– stand undisturbed beside you. michael is so close that you can feel the heat radiating from his shoulder. 

khalil tears through wrapping paper with reckless enthusiasm, a growing pile of things you really didn’t have the apartment space for beside him. action figures, a new basketball, a new soccerball, a remote control car… your eyes started to cross trying to decipher it all.

he’s grinning so wide as he reaches for the last present.

it’s small. a tiny box wrapped in shimmering paper with a white bow on top. khalil’s little fingers fumble with the ribbon, a drunk uncle shouts “use ya teeth, kid!”, and when he finally gets it open, he goes completely still.

inside, nestled on a bed of plush cotton, is a mickey mouse pin. identical to the one from michael’s jacket; the one khalil had stared at with wide, wonder-filled eyes.

khalil opens his mouth, but only a choked sound comes out before his face crumbles. crocodile tears spill down his cheeks as he holds the pin to his chest and through his blubbering he says, voice breaking, “i love it.” a series of coos and 'aww's sound out through the crowd of people– your mother raising a hand to her chest as she cries with her grandbaby, their emotions entwined.

but you, knowing exactly where the pin is from, turn to look at michael. half of you wants to tear into him for overdoing something he didn’t need to do in the first place. half of you wants to sob because he’s made this day so very special for everyone around you.

before you can say anything, michael’s cheeks flush and he shakes his head quickly. “oh, no– i didn’t get that.” he gestures toward bill. “bill did.”

he walks away then. you blink, slowly turning to look at bill– who meets your gaze and, very deliberately, shakes his head.

no.

michael is crouching beside khalil when you glance back over, pulling him into a gentle hug as the boy sobs into his shoulder, still clutching the pin like it’s the most precious thing in the world.

“thank you, mr. michael,” khalil cries.

“happy birthday, khalil.” michael murmurs back.

you have to look away before you join your mother with your own emotional waterworks.

the park is nearly empty when the party winds down. families trickle out one by one, waving goodbye, thanking you for inviting them. the decorations sway gently in the breeze. the boombox is finally quiet. the sun is sinking low, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange.

and khalil is fast asleep on one of the benches, face peaceful, and his new mickey pin attached to the right side of his shirt. you stand a few feet away with michael, midst story.

“–michael, he put it everywhere. the whole bowl of popcorn. i’m talkin’ ceiling, couch, he’d snuck handfuls into the vcr–”

michael cuts you off with a loud burst of laughter. “inside the vcr?” he brings a hand up to cover his mouth.

you look at michael with a smile, but look away quickly when his eye contact starts to make you feel shy. “inside of it.” you confirm, shaking your head as you look at the ground. “kernels too.”

michael doubles over, his shoulders shaking. “how do you even–” he stops, composing himself. “how did you get it out?”

“i didn’t,” you exasperate. “it went straight to donations pile. i had to keep everything with an opening taped shut for two years straight. you don’t know real pain until you have to scoop jelly out of the keyholes on your door; or syrup out of your cd player.”

he loses it then– a full, echoing laugh that makes you laugh harder, and for a moment it’s just the two of you standing there in fading sunlight, cracking up over the absolute bullshit baby khalil put you through.

“i swear,” you say, wiping at the corner of your eye, “sometimes i think he’s trying to see how much i can take before my head rolls right off.”

“that must’ve been how my mother felt with my brothers and i.” he giggles to himself, “we used to do stuff like that all the time. my brother, marlon? he was the worst– stuck a peanut butter sandwich in my other brother, tito’s guitar, ‘cause he wanted to see what it sounded like.”

“well? what did it sound like?”

“oh, the same. but that smell after a few weeks? bad. tito about killed us. mother told tito off for almost killing us, and then almost killed us as well.”

you both crack up again. it feels so easy. so natural, it makes your heart ache.

“i can’t believe you had to deal with eight siblings. i only have two and i thought that was a lot.”

“it was…” he smiles faintly, as if wrapped in memory, “it was loud. all the time. but i wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

“yeah,” you murmur, glancing over at khalil. “i get that.”

there’s a comfortable silence as he helps you clear off the table of food– just the sound of the breeze and the gentle hum of traffic in the background.

and then it hits you.

“michael,” you start. his eyes find yours right away. “can you… give me an itemized list of what i owe you?”

“pardon?”

“the cake, cookies, party favors, mickey and donald…” you shake your head, overwhelmed. “i need to know what i owe you so i can start figuring out how to pay you back. might have to sell a kidney or a lung.”

it’s a joke, but not really.

michael looks at you for a long moment. then, very softly, “what would you need that list for?”

you blink. “what do you mean? i just–”

“those things were for the kids. so, you don’t need to repay me for anything.” he says simply.

“cut the technicalities, michael.”

“seriously.”

you narrow your eyes at the shit-eating grin he attempts to hide. “okay. fine.” you cross your arms and hold his eyes. “those were for the kids. what about those pastries you bought for ‘the boy's beautiful mom’?”

the flush floods his face instantly. he looks down, sheepishly, and now you’re the one grinning at him.

“oh boy… she told you i said that, huh?” michael rubs the back of his neck. “yeah… well, um.”

you wait, enjoying him being bashful a little too much. he clears his throat, bringing his eyes back up to yours. “i know the perfect way you could repay me.”

your heart skips a beat. “yeah? what’s that?”

he takes a breath.

and then, very quietly, earnestly, he says:

“let me get to know you better.”

-

The weekend is a long time.

The weekend is a thing that has, historically, taken approximately forty-eight hours, and the weekend you have just been through took, conservatively, six weeks. You spent it doing things. You went to the grocery store. You did laundry. You graded a stack of redox quizzes and you made notes for next week's lesson and you did not think about Ryland Grace at all, except for the fourteen hours of Saturday and the eleven hours of Sunday during which you thought about almost nothing else.

You replayed the meeting. You replayed it the way he must have replayed eight months in one night, you suspect, and yours took two days. You replayed the word lazy. You replayed the careful neutral face. You replayed him walking out without looking at you, and the small cold rush of oh, no, and you replayed it from every angle, and at no point did any of the angles get any better.

You have arrived at Monday with a plan.

The plan is: act normal. The plan is: do not give him anything. The plan is: he has made his point, and if you behave for a week he will go back to being the slightly flustered man in a cardigan who you used to be able to ruin with eye contact, and the equilibrium will be restored, and you will have learned a valuable lesson about hubris.

You are very committed to the plan. You believe in the plan. The plan is going to work.

The plan lasts forty minutes.

—

He comes into your classroom at 8:20.

You are at the lab benches, setting up for second period, which is a titration unit and which therefore requires you to be carrying a bottle of sodium hydroxide across the room when he opens the door. You do not drop the bottle. You consider it. You do not.

"Morning," he says.

"Morning."

He is wearing the cardigan. He is wearing, under the cardigan, a t-shirt you cannot fully see, and he has a coffee in one hand and a manila folder in the other and he is standing in your doorway like he belongs there, which, technically, he does, because he is a colleague, and colleagues come into colleagues' classrooms, and you have to keep telling yourself this because your body is reacting to him being in here like he has come in to commit a crime.

"You got a second?"

"I'm setting up."

"I can see that. You got a second."

"Grace."

"Two seconds."

You put the sodium hydroxide down. Carefully. With both hands. He waits.

"What."

He holds up the folder. "Curriculum thing. Alvarez wants it by Wednesday. Thought you might have notes."

"You could have emailed."

"I could have."

He has not moved from the doorway. He is still holding the coffee. He is looking at you with the very mild, very patient, very neutral expression of a man delivering an administrative update, except that his eyes have not left your face since he came in, and a man delivering an administrative update would have looked at the folder at least once.

"Was there something else," you say.

"You said my teaching was lazy."

"Grace."

"I just want to make sure I understood what you meant."

"I was making a point."

"In a meeting."

"Yes."

"In front of the department."

"Yes, Grace, that is generally where meetings happen."

"Mm."

He takes a sip of his coffee. He does not look away. You have, in the last forty seconds, lost approximately three layers of skin and you are trying very hard not to show it.

"Do you still think it's lazy."

"I-"

"Because I went home and looked at the unit and I think you might be right."

"What."

"I think you might be right. I'm changing the unit. I'm doing the yeast thing."

"Grace."

"I just wanted to say that. In person. Since you said it in person."

He is, you realise, not letting you off the hook. He has come in here at 8:20 on a Monday morning to agree with you, and he has done it with the polite, neutral, conscientious face of a man closing a loop, and you cannot tell if you are being thanked or being punished or both, and the both is, you suspect, the answer.

"Okay," you say.

"Okay."

"Was there anything else."

"No."

"Okay."

He nods. He does not leave. He takes another sip of his coffee. He looks, very briefly and very deliberately, at the lab bench where you are standing, and then back at your face. He is, you realise, doing a thing. He is doing a thing that is so subtle that if you described it to anyone they would say you were imagining it, and if you described it to him he would say what thing, and you would have nothing to point at, because the thing is not a thing, the thing is a series of very small choices that add up to him standing in your classroom drinking coffee and looking at you and not leaving.

He is doing exactly what you used to do to him.

"You should go to your classroom," you say.

"Probably."

"First period's about to start."

"Mm."

"Stop."

"Stop what."

"Stop saying mm."

"You say mm."

"That's different."

"How."

You don't have an answer to how. You stand there with your mouth slightly open, and he watches you not answer, and the corner of his mouth does the millimetre thing, and he takes another sip of his coffee.

"Have a good first period," he says.

He turns. He goes. He pulls the door closed behind him with the quiet, considerate click of a man who has just left you in a chemistry lab holding nothing and staring at nothing and having to teach sixteen-year-olds about titration in eighteen minutes.

You sit down on the lab stool.

You sit down on the lab stool and you put your face in your hands and you laugh, which is the wrong reaction, which is the reaction of a person whose brain has fully come off the rails, and you laugh for approximately fifteen seconds and then you sit up and you finish setting up the titration and you do not, for the rest of the morning, allow yourself to think his name.

—

You make it until last period.

Last period is your prep. Last period he also has prep on Mondays, which is a piece of information you have, regrettably, retained, and which you are trying very hard to pretend you do not have. You stay in your classroom. You grade. You do not go to the staff room. You do not walk past his classroom. You do excellent, focused work for forty-five minutes and you feel virtuous and you feel mature and you feel like a person who has, finally, gotten a grip.

At 2:40 he knocks on your door.

You look up. He is in the doorway again, except this time he doesn't have a coffee, and he doesn't have a folder, and he doesn't have a reason. He is just there. He is leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets and he is looking at you with the same mild, neutral expression he had this morning, and you realise, with a kind of slow-motion clarity, that you are not going to make it through the rest of this conversation upright.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi."

"Are you busy."

"Yes."

"What are you doing."

"Grading."

"Grading what."

"Grace."

"I'm just asking."

"You're not just asking."

He smiles. Full smile this time. The one that crinkles his eyes.

"I'm just asking," he says again, gentler.

He comes into the room. He closes the door behind him. He walks over to your desk. He does not sit down in the student chair across from you. He sits on the edge of your desk, sideways, with one foot on the floor and one leg bent, and he looks down at you.

The teacher voice is bad. This is worse. This is the teacher voice with proximity.

"So," he says.

"So."

"You've been weird since the meeting."

"I've been weird."

"Mm-hm."

"You've been weird."

"Have I."

"Yes."

"How."

"Grace."

"How."

You stare at him. He waits. He is very, very good at waiting. You suspect, with a flash of belated insight, that he has been good at waiting this entire time and you simply never made him do it.

"You're being mean," you say.

"I'm being attentive."

"It's the same thing."

"It's really not."

He's looking down at you. His glasses are sliding down his nose, the way they always do, and this time he pushes them up himself, with one finger, slowly, and you watch him do it and you understand that he has done it slowly on purpose, and you understand that he has been waiting to do that since Tuesday in the supply closet, and you understand that you are, possibly, going to die in this chair.

He looks at you for a long second. The mild face does not change. His foot, the one on the floor, taps once against the leg of your desk.

"Stand up," he says.

It is a small instruction. It is delivered at low volume. It is delivered in the voice he uses on a student he wants to give a job to, come up to the board, hand out the worksheets, get the door for me, the easy reasonable teacher voice that you have heard him use a thousand times to a thousand sixteen-year-olds and that you have, you realise in real time, never had pointed at you.

You do not stand up.

You sit in your chair and you look up at him from your chair and you feel, very clearly, the moment he registers that you are not standing up, and the moment passes, and he is still looking at you, and he is waiting.

You should stand up.

You should stand up because standing up is the small reasonable thing he has asked for, and because complying with the small reasonable thing is the move that lets you keep your dignity, and because every cell in your body is currently telling you that not complying will be a catastrophe.

You open your mouth. You say it before your brain catches your mouth.

"Make me."

The room goes quiet.

It goes quiet in the way that a room goes quiet when you have just dropped a glass and have not yet heard it hit the floor. There is a one-second window in which you could take it back. You watch the window open and you watch the window close and you do not take it back, because the part of you that said it is the same part of you that said lazy, and that part of you is, evidently, in charge of the steering wheel and committed to driving off the cliff.

He does not move for a beat. He does not move for two.

Then, slowly, he gets off the desk.

He does not come around to your side of the desk. He does not reach for you. He does not touch you. He just stands up, at his full height, two feet from your chair, with his hands at his sides, and he is suddenly much taller than he is when he is sitting on furniture, and the height of him is taking up more of the room than it has any right to.

You stand up.

You stand up without deciding to. Your body has, ahead of your brain, calculated that remaining seated while he is standing over you like that is not a survivable position, and it has corrected for the imbalance, and you are now on your feet and six inches from him and you have to tip your chin up to keep the eye contact.

He has not done anything. He has not made you. You have made yourself. He is watching you have done it, and the corner of his mouth is doing the millimetre thing, and the millimetre thing right now is the worst thing you have ever seen on anyone's face.

"Grace."

"Don't."

"Don't what."

"Don't talk."

"I-"

"You don't get to say make me in this room, do you understand. Not here. Not at school. I cannot do anything about make me in this room, and you said it anyway, and I want you to think about that for a second."

You think about it for a second.

You think about it for several seconds. He is watching you think about it. The patient teacher mask has burned through and what is underneath is the same man, but with a finger of frustration laid quietly along the jawline of it, and the frustration is so much hotter than the patience was that you cannot, immediately, do anything except stand there and absorb it.

"Get your bag," he says.

"Grace, I-"

"Get your bag."

"I-"

"Get your bag."

You get your bag.

You get your bag without saying another word, because there is, you have correctly intuited, no word available to you that will not make this worse. He waits by the door. He does not look at you while you pack up. When you are done he opens the door and he holds it open and you walk through it, and he follows you out, and he pulls the door closed behind him with the same quiet considerate click as this morning, and the considerate click, given what is happening underneath everything, is the most threatening sound you have ever heard.

In the hallway he walks slightly behind you. Not close. Not far. Close enough that you can feel him there. You do not turn around. You do not speak. You walk through the hall and out into the parking lot and the late-afternoon air hits you and you take a breath and you keep walking.

"Did you drive," he says.

"Yes."

"Good. I biked."

"You-"

"Yeah. So you're driving."

You stop walking. You turn to look at him. He has stopped one step behind you and he is, in the late afternoon light, calmly waiting for you to process the logistics of the situation he has just described, which are: you are going to drive him to your apartment, in your car, with him in your passenger seat, for fifteen minutes, in silence, having just said make me to him in your own classroom.

"My bike's locked up at the rack," he says, helpfully. "It'll be fine overnight."

"Overnight?"

"Mm."

"Grace, you biked?"

"I bike every day."

"It's October."

"I have a coat."

You stare at him. He stares back. He is not, you realise, ever going to defend the bike. The bike is a fact of his life, like his glasses or his terrible t-shirts, and he has, in the middle of this, casually mentioned it the way one might mention having brought a packed lunch.

"Get in the car," you say.

"Mm."

"Get in the car, Grace, I swear to-"

"Easy."

He says easy in the same mild teacher voice he said stand up in. You close your mouth. You get in the car. He walks around to the passenger side. He gets in. He puts his bag on the floor between his feet. He buckles his seatbelt. He folds his hands in his lap.

He looks at you.

"You can start driving," he says.

You drive.

You drive out of the lot and you take a left at the light and you do not look at him, because you cannot afford to look at him. You can feel him in your peripheral vision. He is just sitting there. He is sitting in your passenger seat with his hands folded in his lap and his eyes, you can feel, on the side of your face, and he is not saying anything, and the not-saying-anything is filling the car like water.

You make it three minutes before you have to speak.

"You're being weird."

"Mm."

"You're being weird on purpose."

"Mm."

"Grace."

"Eyes on the road."

You snap your eyes back to the road. You did not realise you had taken them off the road. You had, at some point in the last sentence, turned to look at him, and you had not noticed yourself doing it, and he had noticed, and he had, very calmly, redirected you.

The teacher voice is going to kill you in this car.

You make it another four minutes. You make it through two more lights and one merge and a stretch of road where nothing happens. You can hear him breathing. You can hear, you are fairly sure, the seconds of your life ticking away. At one point, at a red light, he reaches over and adjusts the air vent on his side of the dashboard, casually, the way a man might in any car he was riding in, and the casualness of it is the most intimate thing he has ever done.

You make a small sound.

"What," he says.

"Nothing."

"Mm."

"Stop mming."

"No."

The light goes green. You drive. You make it another two minutes. You think, at minute eleven, I could just keep driving. I could keep driving past my apartment and just keep going and we could be in Vermont by midnight.

"You're not going to Vermont," he says, conversationally, like he can hear it.

"What."

"You're doing the face. The face you do when you're considering an exit strategy. You're not going to Vermont."

"How did you-"

"I've been watching your face for eight months, sweetheart, I know what it does."

You almost run a stop sign. You catch yourself. You brake hard. He puts one hand, casually, on the dashboard to steady himself, and does not comment.

"Don't call me that in the car," you say, through your teeth.

"Mm."

"Grace"

"You're going to miss your turn."

You make the turn. You make the turn and you pull into your lot and you park and you sit there for one second with both hands on the wheel and you think, very clearly: I am not going to survive this afternoon.

You get out of the car. He gets out of the car. He walks around to your side and he stands there, calmly, waiting for you, and you lock the car and you walk to your building and he walks one step behind you and you can feel him there and you fumble the key in the lock once, twice, and you get the door open on the third try, and he reaches over your shoulder and pushes it the rest of the way open for you, polite, and the politeness of it, given everything, is what nearly takes you down at the threshold.

You walk in.

He follows you.

He closes the door.

You turn around to face him.

You have, on the drive, prepared a speech. The speech was supposed to land you back on level ground. The speech contained the deli voice and a wry observation about his pacing and a small joke about Vermont, and you had it organised by the time you parked, and you were going to deliver it the moment the door closed, and you were going to win.

You open your mouth.

He kisses you.

He kisses you before you can get the first word out, and the kiss is not a patient, tangential, slow thing. The kiss is a man whose composure has been scratched off by the last forty minutes of you and who is, finally, allowed to use his hands. One hand is in your hair. One hand is at the small of your back. He has pulled you in hard against him and your bag has dropped somewhere and the wall is at your shoulder blades and his mouth is on yours and you understand, in a single small bright pulse of clarity, that you have miscalculated.

You go up on your toes into it because your body has made an executive decision without consulting you.

You get your hands in his hair.

You get your hands in his hair and you pull, because you cannot help yourself, because the bratting is autonomic at this point, because the part of you that has been driving all afternoon does not know how to stop driving even when the road has ended. You pull and he makes a small sound against your mouth, almost amused, and you take the amused noise personally, and you bite his bottom lip.

You bite it on purpose. You bite it harder than you mean to. You feel his lip catch between your teeth and you hear, very distinctly, the sound he makes, and the sound is not amused anymore.

He pulls back.

Not far. Just enough to look at you. His mouth is wet. There is a red mark on his bottom lip where your teeth were. His glasses are crooked. His face is doing something that has nothing to do with patience and nothing to do with mildness and nothing to do with any of the registers he has been using all day, and you stare at him and you understand, with a small descending lurch, that you have snapped him.

He does not move for a second.

Then he says, very quietly: "Okay."

A beat.

"Okay. You want to do it like that."

It is not a question. You do not answer it. You could not answer it. Your mouth has gone dry and your knees are doing something concerning and you are pressed against your hallway wall with a man you have spent eight months teasing and you have just bitten him, and he is looking at you like he is, finally, going to do something about it.

He turns you around.

He turns you around with one hand on your shoulder, not rough, just decisive, and you are now facing the wall and his hand is on the back of your neck, light, not pressing, just there, and his other hand is at your hip, and his mouth is at your ear.

"You are going to listen to me," he says, into your ear. Soft. Almost gentle. "I am going to tell you what is about to happen. And you are going to be quiet and let me tell you. Can you do that."

"I-"

"Words."

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes, I can do that."

"Good."

The good goes all the way down your spine. You make a sound. He hears it. He does not comment on it. The hand at the back of your neck stays where it is.

"I am going to take you to your bedroom," he says, into your ear. "And I am going to take a great deal of time. And every time you try to rush me, I am going to stop. And every time you try to bite me again, I am going to stop. And every time you say something cute, I am going to stop. Three strikes, sweetheart, and I leave you on that bed and I go home. Do you understand me."

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes Grace."

He pauses. The hand at your neck flexes, once, very slightly.

"Try again."

You stare at the wall in front of you. You can feel his breath at the side of your head and his hand at the back of your neck and your face is hot and you are, suddenly, not sure what he is asking for.

He waits.

He waits long enough that you have to think it through, and then you understand, and your stomach does the wrong thing.

"Yes," you say. "Ryland."

"Good girl."

The words do something to you that you will, later, deny. Your knees actually buckle, briefly, and his hand at your hip catches you, and he laughs, very quietly, against the side of your head.

"Down the hall?"

"Yeah."

"Show me."

You show him.

You walk down the hall and he walks behind you with his hand on the small of your back, and the hand is not gripping, it is just present, and the present-ness of it is keeping you upright in a way that is not entirely metaphorical. You get to your bedroom. You stop at the threshold. You do not know what to do.

"Inside," he says, behind you.

You go inside.

He follows you. He closes the door, which is unnecessary because you live alone, and the unnecessariness of the door-closing is a deliberate choice he is making, and you clock it, and your stomach does the wrong thing. He stops in front of you. He looks at you. He pushes his glasses up his nose with one finger, slowly, the way he did at your desk.

"Take your cardigan off," he says.

You take your cardigan off. You drop it on the chair.

"Shoes."

You take your shoes off.

"Good."

You make a sound. You can't help it. He hears it. He does not smile. The not-smiling is somehow worse than the smiling would be. You are standing in front of him in your skirt and your blouse and your bare feet on the cold wood and you are absolutely certain that you have never been looked at like this in your entire life.

"Grace."

"Don't talk."

"I-"

"I said don't talk."

You close your mouth.

He walks around you. Slowly. A full circle. He is looking at you like a thing he is appraising. You stand still because you have been told to stand still and because, frankly, you are not sure your legs could be doing anything else. When he comes back around to your front he stops and he looks at your face and he says, very mildly:

"You bit me."

"I-"

"That was a question."

"It-"

"Was that a question."

"Yes."

"So answer it."

"Yes, I bit you."

"Why."

"I-"

"Yes or no would be easier. Did you bite me because you wanted to, or because you were trying to make me stop being slow."

You stare at him. You understand the trap. The trap is that there is a correct answer and a true answer and they are not the same answer, and he is going to wait until you give him the true one.

"Both," you say.

"Mm."

"Don't mm-"

"I will mm if I want to. Sit on the bed."

You sit on the bed.

He stands in front of you. He is, now, fully out of the patient teacher register and into something else entirely, something where he is paying attention to you with the same focus he uses on a problem he is genuinely interested in, and the focus, which has been pointed everywhere else in his life for forty-eight years, is now pointed at you and you cannot, you find, look away from him.

"Look at me," he says.

You were already looking at him. You keep looking.

"You can be a brat," he says, very calmly. "I figured that out. I figured it out eight months in but I figured it out. You can be a brat with me all you want. You can say make me and you can bite me and you can do whatever you have planned for the next time you want to wind me up, and I am not going to break, sweetheart, I am going to handle it. Do you understand."

"Yes."

"Yes what."

"Yes Ryland."

"Good."

He kneels down in front of you. He is, suddenly, eye level. He puts his hands on your knees. He pushes them apart, slow, and steps in between them, and his hands are on your thighs, sliding up under the skirt, and his mouth is on the inside of your knee, and your hands fly to his hair.

"No," he says, against your knee. "Hands behind you."

You put your hands behind you, on the bed.

"Good."

The good is going to kill you. You are going to die in this bed. Of the goods. You make a small sound and he hears it and he does not comment on it and he moves his mouth higher up your thigh, slowly, and you bite the inside of your own cheek to keep from saying anything.

"You can talk," he says. "I just don't want you to push. Tell me if it's too much. Tell me if you want me to do something else. Just don't tell me to hurry. Got it."

"Got it."

"What was that."

"Got it, Ryland."

He laughs, very softly, against your thigh. He is, you realise, pleased. He is pleased with the Ryland. He is pleased with all of it.

He pushes your skirt up around your hips. His hands hook into your underwear and he pulls it down, slow, and you lift your hips for him without being asked and he says, soft, "good," and you make a sound that is not language. He drops the underwear somewhere on the floor. He puts his hands back on your thighs and he pushes them wider apart and he just looks at you for a second, with his glasses sliding down his nose and his hair already a wreck and the most focused expression you have ever seen on his face.

"Grace."

"Mm."

"Don't look at me like that."

"Like what."

"Like you're going to write a paper on it."

He laughs. He laughs against the inside of your thigh and the laugh hits you in three different places and you make a sound and his laugh stops, abruptly, like he has just discovered something.

"Okay," he says, quieter. "Okay. Hold on."

He leans in.

The first thing he does is not what you expect. He does not put his mouth on you. He kisses the inside of your thigh, high up, slow, and then the crease where your thigh meets your hip, and then the other crease, and you are already, embarrassingly, lifting your hips toward his mouth because your body has stopped consulting you on anything, and he places one flat hand on your stomach and presses you back down against the bed.

"Stay."

"Grace-"

"Stay."

You stay.

He puts his mouth on you.

He does it slow, the way he does everything in this bed. The first pass is just his tongue, broad and warm and exploratory, and you make a sound that is not a word and his free hand tightens on your thigh in answer. He does it again. He does it again, slightly different, slightly higher, and you can feel him paying attention, the way he pays attention to a malfunctioning copier, the way he pays attention to a problem he wants to actually solve. He is learning you. He is logging which thing makes you make which sound, and he is going to use it.

"Ryland."

"Mm-hm."

"Ryland, what are you-"

"Shh."

He finds your clit. He finds it and he closes his mouth around it, gently, and he sucks, once, and you make a noise that you would, ordinarily, be deeply embarrassed by, and the noise tells him what he wanted to know, and he does it again.

Your hands fist in the sheets behind you.

He goes slow. He goes unbearably slow. He is not in a hurry. He is, you understand with mounting horror, going to take the entire afternoon to do this if he wants to, and he wants to, and there is nothing you can do about it. He keeps his rhythm steady and patient and exact, and every time your hips try to come up off the bed his hand on your stomach presses you back down, and every time you make a sound he files it, and every time he files a sound he comes back to whatever caused it and does it again.

He slides one hand up the inside of your thigh. He hooks two fingers, gentle, just at your entrance, and pauses there.

"Yes?"

"Yes, Grace, please-"

"Words."

"Yes, you can-"

"Yes what."

"Yes you can, Ryland, please, please-"

"Good."

He pushes the two fingers into you, slow, and your back arches off the bed and his mouth is back on your clit and his fingers are crooked just exactly right inside you, like he has been practicing, like he has been thinking about it, and you are immediately, embarrassingly, very close.

"Ryland, I'm-"

He pulls his mouth off you.

His fingers stay where they are. The fingers stay where they are, slow, lazy, exactly not enough, and his mouth is at your inner thigh again, kissing, like nothing is happening, and you make a sound that is genuinely the most undignified thing your throat has ever produced.

"Grace-"

"Mm-hm."

"What are you doing-"

"Taking my time."

"Ryland, I will-"

"Mm."

He moves his fingers, just a little, just enough to make you make another sound, and then he keeps them still, and your hips try to move and he presses you down with his free hand and you understand, with a kind of furious clarity, that he is going to keep you exactly here, on the edge, for as long as he decides to, and there is nothing you can do.

You drop your head back against the pillow and you make a sound that is half a laugh and half something that is not a laugh.

"You are evil."

"Mm-hm."

"You are literally evil-"

"Ask me for it."

"What?"

"Ask me for it. Properly. Like you mean it."

You lift your head. You look at him. He is between your thighs with his glasses fogged and his fingers inside you and his free hand on your stomach and his mouth wet, and he is waiting, and you understand that he is going to wait as long as it takes, and you understand that you cannot wait as long as it would take, and you give up.

"Please, Ryland."

"Please what."

"Please, your mouth, please will you finish, please-"

"Good."

He puts his mouth back on you.

He does not, this time, go slow. He has gotten his answer, and now he is going to give you what you asked for, and what he gives you is steady and focused and exactly the rhythm he had a minute ago, and his fingers crook inside you on the same beat, and you come apart in under thirty seconds with both hands fisted in the sheets and his name in pieces in your mouth.

You come for what feels like a long time. He works you through it, mouth and fingers, until you are pushing at his shoulder with one hand because you cannot take any more, and only then does he ease off, slow, and rest his forehead against your inner thigh for one second, breathing.

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Up."

"Are you asking."

"I am asking, Grace, please, get up here-"

"Mm."

He gets up there.

He pulls his fingers out of you, slow, and you make a small protesting sound that you hate yourself for, and he kisses the inside of your thigh once more, and then he climbs up your body, slow, kissing as he goes. He kisses your hip. He kisses your stomach. He pushes your skirt the rest of the way up and then off you entirely, dropping it over the side of the bed, and he kisses up between your ribs and unbuttons your blouse one button at a time with his teeth around the third button which makes you laugh, and he says "don't make me laugh, I will lose track," and undoes the rest with his hands.

He pushes the blouse open. He looks at you. His face does the thing it does when he is looking at something he genuinely cannot believe is in front of him.

"Hi," he says.

"Ryland, please get off me and take your pants off."

He stops.

He stops kissing your sternum and he lifts his head and he looks at you. The look is not angry. The look is patient and very slightly disappointed, in the way a teacher looks at a student who has just done the exact thing the teacher told them not to do five minutes ago.

He sits up. He sits back on his heels between your knees. He puts his hands on his thighs.

He waits.

"Grace."

"Mm."

"What did I-"

"You're pushing."

"I'm not-"

"Mm."

You stare at him. He stares back. He is, you realise with a kind of dawning horror, not going to do anything else until you correct yourself. He is going to sit there, between your bare knees, with his glasses fogged and his hands on his own thighs, until you ask him properly.

The afterglow of the orgasm he just gave you is still in your bones. Your body is still loose and shaky and grateful, and you have just demanded that he hurry up like none of the last forty minutes happened, and he is now demonstrating, with great patience, that they did.

"Ryland."

"Mm."

"I'm sorry."

"Mm."

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Try again."

"Please. Please, will you take your pants off."

"Better."

He stands up off the bed.

He stands up and he turns away from you, slightly, and he pulls his t-shirt off over his head, slow, and you finally get to see him properly, and what you see is a man who is, by any honest measure, real. Real chest. Real shoulders. Real soft middle where his cardigan has been hiding it. Real chest hair, going grey in places. The most Ryland Grace body you have ever seen, and your mouth goes dry.

"Stop looking," he says, without turning around.

"No."

"That's my line."

"Mm."

He laughs, soft. He unbuckles his belt. He undoes his pants. He pushes them down with his underwear in one movement and steps out of them, and he is, you note with some considerable feeling, very hard, and he turns around and he sees you looking and he does not, for once, tell you to stop.

He leans over and picks his pants up off the floor and fishes in the pocket. He comes back up with his wallet. He opens his wallet. He takes out a condom.

You stare at him.

"You had that in your wallet?"

"Mm-hm."

"Since when."

"Couple weeks."

"Couple weeks?"

"Mm-hm."

"Ryland-"

"You want to keep talking about it, or-"

"Get over here."

He stops.

He stops with the condom in his hand and he looks at you, calmly, and he does not move toward the bed.

"Try again," he says.

"Grace, I-"

"Try again."

"I-"

He waits. He holds the condom. He is standing two feet from your bed, naked, hard, with his glasses sliding down his nose, and he is not coming, and you are spread out on the bed with your blouse hanging open and your underwear gone and your skin still flushed from the orgasm he just gave you, and you have just told a naked man holding a condom to get over here, and you are about to lose your mind.

"Please."

"Please what."

"Please, will you, will you come back to the bed, please, Ryland-"

"Better."

He comes back to the bed.

He rolls the condom on, slow, watching your face the whole time, and you watch his hand on himself and you make a sound and he hears it and the corner of his mouth pulls and then he is kneeling between your thighs again and he leans down and kisses you, slow, and his mouth tastes like you, and you make another sound and you reach for him and he catches both your wrists, gently, and pins them next to your head.

"Hands here," he says, against your mouth.

"Ryland."

"Stay."

You stay.

He braces himself on one forearm next to your head. He reaches down with his other hand and lines himself up, and he pauses there, just at your entrance, and looks down at you.

"Yes?"

"Yes, Grace, I have been saying yes-"

"Just checking."

He pushes in.

He pushes in slow. He pushes in unbearably slow, because of course he does, because he has not stopped being himself for one minute of this afternoon, and you feel every inch of him going in and you make a sound that has no shape, and he is making small sounds back into your neck that are not words, and when he is all the way in he goes still and drops his forehead onto your shoulder and breathes out, ragged, against your skin.

"God."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Move."

He moves.

He moves slow at first because he cannot, evidently, help it, because slow is his whole afternoon, but the slow does not last very long this time. The slow lasts maybe thirty seconds. The slow lasts until you wrap one leg around his hip and tilt up into him and make a small please sound against his ear, and then the slow goes out of him in long peeling sheets, and what is underneath it is a man who has been wanting this for eight months and has been holding himself together with both hands, and he is not, now, holding himself together.

He picks up the pace. He picks it up and he does not put it down. He is over you, braced on both forearms now, his hips snapping into yours in a steady deep rhythm, and his face is in your neck and he is talking, of course he is talking, and what he is saying is not the patient teacher voice from the hallway, it is not the careful handler from the desk, it is Ryland Grace talking like he talks, breathless and tangential and chaotic, into your skin.

"God, you are, you are, I have thought about this, I have thought about this so much you have no idea-"

"Ryland"

"You have no idea, I have, eight months, eight whole months of you sitting on my desk and-"

"Ryland, I-"

"Lazy, you called my teaching lazy-"

"Grace."

"In front of everyone, in front of-"

You laugh. You laugh and the laugh shakes you both and he makes a small surprised sound at the way you tighten around him and his hips stutter once before he catches the rhythm again, and you bite his shoulder, the same one as before, harder this time, and he says fuck into your neck which is the first time you have ever heard him swear and the swearing does something to you that you will, later, have to think about carefully.

He pulls his head up out of your neck.

He looks down at you. His mouth is still wet. The red mark from your teeth is still on his bottom lip. His hips have not stopped moving in that deep steady rhythm, and his face, above yours, is focused, and he is looking at you with the calm decisive attention of a man who has just decided to do something about a thing.

He leans down.

He puts his mouth on the place where your neck meets your shoulder. He does it carefully. He does it without hurrying. And then he closes his teeth around the skin there, not hard, just deliberate, and bites you.

You make a sound.

He holds the bite for one beat longer than you expect, and then he releases it, and his tongue passes over the mark he has just left, slow and soothing, and he kisses the spot once, and lifts his head again.

"There," he says, mild. "Closer to even."

You stare up at him. He is still moving. The mark on your neck is throbbing in a way that is travelling through the rest of you, and you make a sound that is not a word, and the corner of his mouth pulls.

You have, in the middle of all of it, one single very clear thought.

The thought arrives without tone. The thought arrives without any particular feeling attached to it, just a flat declarative line in your own voice in the middle of your own head, which is: I am going to murder him and then I am going to marry him.

He laughs, very softly, against the side of your head, like he has somehow heard it.

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"Harder. Don't ask, just do it."

He stops.

He stops moving. He does not pull out. He stays exactly where he is, all the way inside you, and he goes completely still, and he lifts his head off your neck and looks down at you.

You stare up at him.

"No," you say. "No, no, no, Grace, please, please don't-"

"What did I tell you at the wall."

"Ryland-"

"What did I tell you. About the third strike."

You make a sound. It is not a word. It is the sound of you understanding, in a single small bright pulse, that he has been counting. He has been counting the pulls and he has been waiting to use the threat and the threat is now, and you are full of him and he is not moving and you are going to die.

"Ryland, I'm sorry-"

"What was the rule."

"Don't push, don't push, Ryland please-"

"And what did you just do."

"I-"

"Look at me."

You look at him.

His glasses are fogged. His hair is a wreck. His face, above yours, is focused and patient and unmoving, and his hips are still and his weight is heavy and you can feel him inside you still hard and still right there and he is doing nothing, and you understand, in the same small bright pulse, that he can do this all afternoon, that he is patient enough and frustrated enough and attentive enough to do this all afternoon, and that the only way out is through.

"I pushed."

"Mm-hm."

"I pushed, I'm sorry, Ryland, please-"

"Please what."

"Please, please will you, will you please go harder, please-"

"Mm."

He waits one more beat. He waits long enough to make you sure, for one terrible second, that he is going to say no, and then he leans down and kisses you, gently, on the forehead, and he says, very softly, "okay," and he gives you what you asked for.

It is not gentle this time.

It is not gentle and you cry out at the first hard thrust and his mouth comes down on yours and swallows the sound and then he is fucking you, properly, hard, the way you have been pushing for, and the difference between thirty seconds ago when he was still and right now is so vast that your whole body is shaking with it. His hand has come up to cradle the back of your skull, carefully, like he is making sure you don't hit the headboard, and the carefulness of the hand in contrast to the rest of him is what finally undoes you.

You feel it coming. He feels it coming. He somehow knows, because he is paying attention the way he pays attention to everything, and he reaches down between you with his free hand and his fingers find your clit and he says, into your ear, "come on, sweetheart, come on, I've got you, I've got you, good girl," and you come apart underneath him with his name in your mouth, both of them, Ryland Grace, broken, and you are not, this time, trying to be quiet, and he is saying it again into your ear while you come, good girl, that's it, good girl, over and over, soft and certain, and you understand dimly that he has waited to deploy that one, that he has held it back since the hallway, and the saving of it is the last thing that goes through your mind before everything goes white.

He follows you a few thrusts later with his face buried in your neck and a sound he makes that you will think about for weeks.

He goes still.

He is heavy on top of you. His whole weight. He is breathing hard. His hand is still cradling the back of your skull. His other hand is gripping your hip, hard enough that there will be marks tomorrow, and you do not, you find, mind.

You lie there.

You lie there for a long time. He does not move. You do not push him off. His breath slows. Yours slows. His glasses are pressed sideways against your cheek and are, definitely, bent.

Eventually he kisses the side of your neck, very softly, and lifts his head, and looks at you.

He looks like a man who has just been hit by a small truck.

"Hi," he says.

You laugh. You cannot help it. The laugh shakes you both and he laughs too, and he drops his forehead back onto your shoulder, and you put your arms around him, and he sighs, and the sigh is the most relaxed sound you have ever heard him make.

"Ryland."

"Yeah."

"You had a condom in your wallet for two weeks."

"Yes."

"That's presumptuous."

"Mm-hm."

"You were that sure?"

"I was hopeful."

You laugh again. He laughs into your shoulder. He kisses your collarbone, sleepy now, and after a second he eases out of you, careful, and deals with the condom, and comes back and sprawls half on top of you with his face in your neck.

"Your glasses are bent."

"I know."

"They're really bent."

"I'm aware."

"You should take them off."

"I'm not moving."

"Grace."

"Mm."

You laugh. You laugh and he laughs into your neck and he presses a kiss to your jaw, and you reach up and, gently, take his glasses off his face and put them on the nightstand. He makes a small grateful noise. He closes his eyes.

"Hey," he says, into your neck. Quiet now.

"Yeah."

"You're not actually allowed to call my teaching lazy in front of the whole department."

"Oh my god."

"I'm just saying. As a general policy."

"Grace, I will throw you out of my bed."

"You won't."

"I will."

"You won't."

You won't.

He pulls you closer. He is warm. He is heavy. After a minute, into your hair, he says, very softly:

"I clocked you at the meeting."

"I know."

"I want to be on record. About when I clocked it."

"Grace, I know."

"Just so we're clear."

"We're clear."

"Mm."

A pause.

"You really did call it lazy, though."

"Grace."

He laughs into your neck. You close your eyes. The afternoon light is doing something through the curtains and your apartment is very quiet and his weight is heavy against you and you think, very clearly, oh.

Oh, fine.

Okay.

You go to sleep too.

--

Enjoyed - let me know?

"Thanks. I lost an electron."

"I know."

"Oh." He looks down at his own chest like he's checking. "Right. Yeah."

"Are you positive?"

He laughs, and the pen behind his ear finally falls out and clatters onto the table. He picks it up. He puts it back behind his ear.

"That was very good," he says. "I'm using that. I'm telling my third period that."

"Don't tell them you got it from me."

"Why not?"

"Because I want them to think you came up with it. I want you to take the credit."

"That's weird."

"I'm being generous."

"You're being weird." He's still smiling. "But I'll take it. Thank you."

"How's the cell unit going, by the way."

"Good. Fine." He waves a hand at the stack of writeups. "Slow. Some of them are getting it. Some of them are drawing what I can only describe as a fried egg with a beard."

"That's organelles, Grace. That's just organelles."

"It is not organelles, it's-"

"It's mitochondria. The beard is mitochondria."

"The beard is not mitochondria, the beard is them not paying attention, you can't-"

"Mm."

He squints at you. He has, again, lost the thread of his own sentence. This is happening more than usual today and you are choosing not to examine why.

You finish your coffee. He goes back to grading. You stay another four minutes for no reason you would say out loud, and when you get up to leave he says see you tomorrow without looking up, and you say see you tomorrow back, and you walk down the hallway smiling at nothing.

He has no idea. He has no idea. It is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you.

—

You catch him on Monday by the photocopier, which is broken, which he is fixing, which he is fixing wrong.

"That's not the paper jam."

"I know it's the paper jam." He's crouched in front of the open panel with one hand inside the machine up to the elbow. The other hand is holding a screwdriver he has produced from somewhere. "The paper jam is a symptom. The actual problem is upstream."

"It's a photocopier, Grace. It's not upstream of anything. It's a box."

"Everything's upstream of something." He doesn't look at you. He's frowning at the inside of the machine in a way you have come to recognise, which is the way he frowns when he is genuinely thinking and has briefly lost track of being a person in a room. "There's a roller back here that's slipping. If I can just-"

The machine makes a sound. He makes a small triumphant noise. You lean against the wall next to it and watch the back of his neck while he works.

You could fix it in under a minute. You know you could. You unjam the centrifuge in your prep room twice a week and the centrifuge is, generously, a more dignified version of this. But it's funnier to let him try, and it has come to your attention recently that what's funny and what gets a rise out of him are, increasingly, the same Venn diagram.

"Did you ask Dale to look at it?"

"Dale's busy."

"Dale's the janitor. Fixing the copier is literally his job."

"Dale's busy and I'm here." He pulls his hand out of the machine. There is a black smudge on his forearm now. He does not notice. "Also Dale hates this machine. He told me last week. He said if it broke again he was going to push it off the loading dock."

"So you're doing Dale's job for him because you're afraid of him."

"I'm not afraid of-"

"You're afraid of Dale."

"I'm respecting Dale's stated boundaries."

"You're afraid of Dale."

He drops the screwdriver. He picks it up. He looks at you with the exact expression he uses on students who have just discovered they can argue with him, which is delight pretending to be exasperation.

"Are you going to help, or-"

"No."

"Then can you-"

"Your lesson plan was bad, by the way."

His whole head comes up. "Which lesson plan."

"The mitosis one. The one you showed me yesterday."

"What was wrong with it."

"It was boring."

"It was not boring, it was a time-lapse, that's a classic, you can watch a cell actually divide, it's-"

"It's a classic because it's boring. They're sixteen, Grace. You can't show them a YouTube video of an onion root tip and expect them to feel anything."

"You don't need them to feel anything, you need them to understand the phases of-"

"You need them to feel something or they won't remember it on Monday."

He sits back on his heels. The screwdriver is now pointed at you, vaguely, the way someone points a pen when they're making a real point. The smudge on his forearm has migrated to his cheek. You are not going to tell him about the smudge.

"Okay, what would you do."

"Yeast."

"Yeast."

"Yeast. Sugar. A balloon on top of a bottle. Let them watch something multiply in real time. Make it gross. Make the balloon get huge."

"That's fermentation, that's not-"

"It's cells doing things, Grace, which is the whole point of biology, and it moves, and it smells weird, and they will remember it on Monday."

"It's not the same unit."

"And yet."

"You can't just-"

"I'm right and you know it."

"You are not right, you are-"

"I'm right."

"Will you let me finish a-"

"No."

He stares at you. You can see him deciding whether to be annoyed or to concede, and you can see him land on annoyed because annoyed is more fun and he knows you'll keep going if he picks it. This is the part where he is at his most dangerous, which is to say his most attractive, which is to say flushed and animated and almost certainly about to lecture you, and you have come to enjoy this part so much that you are now actively engineering it.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. First of all-"

"Mm-hm."

"First of all, mitosis is foundational, you cannot just swap it out for-"

"Mm-hm."

"Stop saying mm-hm at me."

"Mm-hm."

He drops the screwdriver again. He does not pick it up this time. He stands up. He is now taller than you, marginally, which he usually corrects for by being seated or stooping or holding equipment, but he is doing none of those things now and you have to tip your chin up to keep the eye contact, which you do, because losing the eye contact would be losing.

"You're impossible."

"You're cute when you're losing an argument."

It comes out exactly how you wanted it to. Dry. Throwaway. Just the right amount of warmth to make him not know what to do with it. You watch it land. You watch him try to pick it up and find that it doesn't fit in any of his existing folders, and you watch him put it down again.

"I'm not losing."

"You're losing, Grace. Also you have toner on your face."

"What? Where?"

"Your cheek."

He swipes at the wrong cheek. The smudge stays exactly where it was. He looks at you for confirmation and you nod, lying, very gently, with the smallest possible smile.

"Did I get it?"

"Yeah. All gone."

"Thanks." He smiles at you. The smudge is still there. It is, if anything, slightly worse now. "What was I saying-"

"You were losing an argument about mitosis."

"I was winning an argument about mitosis, I just hadn't-"

"Sure."

"Hey."

You push off the wall. You step into his space. Not enough to touch. Enough to make him notice. You reach up like you're going to pick something off his shoulder, and you don't, and his breath catches in a way he is not aware of, and you step back again and you turn around.

"Where are you-"

"Bye, Grace."

"You can't just leave in the middle of-"

"You'll figure it out."

"That's not how arguments-"

You wave over your shoulder without turning around. You can hear him muttering to himself behind you, something about yeast, something about the whole point of biology in a voice that is trying to sound dismissive and is not succeeding. You keep walking. You are smiling so hard your face hurts.

In your classroom you sit down at your desk and put your forehead on the cool lab bench for a second and think, with great clarity, I am going to get in so much trouble.

—

The staff room at lunch on Wednesday is at maximum density, which means six adults trying to eat at a round table that comfortably seats four, and one microwave that has been making the same humming noise since September.

You sit next to him.

There are two open seats when you walk in. One is next to Ryland. The other is next to the new health teacher, whose name is, you have finally remembered, Brenda. You sit next to Ryland. Brenda watches you do it. Brenda is, you have come to understand over the last month, much sharper than her cardigan suggests.

"Hi," Ryland says, without looking up. He is eating a sandwich and grading at the same time, which is a thing he does, which is something the staff room has been trying to break him of since September and has accepted it cannot.

"Hi."

"I brought too many chips."

"Did you."

"Mm."

He nudges the bag toward you without looking up. You take one. You take two. On the third one he finally glances over, mildly, and says, "leave me some, you maniac," and goes back to grading.

Across the table, Brenda watches this entire exchange with the steady, professional interest of a woman watching a wildlife documentary.

"What are you grading," you ask him.

"Quizzes."

"Same quizzes as Friday?"

"Different quizzes. There are always quizzes. Quizzes are a renewable resource."

"You should pace yourself."

"I should do a lot of things."

You rest your chin on his shoulder to read what he's writing. You do this casually. You do this very casually. He does not move. He does not flinch. He keeps writing. The only thing that happens is his pen pauses, briefly, mid-sentence, and then resumes.

Across the table, Brenda raises an eyebrow at you.

You raise one back.

Brenda takes a long, deliberate sip of her diet coke.

"Stop reading over my shoulder," Ryland says, mildly.

"I'm not reading."

"You are literally reading, your eyes are on the page-"

"I'm checking your handwriting. Your handwriting is bad. You should know your handwriting is bad."

"My handwriting is fine, my students can read my handwriting-"

"Your students are guessing, Grace, they have built up a system-"

"Will you get off me."

"No."

He sighs. He keeps writing. You stay where you are with your chin on his shoulder for a full thirty seconds, and then, because you have made your point, you sit up. You take another one of his chips. He does not look at you. He does, however, push the bag a little further toward you, which is not nothing.

Across the table, Brenda is now openly looking at you.

"What," you say.

"Nothing."

"Brenda."

"Nothing."

"What."

Brenda smiles. Brenda has a smile that should be on a poster somewhere as a warning.

"You two seem cosy," she says.

Ryland looks up. He looks at Brenda. He looks at you. He looks back at Brenda.

"Do we?" he says, genuinely puzzled.

Brenda, very slowly, very deliberately, looks from him to you and back to him. She lets the look land. She is, you realise, giving him time. She is leaving the space open for him to clock the joke. She is being kind about it. She is being unbearable.

He does not clock the joke.

"We've worked together for a while," he says, by way of explanation. "We share a department."

"Mm," says Brenda.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He looks at you for backup. You look at him with your most innocent face. He looks at Brenda. He looks at his sandwich. He shrugs and goes back to grading.

Brenda, across the table, mouths at you, very clearly: oh my god.

You mouth back: I know.

She mouths: does he?

You mouth: no.

She closes her eyes for one second like a woman gathering strength. She opens them. She picks up her diet coke. She holds it up to you in a small, ironic toast, and drinks.

You take another chip.

"Stop eating them," Ryland says, without looking up.

"You said you brought too many."

"That was before you ate eight of them-"

"I have eaten four."

"You've eaten eight-"

"Brenda, how many chips have I eaten."

Brenda, without missing a beat, in the kindest voice: "I'd say roughly twelve, sweetie."

"Brenda."

"What. I'm being a witness."

Ryland laughs. He laughs at the roughly twelve, sweetie in the way he laughs at things that have caught him off guard, fully, with his whole chest, and you watch him laugh and you watch Brenda watch you watch him laugh, and Brenda, very slightly, shakes her head at you.

The look on Brenda's face says: you are in so much trouble and you don't even know.

The look on your face, you suspect, says: I know, I know, I know.

Ryland eats his sandwich. He does not, for the rest of lunch, notice anything. When the bell goes he packs up his grading and stands and says see you later to the table in general and bye, you menace to you specifically, and he leaves.

Brenda waits exactly two seconds.

"Sweetie."

"Don't."

"Sweetie."

"Brenda, I swear to god-"

"He has no idea."

"I know he has no idea, Brenda, that's the point-"

"That's the point?"

"It's the whole point."

Brenda stares at you. Brenda, slowly, starts laughing. Brenda laughs until her eyes water. Brenda picks up her diet coke and her tupperware and stands up and pats you, once, on the shoulder, with great affection and great pity.

"Honey," she says, "that man is going to figure it out, and when he does I want a seat. Front row. Centre. I will pay."

"He's never going to figure it out."

"Mm."

"Brenda."

"Mm."

She leaves. You sit at the round table by yourself with the remains of his chips and you eat one more, slowly, and you think, with great satisfaction: I have got away with everything. I have got away with everything. There is no version of the world in which this catches up to me.

There is, in fact, exactly one version of the world in which this catches up to you. It catches up to you in nine days.

—

It is Thursday at 4pm and you are in his classroom because you have an excuse for being in his classroom, which is parent-teacher conferences tonight, which start at six, and which you have both decided to prep for together because misery loves company and you, specifically, love the company in question.

He is at the board. He is drawing a diagram. The diagram is for nobody. He is just drawing it because he is talking and his hands need to be doing something, and what his hands are doing is sketching the cell cycle in three colours of dry-erase marker because he found the three colours in a drawer and got excited.

You are sitting on a student desk. Not in the chair. On the desk. Your feet are swinging.

"So the trick," he is saying, "with the parent who comes in mad about the grade, the trick is you don't defend the grade, you walk them through what the assignment was asking for, and then you let them tell you whether their kid did it. Nine times out of ten they"

"Grace."

"What."

"Practice on me."

"What?"

"Practice the speech. On me. I'll be the mad parent."

He turns around. He has a green marker in one hand and a red in the other and his glasses are sliding. He considers you for a second. Then he shrugs.

"Okay. Sure. Hit me."

You straighten up on the desk. You arrange your face into something stern. You point at him.

"My son is failing your class and I want to know why."

"Right, okay, thank you for coming in. Tell me what you understand the assignment to have been."

"The assignment was to do the worksheet."

"Right, and what did the worksheet ask-"

"How would I know, I didn't do the worksheet, my son did the worksheet, that's the whole issue."

He laughs. The red marker drops. He bends down to pick it up. When he straightens, he has refocused, and you can see him slot you into the mad parent file in his head and start running the script for real.

"Okay, well, let's pull up the assignment together, and we can-"

"Don't handle me, Grace, I am a very upset parent-"

"I'm not handling you, I'm meeting you where you are-"

"That's the same thing."

"It's really not."

"Grace."

"Yeah."

"What if I asked you a really inappropriate question. As the parent. What would you do."

His face does nothing. He is, you realise, still in the script. He is treating what if I asked you a really inappropriate question as a real prep question, which it is, because parents do ask inappropriate questions, and he is now standing at the board considering it seriously.

"Depends what kind," he says. "If it's about, like, my personal life I just redirect, I say let's focus on-"

"What if I asked you out."

He blinks.

"What."

"What if I, the mad parent, asked you out, what's the redirect."

"That has never happened to me."

"I'm asking what would you do."

"I-"

"Hypothetically."

"I'd say I'm flattered but I have a policy."

"What's the policy."

"I don't have a policy. I'd come up with one. That's the deflection, you cite a policy that does not exist and the conversation moves on."

"Mm. And what if I kept pushing."

"Why would you keep pushing."

"Because I'm a mad parent and now I'm a mad horny parent."

He laughs. The laugh is a real laugh, the kind that takes him by surprise, and he has to put both markers down on the chalk tray and rub his face with one hand.

"That's not, that's not a real, you can't-"

"Answer the question, Grace."

"I would tell you, gently, that this is not appropriate, and I would walk you to the door."

"You'd walk me to the door."

"Yes."

"That's so condescending."

"It's firm. Firm is not condescending. There is a difference."

"Walk me to the door right now. Demonstrate."

"What?"

"Walk me to the door. Show me the technique."

He stares at you. You stare back. You are, you would like the record to show, sitting on a student desk in his classroom at 4:15 in the afternoon asking him to physically escort you to the door as a demonstration of professional boundary-setting, and you have done this in the same voice you would use to ask him to pass the salt.

He shakes his head. He is smiling.

"You're trying to get me to do a bit."

"I'm trying to learn from a master."

"You are trying to get me to do a bit."

"Is it working."

"A little."

"Walk me to the door, Grace."

He sighs. He puts the markers down. He comes over to the desk. He offers you his hand, which is, you note, the most condescending possible part of the entire imaginary protocol, and you take it, and he pulls you off the desk and he tucks your hand into the crook of his elbow like a Victorian dance instructor and walks you, at a slow processional pace, the eight feet to the classroom door.

At the door he stops. He turns to face you. He looks at you with infinite kindness.

"Ma'am," he says, "I really appreciate you coming in tonight. I think we should leave the rest of this conversation for another time. Please drive safely."

You stare at him.

"That was so good," you say.

"I told you."

"You're really good at this."

"It's mostly just eye contact and a soft voice, that's all of it-"

"Do it again."

"What?"

"Do it again. The eye contact thing. Do the soft voice thing again."

"I'm not gonna-"

"Please. For research."

He laughs. He shakes his head. He does not do it again. He pulls his arm out of yours and goes back to the board and picks up the green marker and stares at the cell cycle diagram like he has lost his place in it, which he has.

You sit back on the desk. You swing your feet. You watch him try to find his place. You think, with a deep and slightly horrible warmth: I could have asked him almost literally anything just now.

You file this. You file it carefully. You will use it.

—

It is raining on Tuesday and the staff parking lot smells like wet asphalt and the school smells like wet asphalt with a top note of cafeteria, and you are in the supply closet at the back of the science wing because Mrs. Alvarez sent you for graph paper and there isn't any, but there is, apparently, Ryland Grace.

He has his back to you. He is up on a step stool, reaching for something on the top shelf, and the cardigan is gone today which means the t-shirt is doing the work alone, and the t-shirt is a faded grey one that says NEVER TRUST AN ATOM, THEY MAKE UP EVERYTHING and is riding up at the back. You can see a strip of skin above his belt. You can see, also, that he has not heard you come in.

You could announce yourself. You could clear your throat. You could leave and pretend this didn't happen.

You stand there for a full five seconds and look.

"Grace."

He jumps. The step stool wobbles. He catches the edge of the shelf with one hand and steadies himself and turns to look at you with the box of microscope slides he's been retrieving clutched against his chest like a shield.

"Jesus. Hi. Hi."

"Hi."

"You scared me."

"I said your name."

"You said it from very close."

"I said it from the doorway, Grace, I'm in the doorway."

He looks at the doorway. You are, in fact, in the doorway. He blinks.

"Right. Okay. Sorry. I was concentrating."

"On the slides."

"On the slides, yeah."

You step into the closet. It is not a large closet. It was not designed for two adults and a step stool. He notices this approximately one second after you do, and you watch him calculate whether to come down off the stool, and you watch him decide that coming down would require him to be closer to you for a brief transitional period, and you watch him stay where he is.

"What do you need?" he says.

"Graph paper."

"There's no graph paper."

"I'm finding that out."

"There hasn't been graph paper in this closet since October."

"Why is that."

"Nobody knows. It's one of the great mysteries of the science wing."

You step closer. You step closer on purpose, which is a thing you have started doing this week. There is a shelf you are looking at, theoretically, but the shelf is past him and you do not actually need anything from it, and the closet is now small enough that you can smell his deodorant and the faint chalk-and-coffee smell that lives in his cardigan when he is wearing his cardigan and apparently lives in his t-shirt when he is not.

"Move," you tell him.

"I'm on a step stool."

"Move the step stool."

"Where am I supposed to-"

"Down, Grace. Move it down. Get off the step stool."

"Okay. Okay, hang on."

He climbs down. The closet, already small, gets meaningfully smaller. He is now standing approximately a foot in front of you holding a box of microscope slides and there is nowhere for either of you to go because the step stool is between him and the door and you are between him and the shelf and the shelf is between everyone and dignity.

"Sorry," he says.

"For what."

"I don't know. The stool. I'm in your way."

"You are in my way."

"Yeah."

You do not move. He looks at you. You look at him. His glasses are sliding down his nose again and he can't push them up because of the slides, and you watch him try to do it with his shoulder, which does not work, and you watch him give up.

You reach up and push them up his nose for him.

You do it slowly. You do it slowly on purpose. Your fingertip rests on the bridge of his nose for one beat longer than gravity requires and then you take it away, and his glasses are where they should be, and your hand is back at your side, and you have, in the closet, just done something that you cannot pretend you did not mean to do.

He has stopped breathing. He is not making a big show of having stopped breathing. He has just, quietly, stopped. The colour in his face is doing something interesting. You watch it happen with the polite scientific interest of a person observing a reaction from behind a safety screen.

"Thanks," he says.

"You're welcome."

"I had my hands full."

"I noticed."

He is looking at the slides. He is looking at the slides very specifically and not at you, which is a tactical decision and not a successful one because you can see his pulse in his neck.

"Grace."

"Yeah."

"Look at me."

He looks up. You hold the eye contact. He is the one who is supposed to break it. He is always the one who breaks it. He does not break it this time. Something behind his eyes is doing maths and you cannot see the equation but you can see the shape of it, and the shape of it is new.

"Was there," he says, "something specific you needed, or-"

"No."

"You came in here for graph paper."

"There's no graph paper."

"So you can-"

"What are you going to do about it, Grace."

You did not plan to say it. You said it. It came out in the same dry deli voice as everything else, and it landed in the closet between you, and he did not move and you did not move and the fluorescent light buzzed.

"About the graph paper," he said. Even.

"Sure."

"Or about you standing in a supply closet making it difficult for me to retrieve microscope slides."

"Whichever you'd like."

"Mm."

He has, you realise, said mm. He has said it the way you say it. Not at full volume yet. Just a test. He is testing the word in his own mouth and you are listening to him do it and you have the dim, dawning sense that you should leave, that this is the moment when a more sensible woman would leave, and you are not a sensible woman, you are a woman in a supply closet two inches from a man in a faded t-shirt, and you are not leaving.

You step back. Not because you want to. Because if you do not step back in the next two seconds you will do something that does not belong in a supply closet on school property at ten past three on a Tuesday.

"I have to go," you say.

"Okay."

"Mrs. Alvarez. The graph paper."

"There isn't any."

"I'm going to tell her there isn't any."

"Okay."

"Bye, Grace."

"Bye."

You walk out. You walk down the hallway. You make it to the bathroom and you lock the stall door and you put your hand over your mouth and you laugh once, breathlessly, and you think: Okay. Okay. We are escalating now. Apparently we are escalating now. Apparently that's the game.

You are very pleased with yourself. You are giddy with how pleased with yourself you are. You wash your hands and you look at yourself in the mirror and you smile, and you tell your reflection, very quietly: that wasn't even my final form.

—

The department meeting is on Wednesday afternoon, last period, in the chemistry lab, because the chemistry lab has the most chairs and Alvarez likes the chairs.

You get there first. You sit at the back, on a lab stool, with your coffee. The coffee is from the staff room and is therefore terrible, and you are drinking it anyway because you are riding the high of yesterday and the high needs a delivery system. Alvarez comes in. Brenda comes in. The other bio teacher comes in. Two earth science people come in. Dale, for reasons that are not explained, sticks his head in, sees the meeting, says nope, and leaves.

Ryland comes in last.

He sees you at the back and he gives you a small, careful nod. The cardigan is buttoned today. The cardigan is buttoned. You have not, in eight months, seen him button the cardigan. He sits at the front. He does not sit near you.

Alvarez starts the meeting. There is a budget thing. There is a thing about field trips. There is a thing about the standardised tests, which everybody groans at, and you groan with them, performatively, and you catch Ryland's eye while you are groaning, and he looks away.

He looks away.

Something cool and bright moves through your chest. You take a sip of the coffee. You sit up a little straighter.

"Last item," Alvarez says. "Curriculum review. We're being asked to integrate more cross-disciplinary work. Each of you, briefly, what you're doing this quarter that touches another science."

The earth science people go first. They are doing something with rocks. Nobody is interested.

Brenda goes. She is doing something with nutrition that touches on chemistry. You nod politely. Brenda, across the room, gives you a look that you cannot quite read.

The other bio teacher goes.

Then Ryland.

He clears his throat. He uncrosses his legs. He says, "Yeah, so, I'm doing the cell unit right now, and I've been trying to bring in some chemistry, the basic biochem, ATP, you know, what makes the cell go, and-"

"Boring," you say.

It is loud enough for the room to hear. You did not plan to say it. You said it anyway. It comes out in the deli voice, mild and dry, and the room registers it.

There is a beat.

Ryland says, "I'm sorry?"

"I said it's boring. ATP is boring. You're doing it wrong."

The room is now looking at you. Alvarez is looking at you. Brenda is looking at you with her mouth very slightly open. Ryland is looking at you with an expression you have not seen on him before, which is carefully neutral.

"Okay," he says.

"Sorry," you say, not sorry. "Continue."

"No, please, you have-"

"No, no, you go. You were saying."

"You said I was doing it wrong."

"I shouldn't have interrupted. Go ahead."

The room is still looking at you. Alvarez has her pen down. You take a sip of your coffee with the very faint, very pleased awareness that you have just walked over a line that, for the past eight months, you have been carefully drawing in pencil and erasing.

"No," Ryland says. He has put his hands flat on the lab bench in front of him. "I want to hear it. What am I doing wrong."

"I don't want to derail."

"You've already derailed. Tell me."

His voice has not gone up. It has not gone tight. It has, if anything, gone softer, which is somehow worse. You can feel the room watching. You can feel Brenda watching. You feel, for the first time in eight months, visible in the science department in a way that you cannot entirely control, and you make the choice, because you are a woman who has decided this week to make every wrong choice available to her, to commit.

"You're just telling them about ATP," you say. "You're standing there and telling them. Of course they're bored. Make them do something. Make them generate it. Make them watch sugar burn in a calorimeter and connect it back. Don't narrate biochemistry to a sixteen-year-old, Grace, they will fall asleep."

"Okay."

"I mean it. It's lazy teaching."

The word lazy lands. You hear it land. The room hears it land. Alvarez's eyebrows go up a quarter of an inch. Brenda makes a sound that is not quite a sound. Ryland's hands are still flat on the bench. He has not, you realise, looked away from you since you said the word boring. He is looking at you the way he looks at a problem he is in the middle of solving. He is doing maths.

"Lazy teaching," he repeats, evenly.

"You heard me."

"I did. I just wanted to make sure I had it right."

"You had it right."

"Okay."

He looks down at the lab bench. He breathes out through his nose. When he looks back up, the carefully neutral face is still there, and that is what tells you, in a small cold rush, that something has gone wrong.

He has not flushed. He has not stammered. He has not done the half-smile. He has not done any of it, and the absence of all of it is much, much louder than the presence of any of it has ever been.

"I think those are good points," he says. To the room. Not to you. "I'll look at the unit. Thanks."

Alvarez says, "Okay, well. Moving on."

The meeting moves on. You sit at the back with your coffee and you do not hear another word of it because your blood is doing something strange and your stomach is doing something stranger, and at the end of it Ryland gets up and gathers his folder and his pen and he walks out without looking back, and he does not say goodbye to you, which he has not, in eight months, ever not done.

You sit on the lab stool after the room has cleared.

Alvarez stops in the doorway. She looks at you. She says, very dry, "Lazy teaching."

"I was making a point."

"Mm."

"It was a fair point."

"Mm."

She leaves. Brenda, who has been waiting, comes over and sits on the lab stool next to yours.

"Sweetie."

"Don't."

"Sweetie."

"Brenda, I-"

"That was the front row, wasn't it. I was sitting in the front row. I just want to confirm that."

You put your face in your hands.

She pats your shoulder, once, with great affection and great pity, and she leaves.

You sit there. You drink the rest of the cold terrible coffee. You think, okay, that was too far, and then you think, no it wasn't, he can take it, and then you think, why didn't he look at me, and then you think, why did he say it like that, and then, slowly, with the same kind of dread that you used to feel as a kid when you realised, three seconds too late, that the adult was actually mad this time:

oh.

oh, no.

You sit on the lab stool for a long time. You do not, when you eventually leave, walk past his classroom.

—

You don't see him on Wednesday after the meeting. You don't see him on Thursday.

This is not, on the face of it, alarming. You have prep periods that don't overlap. He has lunch duty on Thursdays. The science wing is small but it is not so small that you cross paths every day by physics alone, and there are weeks when you only see him at the Friday department meeting and that's fine, that's the normal amount, and the normal amount is what you are getting, and you are fine.

You are not fine.

You walk past his classroom three times on Thursday for no reason. The door is open. He is at his desk. He is grading. He does not look up. The third time, you stand in the hallway just past the door, out of his sightline, and you listen for a minute. He is humming. Whatever he is humming has no tune. He sounds, by any acoustic measure available to you, completely fine.

He sounds completely fine and you are losing your entire mind, and the asymmetry of this is the worst thing that has happened to you all year.

On Thursday evening you sit at your kitchen table and you grade a stack of redox quizzes and you make notes for Friday and you do not draft a text to him, three separate times. You are very proud of yourself. The not-drafting is, you tell yourself, a discipline. The not-drafting is restraint. The not-drafting is, you have decided, exactly the right move, because if you reach out now you will lose whatever ground you have left, and you cannot afford to lose ground when you are already, by your private estimate, halfway down the hill.

You go to bed. You do not sleep well.

—

Friday you go and find him.

You tell yourself you are not going to find him. You tell yourself you are going to the staff room for coffee, which is true, and that if he happens to be there, fine, and if he is not, also fine. You tell yourself this on the way down the hallway and you tell yourself this with such conviction that by the time you push the door open you have almost convinced yourself.

He is at the round table by the window.

The cardigan is gone today. The t-shirt is white and says SCHRODINGER'S CAT IS in block letters and then, underneath, in smaller letters, DEAD and ALIVE side by side. He is grading. He has a red pen in his hand. There is no pen behind his ear.

"Grace."

He looks up.

"Hey."

That's it. Hey. No real smile. No what's up. No come tell me about your day. Just hey, and then his eyes go back to the paper in front of him.

You pour your coffee. The pot is nearly empty and what comes out is the dregs and you drink it anyway because the alternative is admitting that you came in here specifically to engineer this conversation and that the conversation is going badly already.

You sit down across from him. Not next to him. Across. Eye contact territory.

He does not look up.

"What are you grading."

"Quizzes."

"Cell unit."

"Mm."

"How are they doing."

"They're doing okay."

He has not, in eight months, given you a one-word answer to a question about his students. You file this. You file it next to him not saying goodbye, and the file is starting to bulge.

"Grace."

"Yeah."

"Look at me."

He looks at you.

For a fraction of a second, before his face does the polite teacher thing, you see something underneath it. Something a little tired. Something a little wary. Something a little amused, which is the part that makes your stomach do the wrong thing.

It is gone almost before you can name it but you saw it and he knows you saw it.

"What's up," he says, evenly.

"Nothing's up."

"You said look at me."

"I wanted you to look at me."

"Okay."

He keeps looking at you. He is, you realise, much better at eye contact than you had previously given him credit for. He has been letting you win the eye contact, this whole time. He is not letting you win it now.

You break first.

You look down at your coffee. Your face is hot. You can feel it. You have not, you realise, been the one whose face gets hot. That has been his job. You have been doing the lighting and he has been doing the burning and the division of labour has been very clear and very pleasant and the division of labour has now apparently been re-negotiated without your input.

"Your shirt's bad," you tell the coffee.

"Thanks."

"It's worse than the electron one."

"Mm."

"It doesn't even rhyme."

"It's a superposition joke. It doesn't have to rhyme."

"All the good ones rhyme."

"That's not true. That's a thing you just made up."

"It's true. It's a known fact about jokes."

"Show me the data."

You look up. You did not mean to look up. You looked up because show me the data is the first thing he has said in this conversation that sounds like him, and it caught you, and you looked up to confirm it, and now you are looking at him, and he is looking at you with an expression you do not entirely recognise.

"I don't have data," you say.

"Then it's not a known fact."

"It's a vibe-based fact."

"That's not a category."

"It's a category I just made."

"You can't just make categories."

"Watch me."

He smiles. Small. Closed-mouth. It does not reach his eyes in the way his smiles usually do.

"About the meeting," he says.

Your stomach drops two floors.

"What about it."

"You called my teaching lazy."

"I was making a point."

"Mm."

"Grace."

"Mm."

"Stop saying mm."

"You say mm."

"That's different."

"How."

"It's-"

You don't have an answer to how. You did not anticipate having to answer how. You stare at him. He keeps grading. The red pen moves down the page in even, small ticks. He is not, you realise, actually reading the quiz. He is making the motions of grading. He is making the motions of being busy. He is doing what you do when you want a conversation to end and you don't want to be the one to end it.

He is making you end it.

"Okay," you say. You stand up. "Okay, fine."

"See you tomorrow."

"It's Friday, Grace."

"See you Monday."

"Yeah."

You walk out of the staff room. You walk down the hallway. You walk into your classroom and you close the door, which you do not normally do, and you sit at your desk and you put your face in your hands.

He didn't even look.

That's a lie. He noticed you. He noticed you and he chose not to act on it, which is worse, which is much worse, which is, you are realising with a slow and terrible clarity, the same move you have been doing to him for eight months.

Oh.

Oh, no.

--

"No. No. Absolutely not. You cannot. You cannot just draw a picture of the sun and write 'it is hot' and act like that's a complete answer. I said explain why we have seasons, Marcus. Seasons. You've experienced them. You own a coat."

A pause. The sound of a pen tapping.

"You know what, fine. Fine. I'll give you credit for the drawing because the sun does look like that. That's a good sun. But Marcus, buddy, 'it is hot' is not science. 'It is hot' is a complaint."

More pen tapping.

"Oh, and now on the back you've drawn a snowman and written 'it is cold.' Marcus. That is the opposite of the same wrong answer."

You lie there in the dark, staring at your ceiling, and think: I'm going to have to move.

—

You don't move.

You do, however, meet him. Not on purpose. In the lift, on a Wednesday morning, because apparently his schedule overlaps with yours in the one way you'd rather it didn't.

He's taller than he sounds through the wall. That's the first stupid thing you notice. The second is the shirt, which is faded grey and reads I MAKE BAD CHEMISTRY JOKES BECAUSE ALL THE GOOD ONES ARGON.

"Hey! You're in 4B, right?" He sticks his hand out. Smiles like this is something he's been looking forward to. "Ryland. Grace. Ryland Grace. That's. One name, not two options."

You give him yours, because you were raised with manners, and then you give him about four seconds of eye contact before looking at the lift buttons.

"So listen, if you ever need anything. Sugar, eggs, someone to explain the hot water schedule because it's honestly deranged, I made a spreadsheet."

"Thanks," you say. The doors open. You leave.

You're not unfriendly. You're just not looking for a friend in this building. Especially not one who grades homework out loud at midnight.

The rants don't stop. They become furniture.

Tuesdays are grading nights. You learn this the way you learn anything about him, which is involuntarily. Tuesdays he argues with Marcus (who never spells anything right), with a girl named Priya (who is "genuinely too smart for this class, which is a me problem"), and occasionally with the textbook itself, which he seems to consider a personal enemy.

Thursdays are cooking. Or what he calls cooking. You hear a pan clang, then a long silence, then: "Okay. Okay okay okay. That's not. That's fine. Smoke doesn't always mean fire. Smoke sometimes means. A learning opportunity."

On a Friday night in your second week, you hear him explain the Drake Equation to absolutely nobody.

Not on a phone call. Not to a guest. To his empty apartment, at conversational volume, with the cadence of someone who is simply thinking out loud and does not know or does not care that the walls are made of wet tissue paper.

"So the thing about the Drake Equation is that it's not really an equation. It's supposed to tell you how many alien civilizations are out there in the galaxy. Like, actually out there, right now, sending signals. And the way it works is you take all these factors. How many stars are born every year, how many of those have planets, how many of those planets can support life, how many actually develop life, and then you multiply them all together and you get a number. Except every single term is a guess! Every single one! It's guesses multiplied by guesses and we treat the output like it means something, which, honestly? Respect. It's basically a prayer with variables. You're saying, 'God, I know you're probably not listening, but here's my estimate for how many of you there aren't.'"

You are lying in bed. It is 10:30pm. You are smiling, and you are annoyed about it.

—

The lift again, two days later.

You're carrying groceries. He's carrying what appears to be a crate of second-hand lab equipment, because of course he is.

"Hey, 4B!" He shifts the crate to one hip. Something glass clinks inside. "Quick question. Totally unrelated to anything. Do you happen to know if there's a rule about. Small controlled experiments. In residential units."

"What kind of experiments."

"Small ones. Very small. Mostly safe."

"Mostly."

"Like ninety percent safe. Ninety-two. I could get it to ninety-five if I had a fume hood, which I don't, hence the question."

"Please don't blow up the building."

He grins. It's the wrong response and he knows it, and the grin says he knows it, and the grin also says he is definitely going to do whatever he was already going to do before he asked. "Noted. Noted! That's. That's not a no, technically, but I hear you."

The lift doors close. You stand in your kitchen putting away groceries and realize you didn't tell him off. You meant to. He just talked past the place where you would have.

—

You hear him sneeze eleven times in a row on a Saturday morning. You count. Not on purpose. But the walls don't give you a choice, and after the sixth one you're committed.

Eleven sneezes. Then silence. Then, very quietly: "Ow."

A pause.

"Okay. No more. We're done. That's. The body is not designed for that. That was structural damage. I think I detached something."

You press your face into your pillow so he doesn't hear you laugh, and something in that gesture. The hiding. The fact that you don't want him to know you're listening.

That's the first time you think: oh no.

Not because of anything he's done. Just because you've started listening on purpose, and you're not sure when that happened.

—

He leaves something at your door on a Sunday afternoon.

A printout. A neatly formatted spreadsheet, actually, with the building's hot water schedule annotated in handwriting that is surprisingly legible for someone this chaotic. There's a post-it note stuck to the top: Made you a copy! The 7-7:30am window is the sweet spot. Also Tuesdays the pressure drops around 6pm, I think there's a valve thing, I'm investigating. — R

He signed it with his initial. Like you might not know which neighbour was conducting an investigation into the building's plumbing.

You run into him at the mailboxes the next morning and he looks up, hopeful. "Did you get the. The hot water thing? I slid it under your door, I wasn't sure if you."

"I got it. Thanks."

The thanks is a full stop. You hear yourself do it. The bright, closed, conversation-over thanks that leaves no room for a follow-up. You grab your mail and turn toward the stairs.

Behind you, a small pause. "Oh. Okay. Cool. Well, if you ever want to know about the valve thing, it's actually pretty interesting, there's this."

"I'm good. Thanks."

You don't look back. You take the stairs instead of the lift because the lift is a box and you can't be in a box with him right now, and you can feel him standing at the mailboxes behind you, still holding his own mail, still mid-sentence about a valve.

The spreadsheet is on your kitchen counter. It is helpful. It is accurate. The 7am window is, in fact, the sweet spot.

You use it every day and you never mention it.

—

The next time you see him in the hallway, there's a scorch mark on his door frame.

"It's cosmetic," he says, before you've said anything.

"I wasn't going to ask."

"You were looking at it."

"Because it's a scorch mark. On your door."

"Cosmetic scorch mark. Important distinction. The experiment went great, actually. The experiment itself was flawless. The experiment's proximity to a kitchen towel was the issue."

You should be angry. You should say something about lease agreements and fire safety and the fact that you live right there, eight inches of drywall away from whatever he just did to a kitchen towel.

Instead you say, "You're a disaster," and it comes out wrong. It comes out warm. Like you've said it before. Like you say it to people you like.

His face does something complicated. Surprise, maybe. Like he expected the version of you from the lift and got someone else for a second.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, that's. That's been noted. Extensively."

You go inside and close the door and stand there for a second with your keys still in your hand.

The thing about the wall is that it lets you know him without any of the risk of knowing him. You get the unperformed version. The late-night, talking-to-himself, arguing-with-homework, burning-things, sneezing-eleven-times version. And that version is.

A problem.

Because in person, you can handle him. In person, he's your annoying neighbour who does small controlled experiments and doesn't respect noise ordinances, and you can be cold to that guy. You have been. That version of you works fine.

It's the other version that's the problem. The one lying in the dark, pressing your face into a pillow so he won't hear you laugh. That version likes him. That version has been listening on purpose for days and hasn't told the daytime you, and if those two versions of you ever have to exist in the same room as him at the same time, you are in serious trouble.

—

The first time, you don't know what you're hearing.

It's late. Past midnight. You're half asleep, that loose dissolving place where sounds don't fully register as real, and through the wall there's. Something. A rhythm that doesn't belong to anything you can file. Not talking, not the TV, not him pacing the way he does sometimes when he's working through a problem.

Breathing. Uneven. A little ragged.

Then a sound. Low, caught, bitten off. Like he started to say something and stopped himself. And then a rhythm beneath it, steady, unmistakable. The soft, slick sound of a hand moving.

Your eyes open.

You lie very still. The way you'd lie still if a noise woke you up and you weren't sure if it was inside your apartment or out, except you know exactly where it's coming from. You know which room. You know which wall. You know that the headboard of his bed is probably eighteen inches from yours because you've thought about the floor plan and you wish you hadn't.

He's quiet. Controlled. Nothing like the daytime version, the one who narrates at full volume, who can't keep a thought inside his head for longer than it takes to form. This version is trying not to be heard, and that effort. The restraint of it. The idea of him biting down on every sound while his hand works himself over, steady and deliberate, because he knows the walls are thin, because he's always known the walls are thin.

Your heart is pounding and you are not moving.

It doesn't last long. A shift. The rhythm speeds up, just slightly, and then a breath that's sharper than the ones before it. A groan he almost catches in time. Then quiet. Real quiet. The kind that settles.

You stare at the ceiling. Your body is warm in a way that has nothing to do with the blankets and everything to do with the fact that you just lay there and listened and you didn't stop listening and you could have put headphones in, you could have gone to the kitchen, you could have done anything, and you didn't.

You don't sleep well.

—

In the morning he's in the hallway. Jacket, backpack, bike helmet dangling from one hand, travel mug in the other. Normal. Completely normal. He gives you the same slightly-too-friendly smile he always gives you, the one you usually return with as little warmth as possible.

"Morning, 4B."

"Morning."

He holds the stairwell door for you. You walk through it without looking at him because if you look at him you will think about the sound he made, the caught one, the one he bit off, and you are not going to do that in the stairwell at 7:45am.

You do it on the bus instead.

—

Three days later, his bike is blocking your door.

Not entirely. Not maliciously. It's leaning against the wall between your doors at an angle that means you have to step around it, and it's not the first time, and you've been pretending it doesn't bother you because picking a fight with him about a bike felt petty before and now it feels impossible, because how are you supposed to stand in front of him and be annoyed about a bicycle wheel when you know what he sounds like when he comes.

But the bike is there. And you've had a long day. And you step around it and your bag catches the handlebar and the whole thing clatters sideways into your door with a sound that probably reaches the third floor.

His door opens. Of course it does.

"Oh. Hey. Sorry, was that. Did that fall? I was going to bring it inside, I just. I got distracted by this thing about axial tilt, which. Not relevant. Sorry. I'll move it."

He's in socks. No shoes, just socks, sliding across the hallway floor to grab the bike, and his hair is doing something unsupervised and he's wearing a shirt that says GEOLOGY ROCKS and you want to be irritated. You are irritated. You are also looking at his hands on the handlebars and thinking about his hands in the dark and you need to stop that immediately.

"It's the third time this week," you say, and it comes out sharper than you planned.

His face changes. The easy smile dims by a fraction. "Right. Yeah. No, you're right, I'll. I'll keep it inside. Sorry."

He wheels it into his apartment. You go into yours. The door closes and you stand there and feel like a terrible person, because he looked sorry, genuinely sorry, the way a golden retriever looks sorry, and you were cold to him because you can't figure out how to be anything else to his face.

Through the wall, you hear him lean the bike against something. A pause. Then, quietly: "Okay. Inside bike. Inside bike from now on. We can do that. That's fine."

He's talking to himself. He doesn't know you can hear.

You press your forehead against your door and close your eyes.

—

The third time. The fourth.

You stop keeping count because counting means admitting there's something to count, and you're not ready for that arithmetic.

But it's in your head now. Daytime, nighttime, all the time. He rants about a documentary he watched ("they got the scale of the solar system completely wrong, it's like they've never even seen the solar system, and I know nobody's seen the solar system but you could at least try") and your brain serves up the memory of his breathing, unbidden, laid right over his voice like a transparency. He talks, and you hear the other thing he sounds like. You can't unhear it. The information is in you now, permanent, and every time he opens his mouth in the hallway you feel it flicker behind your sternum like a pilot light.

He holds the door for you again on a Thursday. You say thanks and he says "yeah, of course" and his voice is just his voice, normal, unremarkable, and your whole body responds to it like a tuning fork and you hate this. You specifically hate this.

—

It's a Wednesday night when you hear your name.

He's been quiet today. No rants. No cooking disasters. You almost wondered if he was out, and then you heard the door close around ten, heard him move through his apartment in the dark, heard the bed.

You're lying on your side, facing the wall. You should roll over. You should put on a podcast. You should do literally anything other than lie here in the dark and wait for it, because that's what you're doing now, you're waiting for it, and if you had any self-respect at all you would.

He starts. And tonight he's not quiet about it.

Not loud, not the way he is during the day. But less careful. Like something in him has loosened or he's stopped trying to hold it, and you can hear more than breathing, you can hear him, the sounds he makes when he's not monitoring them, rough and open and. God.

Your hand is on your stomach. Then lower. Just resting. Not yet.

He says something. Muffled. Into the pillow, maybe, or against his arm. You can't make it out and your whole body goes tight trying to, which is insane, you are straining to hear your neighbour masturbate and this is not the person you thought you were but apparently it's the person you are now.

Then he says it again. Clearer this time. Like he moved his head, like he turned toward the wall.

Your name.

Not moaned. Not gasped. Said. Like a sentence he's been thinking and finally let out. Like he's been turning it over in his mouth and decided, just this once, to stop swallowing it.

And that's it. That's the thing you were holding out against and it's gone.

Your hand moves. No more resting, no more hovering. You touch yourself with his voice still in the wall, still in your bloodstream, and it's not careful, it's not slow. It's weeks of pretending you weren't listening and you are done pretending. You're wet, you've been wet since before he said your name, probably since you heard him start, and your fingers find a rhythm and it's his rhythm, the one you can hear through the wall, the one your body has apparently memorized without your permission.

On your back like this, staring up at the dark ceiling, you can hear everything. Every breath. Every shift of his weight. And you can hear yourself too, and that's the problem. Your breathing is too loud. The small sounds you're making are too loud. Everything in this apartment is a betrayal and the ceiling is right there not absorbing any of it.

You flip over.

Face down, pillow pulled tight under your head, your hand trapped beneath you now. This is a containment strategy. This is you being sensible about the acoustics of the situation.

Except.

The angle changes everything. Your weight settles onto your hand, onto your fingers, and gravity does something that your wrist alone wasn't doing. You grind down and the pressure is different here, fuller, your whole body behind it, and the first slow roll of your hips pulls a breath out of you that you bury in the pillow. You do it again. Again. Each time the weight of you pushes your fingers harder where you need them, and the pillow is in your teeth and the wall is right there, right beside you, and every sound he makes travels through it and into the mattress and into your chest.

He's still going. You can hear his breathing shift, rougher now, less measured, and you think about what that breath would feel like. Against your hair. Against the back of your neck. What that low, caught sound would do to you if it wasn't filtered through drywall and distance but pressed directly into your skin, his mouth on your throat, the vibration of it in your pulse point. If you were the one pulling those sounds out of him. Your fingers instead of his. Your name in his mouth not said to an empty room but said into the curve of your shoulder, said against your ear, said so close you could feel the shape of it.

Your hips roll down against your hand and you bite the pillowcase and think about his hands, the ones that held the handlebars, the ones that gesture when he talks, and what they would feel like replacing yours. How he'd touch you. Whether he'd be careful at first, the way he's careful about everything else when he thinks someone's watching, or whether he'd be like this. The nighttime version. Unmonitored. Honest.

You think about the sounds he doesn't let himself make during the day. The groan he almost caught in time that first night. What that sound would be if he stopped catching it. If he let it go into your mouth. If you swallowed it.

That's when the sound comes out.

Not when you expect it. Not at the finish. You grind down and your whole body is behind it now, the full weight of you bearing down onto your hand, and the angle is too good, too much, and the moan that comes out of you is the kind that starts in your chest and doesn't care about the pillow. It goes right through the cotton and the stuffing and into the room like the pillow isn't even there. Real. Unmistakable. The kind of sound that only means one thing.

You freeze. Face down, hand still pinned beneath you, every muscle locked.

On the other side of the wall, he has gone very still.

The silence is excruciating. Five seconds. Ten. You don't breathe. He doesn't breathe. Your hand is still between your legs and your heart is in your teeth and the whole building is holding its breath with you and you are going to die, you are going to actually die right here in this bed because he said your name and you moaned and he heard you and there is no version of this that is survivable.

Then. Slowly. He starts again.

And something about the way he starts. The pace of it. Deliberate. Like he heard you and the hearing made him harder. Like the sound you made was not a problem.

You press your forehead into the pillow. Your hand moves again. And this time you don't try to be quiet.

You grind down into your own fingers and match his rhythm and his breathing is rough and yours is rough and you are face down in your pillow thinking about his mouth on your neck and his weight on your back and the wall is nothing, the wall is air, the wall is the only reason you are not in his bed right now with his hand where yours is and his voice in your ear instead of in the plaster.

He's close. You can hear it the way you always can, the catch, the tightening, the way the sounds get shorter and less controlled. You're close too. Closer than you should be this fast, but you've been thinking about this for longer than tonight and your body knows it even if you've been lying to yourself about the timeline.

You come with your teeth in the pillow and your hips stuttering against your hand and a sound in your throat that you don't fully stop. It escapes. And it happens at almost the same moment he finishes on his side, and the symmetry of that is either coincidence or something worse than coincidence, and you don't want to think about which one.

The silence afterward is different from the other silences.

It has a shape. A weight. Like something has been set down in the room that wasn't there before and neither of you are going to acknowledge it but neither of you can pretend it isn't there.

You lie in the dark with your heart hammering and your hand still between your legs and you think: he heard that. He definitely heard that.

And the thing that should terrify you, the thing that keeps you awake for another hour staring at the wall that is not a wall, is that some part of you. The part you're not speaking to right now. Is glad.

—

In the morning, you decide it didn't happen.

Not the touching. That happened. You're not delusional. But the sound. The sound was not as loud as you think it was. You were face down in a pillow. Pillows are specifically designed to absorb sound, that's basically their whole job, and the wall is thin but it's still a wall, and he was. Busy. Distracted. Focused on other things. There is absolutely no reason to believe he heard anything.

You shower. You make coffee. You eat breakfast like a person who did not, twelve hours ago, grind herself into her own hand while listening to her neighbour say her name through a shared wall. That person does not exist. You are a different person. You are the person who eats cereal and checks email and has never thought about anyone's mouth on the back of her neck.

In the hallway, his door is closed. No bike. No scorch marks. No signs of life.

You go to work. You come home. The wall is silent. He's out, maybe, or grading quietly for once, and the silence should be a relief but instead it sits in your apartment like a held breath, and you keep catching yourself listening for him, and that makes you angry at yourself, which is at least a familiar feeling.

You go to bed. Nothing happens. You sleep.

See? Fine. You're fine.

—

The next evening, he starts ranting.

Something about a planet. Not a real planet, a hypothetical one, something to do with tidal locking and how one side would be permanently frozen and the other side would be permanently on fire and how that's "not even the interesting part, the interesting part is the terminator line, which. Okay, not the movie. Although also a great movie. But the line between the hot side and the cold side, this narrow strip where the temperature is juuust right, and that's where everything lives. Everything. All of life, all of civilisation, just this thin little ribbon of habitable space between too much and not enough."

He pauses. You hear him open the fridge.

"I mean, can you imagine? Your whole world is a margin. A border. You exist in the in-between and if you go too far in either direction you just. Burn up or freeze. You stay in the narrow part or you don't stay at all."

He's talking to no one. He's talking to his fridge. He's talking to his empty apartment at 9pm on a weeknight about the habitable zone of a hypothetical tidally locked planet and he doesn't know you're listening and his voice is the same voice that said your name two nights ago and you cannot do this anymore.

You just. Can't.

You're standing up before you've decided to stand up. You're at your front door before you've decided to leave. You're in the hallway in bare feet and a t-shirt and shorts and your hair is not ready for this and you are not ready for this but your body has apparently filed a motion to override your brain and the motion carried.

You knock.

The ranting stops. Footsteps. The click of a lock, and then his door opens and he's right there, closer than the wall has ever let him be, and he's wearing a faded t-shirt that says TRUST ME, I'M A SCIENTIST and his glasses are slightly crooked and he looks exactly like himself, which is the worst possible thing he could look like right now.

"Oh. Hey." Surprise. Not unwelcome surprise, just the regular kind. "Is everything. Did the bike. No, the bike's inside now, I moved the bike. Is it the noise? I know I was talking, I do that, I just. It's this thing about tidal locking that I. Sorry. I'll keep it down."

"You're always talking," you say, and it comes out wrong. Too flat. Too honest.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry." The apologetic face. The one you've seen in the lift, in the hallway, every time he's done something that requires a sorry. Easy. Practised. "I do that. I know I do that. I'll keep it down."

"Thank you."

That should be the end of it. That's a complete interaction. You have lodged your complaint and he has accepted it and now you can go home and never think about the habitable zone of a tidally locked planet or the sound of your own name in his mouth ever again.

But he doesn't close the door. He leans against the frame, arms folded, and looks at you with an expression you can't quite read.

"Out of curiosity," he says. "What can you hear, specifically. Like is it just. Volume? Or is it. Content."

"What?"

"I'm just trying to calibrate. For future reference. So I know what I need to keep down." Reasonable. Helpful. The considerate neighbour, adjusting his behaviour based on feedback. Nothing wrong with the question at all.

"I mean. Everything," you say. "The grading. The cooking. The. Monologues."

"The monologues." He smiles. Not the hallway smile. Something a shade closer to private. "Right. And that bothers you."

"It's. Loud."

"It's loud," he repeats. Nodding. Still leaning. Still watching. "So it's a volume issue."

"Yes."

"Just volume."

Something about the way he says just makes your stomach tighten. Like he's leaving a space in the sentence for you to fill and you are not going to fill it.

"Because the thing about thin walls," he says, "is that they go both ways."

The hallway gets very quiet.

"I can hear you too," he says. Simply. Like he's giving you a weather report. Like this is information he has been sitting on for a while and has made his peace with. "I can hear you come home. I can hear you laugh at things on your phone. I can hear you sing in the kitchen when you think no one's listening, and you always sing the same song wrong and it's." He pauses. "That's not the point."

You are going to die in this hallway. You are going to die in bare feet in front of a man in a novelty science shirt and they will find your body and the cause of death will be this exact moment.

"The point is that if you can hear everything," he says, and the word is careful now, weighted, placed, "then I think we both know this isn't really about the volume."

The floor drops.

He's not embarrassed. He's not fumbling. He's standing in his doorway with his arms folded and he is looking at you the way he looks at a problem he has already solved and is waiting for you to catch up to.

"The other night," he says. And his voice doesn't go soft or nervous. It stays steady. He is looking directly at you and he is not flinching. "I said your name. And you heard me."

You can't speak. You are physically present in this hallway but your voice has left the building.

"And I heard you."

"You." Your voice comes out airless. "You heard."

"I heard you start. After I said your name." He unfolds his arms. Lets them drop. And the steadiness in his voice flickers, just once, just enough for you to see what's underneath it. "And I heard the sound you made when you. Yeah."

"On purpose," you manage. "You said it on purpose."

"Yes."

The single syllable lands like a detonation. No fumbling. No apology. Just yes. He said your name while he touched himself and he meant to and he's not pretending otherwise and you have never in your life been less prepared for a conversation.

"I was testing something," he says, and a ghost of a smile surfaces. "Which sounds clinical and I promise it wasn't. It was. I wanted to know if you were listening. I thought you might be. I hoped you might be."

You are standing in a hallway in bare feet and this man has known, this whole time, every single thing you thought you were hiding, and he has been on the other side of the wall listening to you the way you were listening to him and neither of you said anything and he's just been. Waiting.

"Do you want to come in," he says, and it's not a question. The grammar is a question but his voice has dropped the question mark somewhere on the floor and what's left is just the sentence. An opening. A door that is already open, has been open, that you've been standing on either side of for weeks.

You step through it.

He closes the door behind you, and the click of the lock is the loudest thing in the world, and then his apartment is around you and it smells like him and looks like him and there's a bike leaning against the bookshelf and papers on the kitchen table and a coffee mug with a dinosaur on it and this is the other side of the wall. This is where the sounds come from.

"So," he says, behind you.

You turn.

He's closer than he was. Not touching. Just closer. Close enough that you can see the way his breathing has changed, the way his eyes are darker than they were in the hallway, the way his hands are at his sides and very deliberately not reaching for you, not yet, like he's giving you one more second to leave, one more exit, and he will let you take it if you want it.

You don't want it.

"So," you say back.

"You're not exactly friendly to me," he says, and the way he says it is not an accusation. It's an observation. The way a scientist notes a data point. "In person. You're friendly through the wall when you don't think I know you're there. But to my face you're."

"I know."

"Is that. Was that because of the bike, or because of."

"The bike. At first."

"And then?"

"And then I didn't know how to stop."

"Being unfriendly."

"Being unfriendly when I knew what you sounded like at night. Yeah."

The sound he makes. Low, involuntary, like you've said something that landed somewhere physical. The steady composure he's been holding cracks, just for a second, and what's underneath it is not calm. His hand comes up, and this time it doesn't go to his glasses. It goes to the side of your face, and his fingers are warm, and he's shaking slightly, and there it is. Under the patience, under the confidence, under the man who opened the door already knowing why you were there. He's shaking.

"Can I," he says.

"Yes."

He kisses you.

And it's nothing like the wall. The wall was distance and imagination and the shape of a sound you couldn't see. This is his mouth, warm and real and slightly off-center because he came in too fast, and his hand on your jaw tilting you into it, and the small desperate sound he makes against your lips is the one you've been hearing through plaster for weeks except now it's yours, it's happening because of you, and it sounds completely different when there's nothing between you and the source.

He pulls back just far enough to breathe. His forehead is against yours. His thumb is tracing your cheekbone and his eyes are closed and he says, very quietly, "I've been going out of my mind."

"Yeah," you say. "Me too."

"I talk to myself," he says. "I know I talk to myself. I've always done it, it's a whole thing, and I knew the walls were thin and I just. I never thought about it until you moved in and then I couldn't stop thinking about it. About what you could hear. About whether you were listening. And then I started talking louder on purpose. Which I realize makes me sound. But I wanted. I liked knowing you were there."

"I was always listening."

His breath catches. His hand slides from your jaw to the back of your neck and the touch lands exactly where you imagined it, exactly where you pictured it when you were face down in your pillow with your hand between your legs, and the reality is so close to the fantasy that your knees actually soften.

He feels it. Of course he does.

"That," he says. "When did that start. When did you start."

"Listening?"

"Wanting."

You close your eyes. "The Drake Equation."

He makes a sound that is almost a laugh and almost a groan. "That was. That was like the second week."

"I know."

"I was talking about aliens."

"I know."

"And you were on the other side of the wall."

"Getting into bed."

"Getting into." He doesn't finish. His hand tightens on the back of your neck and he pulls you in again, and this kiss is not off-center. This kiss knows exactly where it's going. His other hand finds your hip and pulls you against him and you can feel him, all of him, hard against your stomach, and the sound you make into his mouth is the same one from the other night, the one that went through the pillow and through the wall, except now he swallows it the way you imagined him swallowing it and the reality is better, it's so much better, because his hands are real and his mouth is real and the sound he makes back is one you've never heard through the wall before. This one is new. This one is what he sounds like when he's touching someone instead of himself.

He walks you backward. Not far. His apartment is the mirror of yours, you know the layout, you've imagined the layout, and when the back of your legs hit the edge of his bed the shock of it runs up your spine because this is the bed. This is where the sounds came from. This is where he lay in the dark and said your name and meant it.

"I should have just knocked on your door," he says. His hands are on your hips and his breathing is wrecked and his glasses are fully crooked now and he's looking at you like you're a problem he wants to solve slowly. "Like a normal person. But the wall was easier. The wall was safe. I could talk and pretend I wasn't talking to you and you could listen and pretend you weren't listening and neither of us had to be brave about it."

His thumb is drawing circles on your hip bone through the fabric of your shorts and you are losing the ability to process full sentences.

"I'm trying to be brave about it now," he says.

—

You sit back onto the bed and pull him with you.

He comes down over you and the weight of him is the first thing. The first real thing. You imagined this through the wall, his body pressing yours into the mattress, and your imagination was wrong. Your imagination didn't know about the heat of him, the solid fact of him, the way his hips settle between yours like they were always supposed to be there and the sound you make when they do is not quiet and you don't care.

"Hi," he says, looking down at you. Slightly breathless. Glasses crooked. Smiling like he can't believe he's here.

"Hi."

"This is. This is better than the wall."

You laugh. You actually laugh, and he grins at the sound, and then he dips his head and puts his mouth on your neck and the laugh dies in your throat because. Oh. Oh.

You imagined this. You imagined it face down in your pillow with your hand between your legs and you thought you knew what it would feel like. You didn't know anything. His lips are warm and his breath is hot against your skin and when he opens his mouth and drags his teeth lightly across the tendon in your neck, the sound you make is not the sound from the other night. That sound was muffled and buried and ashamed. This sound is in his ear, against his hair, and you feel him shudder when he hears it.

"God," he says into your throat. "You sound. You have no idea what you sound like."

"You've heard me before."

"Through a wall. This is." He presses his mouth to your pulse point. Stays there. You can feel him breathing you in like you're data he needs to collect. "This is different. This is. I can feel it when you."

You arch into him and he loses the sentence.

His hands find the hem of your shirt and he looks at you, a question, and you pull it off yourself because you don't have the patience for chivalry right now. His eyes drop and his expression does something that makes your stomach flip, because it's not smooth, it's not practised. It's wonder. The same wonder he has when he's explaining the Drake Equation to his empty apartment, except it's pointed at you.

"You are," he starts, and doesn't finish, and puts his mouth on your collarbone instead.

He works his way down. Slow. Tasting. His mouth on your sternum, between your breasts, along the curve of one, and when his lips close around your nipple and his tongue does something clever and unhurried, your hips jerk up against his and you feel how hard he is and the noise that comes out of both of you is graceless and perfect.

"Okay," he breathes against your skin. "Okay, that's. I need. Can I."

He's pulling at your shorts. You lift your hips and he drags them down and his fingers trail along the inside of your thigh on the way and the touch is so light it makes you shake. But he stops. Your underwear is still on and he is looking at you and his hand has gone still on your thigh and something about his expression has. Changed. Gone quiet. Focused in a way that isn't about your face anymore.

You don't understand for a second. And then you look down.

The cotton is soaked. Dark with it. The damp patch spreading through the fabric, obvious, undeniable, the evidence of what his voice and his hands and his mouth on your neck have done to you, and it's right there and he's right there and your knees start to close on instinct, some useless reflex to cover it, to take it back.

His hand catches your thigh. Gentle. But firm. He doesn't push your legs apart, he just. Holds them where they are. Doesn't let you hide it.

"Don't," he says. Low. Almost not a word.

The sound of it goes through you like a current. One syllable and your whole body decides it will do whatever he says for the rest of time. Which is a problem for future you. Present you just stops moving.

Your knees stay where they are. He looks at you, at the soaked cotton, at the shape of you through it, and his thumb traces the edge of the fabric along your inner thigh and his breathing has changed completely.

"You're. This is all." He exhales. Presses his thumb gently against the wet patch and watches the fabric darken further under the pressure. "This is all from tonight? From. From talking?"

You can't answer that honestly without dying, so you just nod.

"From talking," he repeats, and the wonder in his voice is the Drake Equation wonder, the tidal locking wonder, the same helpless fascination he has for things that exceed his models, except it's aimed at you. At what his voice does to you. At the evidence soaking through cotton.

"Ryland."

His eyes snap to yours. And the sound of his name in your mouth does something visible to him. You've never said it. Not once. Not in the hallway, not in the lift, not through the wall. It's always been hey or you or nothing. And his name in your voice in his bed is a thing he was clearly not prepared for.

"Yeah," he says. Rough. "Yeah, I'm. I'm here. Sorry. You're just. I've thought about this. I've thought about this a lot, and you're right here and I keep expecting the wall to be in the way."

"There's no wall."

"There's no wall," he repeats, and his hand moves up your thigh and between your legs and he doesn't pull the underwear aside. He presses his fingers against you through the cotton and the friction of the wet fabric on your clit makes your whole body jolt.

He feels it. Does it again. Deliberate this time, two fingers pressing flat, dragging slowly up through the soaked cotton, and the texture of it, the slight rough catch of the fabric between his skin and yours, is filthy and perfect and nothing like bare fingers would be. It's indirect. It makes you push your hips up into his hand chasing the pressure because you need more and the barrier is maddening and he knows it's maddening and he's doing it anyway.

He presses his forehead against your hip. His fingers keep moving, slow circles through the fabric, and you can feel the cotton sliding against you, slick and warm, clinging to every contour. "How long," he says. "How long have you been like this."

"Since the hallway. Since you opened the door."

"Since I." He makes a sound against your skin. Disbelief and want and something almost pained. His fingers find your clit again, bare this time, and the difference between cotton and skin makes you cry out. No fabric to blunt it. Just his fingertips, slick and precise, and he already knows where, he already learned that through the underwear, so now he just. Goes there. Directly. Confidently. Like he took notes through the fabric and is now applying them to the final draft.

He watches your face while his fingers work, and this is the teacher in him, the part that pays attention, that meets you where you are and adjusts, and when he finds the exact pressure that makes your thighs shake he doesn't speed up, he just stays there, steady, relentless, reading every sound you make like a language he's already halfway fluent in.

"Talk to me," you say, and you don't know where it comes from but it's the truest thing you've said all night, because his voice is where this started, his voice through the wall, and you need it now. You need it without the plaster in the way.

He understands. Of course he does.

"I could hear you," he says, low, against the skin of your stomach. His fingers don't stop. "Through the wall. I could hear you come home every night and I'd just. Lie there. Knowing you were right there. Knowing you were on the other side and I couldn't."

His thumb stays on your clit and two fingers press inside you and the stretch and the pressure and his voice all at once make your vision go white at the edges.

"I started talking louder," he says. "I know I did. I told myself I wasn't but I was. I wanted you to hear me. I wanted to be in your head the way you were in mine and I didn't know how to just say that so I just. Talked. About planets. About homework. About whatever I could think of because as long as I was talking I was. With you. Sort of."

His fingers curl inside you and your hand flies to his hair and grips.

"And then at night." His voice drops. "At night I'd think about you on the other side of the wall and I'd."

"I know what you'd do."

"You'd listen."

"I'd listen."

"And then you started." His breath catches. "That night. When I said your name. I heard you start and I almost. I almost knocked on the wall. I almost just put my hand on it and."

He's still talking. His fingers are still inside you and his voice is still doing what it always does to you and he is right here, not behind a wall, and you think about the last time you felt this. Face down in your bed, grinding into your own hand, wishing the wall wasn't there. Wishing his mouth was where your pillow was. Wishing you could take instead of just listen.

You can take now. There's no wall.

And the thing is. He made that possible. Not just by opening the door. By the way he looked at the wet cotton and said don't like it was something precious. By the way he said from talking? like your body's response to him was a wonder and not a mess. By the way he has not once made you feel like any part of this is something to be ashamed of.

So you're not going to be.

"Lie back," you say.

He blinks. His fingers still inside you, his brain visibly trying to catch up with the instruction. "What?"

"Lie back."

He does. He pulls his hand from between your legs and lies back on the mattress and looks up at you and you can see the moment he understands what you're doing because his lips part and his breathing changes and his hands come to your thighs as you swing one leg over him and move up his body.

"Oh," he says. "Oh, you're. Yeah. Yes. Please."

You're above him. Knees on either side of his head, your hands braced on the wall. The wall. The one that separates his apartment from yours. Your palms are flat against it and the surface is cool and thin and you can feel the hollow of it under your fingers, this stupid flimsy partition that has been the only thing between you for weeks, and now you're on the other side of it with your thighs framing his face and he's looking up at you like you're the night sky.

You hesitate. Hovering. Because this is a lot and he's looking up at you and you need to know.

"Is this okay?"

His hands tighten on your thighs. He turns his head and presses his mouth to the inside of one, open and warm and deliberate, and says against your skin, "I have wanted this since the second week. Sit down."

You lower yourself onto him and his hands are pulling your hips down and then his mouth is on you and you stop thinking entirely.

The sound you make should be illegal in a building with thin walls. It comes from somewhere deep and it fills the room and you hear it echo off the ceiling and some part of your brain registers that whoever is on the other side of his apartment can hear you right now and you do not care. You do not care even a little bit.

His tongue is slow and precise and devastating. He licks into you like he has all the time in the world, like this is the experiment he's been designing in his head for weeks, and his hands are gripping your thighs, holding you open, holding you exactly where he wants you. He moans against you and the vibration rolls through your clit and up your spine and you gasp and press harder against him and he does it again. On purpose this time. A low, deliberate groan directly into you, and your thighs clamp around his head and he doesn't stop.

This is the thing. He can't talk now. The man who never stops talking has his mouth full of you and all that's left is sound. Every reaction he has comes through vibration instead of words. When you grind down harder he groans and you feel it in your bones. When you ease off he whimpers, actually whimpers, and the frequency of it hums through your clit and makes your hips jerk. He is communicating entirely in resonance and you can feel every single thing he's feeling because it's pressed directly into the most sensitive part of you.

You roll your hips against his mouth and he pulls you tighter and you are grinding onto his face the way you ground into your own hand except his mouth is softer and wetter and smarter than your hand ever was, and every time you press down he meets you, tongue flat and firm, and the sounds he's making vibrate through you, wet and hungry and desperate, and you can feel them building, getting rougher, getting louder, and when you look down his eyes are closed and his hands are gripping your thighs hard enough to bruise and he looks like there is nowhere on earth he would rather be.

You shift your angle slightly, chasing it, and his tongue drags across your clit and he moans at the taste of you and the vibration hits at exactly the right moment and your back arches and your nails scrape against the wall and you hear yourself say his name.

"Ryland." It comes out wrecked.

His eyes open. He looks up at you from between your thighs and pulls back just enough to speak, his lips wet, his chin wet, and he says, "I'm right here. No wall. Right here."

And then he pulls your hips back down onto his mouth and starts again, and you've lost ground, you can feel it, the orgasm that was right there has retreated and he knows it and he doesn't rush. He builds you back. His tongue finds you, slow at first, relearning, and then firmer, more deliberate, settling into a rhythm that is patient and relentless and exactly, exactly right. You can feel it gathering again, tighter this time, closer to the surface, and his hands grip your thighs and pull you harder against his mouth and then he grazes his teeth against your clit, barely there, just the edge of them, and the sharp bright shock of it is the thing that tips it. You grind down hard and your hands press flat against the wall and you come so hard your vision whites out.

It's not like the other night. That was your hand and his sounds and a pillow in your teeth. This is his mouth and your weight and the noise you make is loud, open, a thing you give to him on purpose, and he takes it, takes all of it, works you through it with his tongue until you're shaking and grinding and saying his name like it's the only word you know.

You come down slowly. Your thighs are trembling. Your hands are still on the wall. You lift your weight off him and slide back, settling on his stomach, and he sucks in a breath like a man surfacing from water. His face is flushed and wet and he's grinning up at you, breathing hard, and you can feel him against the back of your thighs, so hard it must hurt.

He reaches up and pushes your hair out of your face. His thumb traces your cheekbone.

"That," he says. "That's the sound. That's what I heard through the wall and I."

"Get your clothes off."

He laughs. Breathless, startled, delighted. You climb off him, kneel back on the mattress, and he sits up and strips his shirt over his head and you watch from beside him and it's not a performance, it's him fumbling with the hem and getting his glasses caught and tossing them somewhere toward the nightstand and missing entirely, and you love it. You love the gracelessness of it. You love that he's not smooth because smooth would be someone else and you don't want someone else. You want the man who argues with homework and burns kitchen towels and talks about aliens at 10pm and said your name through a wall because he couldn't not.

He stands just long enough to shove his jeans down and his boxers with them and he's hard, flushed, and the sight of him makes your mouth go dry because you heard this, you heard this, the sounds he made while he touched himself, and now you can see what your imagination was building around and the reality is right here, in his bed, within reach.

You reach for him. Your hand wraps around him and his whole body jerks and the sound he makes is the one from that first night, the low caught groan, except with nothing to muffle it. It fills the room. Fills you.

"That sound," you say. "That's the one."

"What?"

"The first night. Through the wall. That's the sound that started this."

He drops his forehead against yours, his breath ragged, his hips pushing into your hand. "You heard that? The. The first time?"

"Every time."

"God." His voice cracks. "Every. You were just lying there and."

"Listening. Every time."

He kisses you like the sentence broke something in him. Deep, messy, his hand in your hair, and you're stroking him and he's leaking against your palm and his breathing is shot and he pulls back and says, "I need. Can I. I want to be inside you, can I."

"Yes."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

He reaches for the nightstand. The drawer. You hear the click of it and something about that sound, the same sound you've heard through the wall from your own bed, rearranges the room. He rolls the condom on and his hands are shaking slightly and then he's over you and between your legs and the head of him presses against you and you're so wet from his mouth that there's almost no resistance.

He pushes in slow. Watching your face. His jaw is tight and his arms are braced on either side of you and the stretch of him is perfect, thick and full, and when he bottoms out you both go still.

"Oh," he says. Very quiet. Like a realisation landing.

You wrap your legs around him and pull him deeper and he makes a sound you have never heard through the wall. Not once. This one is new. This one only exists here, inside you, and it is low and broken and so good that your walls clench around him and his hips stutter.

"If you do that," he manages, "this is going to be. I've been thinking about this for. A very long time, and I'm not going to."

"Then move."

He moves.

Slow, first. Long, deep strokes that pull almost all the way out and push back in and every one of them drags against exactly the right spot and the sounds you're making are continuous now, not words, not anything, just his name and yes and the wet sound of him inside you and his breathing in your ear.

He drops his head to your neck. His mouth finds the place behind your ear and he talks against your skin, half words, half breathing, and this is it, this is the thing you imagined, his voice in your neck, his sounds pressed directly into your pulse, and the reality makes the fantasy look like a pencil sketch.

"You feel." He rolls his hips and you gasp. "I can't. You feel so."

"More."

He gives you more. His pace picks up and the angle changes and he hooks one hand under your knee and lifts and the depth of the next thrust makes both of you cry out and he does it again, again, finding the spot that makes you clench and then driving into it over and over because this is what he does, this is the problem-solver, the experimenter, the man who tests and adjusts and learns, and he is learning you and he is a very fast learner.

"Right there," you say, and it comes out begging and you don't care.

"Here?" He does it again. Precise. His hips snapping into yours.

"There. There. Don't stop."

"I'm not stopping." Low. Wrecked. Almost a growl. "I'm not. I couldn't stop if I. You're so. The sounds you make, I can feel them, I spent weeks listening through that wall and this is. God, this is so much better. You're so much better than anything I."

His hand slides between your bodies. His thumb finds your clit and presses and the noise that leaves you is feral, unhinged, because you're still sensitive from before and the combination of him inside you and his thumb on you and his voice in your ear is too many inputs, too much data, and your body can't process all of it at once so it just. Gives in.

"That's it," he says, and his voice is barely holding. "That's. I can feel you, I can feel you getting close, you're tightening around me and I."

You're not getting close. You're already there. It hits you like a wave you didn't see coming, sudden and total, and this orgasm is different from the first one. The first one was his mouth and his patience and his precision. This one is his cock buried deep and his thumb circling and his voice cracking apart against your ear and the fact that you are underneath him in the bed where he said your name and there is no wall and no pillow and nothing to bite down on so the sound just comes out of you, raw and open, his name tangled up in it, and you feel yourself clench around him in long, rhythmic pulses that make his whole body go taut.

"Oh. Oh, God. I can feel you. I can." His hips stutter. His rhythm breaks. "I'm. If you keep. I'm going to."

You pull him down and say his name against his mouth and tighten around him again and he breaks. He comes hard, driving into you, his whole body shaking, and the sound he makes is long and open and your name is in it, not said the way he said it through the wall, not careful, not half-swallowed. Your name like he can't hold it back. Your name said into your mouth while he's inside you and the wall is gone and there's nothing between you and that sound and nothing will ever be between you and that sound again.

You hold him through it. Your legs locked around his hips, your hand in his hair, his face in your neck, his breath ragged and hot against your skin. He's still shaking when he comes down. Still inside you. His hand finds yours on the mattress and his fingers thread through yours and he squeezes once, hard, like he's checking you're real.

"Hi," he says into your neck. Same thing he said at the start.

"Hi."

"So that happened."

"That happened."

He pulls back enough to look at you. His hair is destroyed. His eyes are soft and blown and slightly disbelieving, and the smile that arrives is not the hallway smile or the lift smile. This is the one the wall has been hiding.

"I have a question," he says.

"Of course you do."

"On a scale of one to ten, how do you feel about the thin walls now."

You laugh. He catches it with his mouth. And on the other side of the wall, your apartment sits empty, and quiet, and you don't go home for a very long time.

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.”

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

Michael Jackson lived just like he died: on the margins, despite having every spotlight on himself. Biggest star of the world—resplendent, untouchable—someone to look at in a museum display with awe instead of knowing. Of learning.

Of loving.

Michael Jackson came into your life still breathing, cheeks full of warmth, alive. So, so alive it hurts to think about. He’d just broken the Grammys in half, forever splitting himself apart from any other artist that’s walked the same halls and earned the same awards.

They weren’t him. No one would or ever could be.

The year was 1984. At the beginning of spring, the time when earth wakes up and stirs people into living again. But it stirs hunger, too. Blood-red and sopping with a never-ending repetition that rarely gives and only takes.

You didn’t know it then and neither did he, but the spring of ‘84 would be the last spring Michael ever saw as mortal. Where he could wake in the morning and tiptoe outside, glimpse at the birds perched on his balcony and watch the sunrise without it being suicidal.

You were nervous back then, still green while the industry was blooming all in technicolor around you, trying to carve a space for yourself in metaphorically unmoving stone.

You’d just gotten out of a hellish job waiting tables near Marina Del Rey. Ready to take the world by storm, carrying your clip-book full of articles everywhere like ID. It was your baby, fully yours, born from three years’ worth of endless nights and cramped fingers and all the sweat going into that.

UC Berkeley’s Mass Communications alumna. Magna Cum Laude, although you had to fight for it because, well… Life gets hard sometimes, right? But you got it in the end, and it felt good as shit.

That waitress job was temporary, you’d swore to yourself it would be. Your dreams were much bigger than a sleazy diner only serving those small enough to fit in it. It got you through school though, so there’s not much to pine about. You lose some, you win some.

And you won big.

Worked your ass off for that win, too. Written a banging thesis on the rise of MTV, built a portfolio of music reviews for The Daily Cal, co-hosted a weekly pop culture slash entertainment show on KALX with some campus friends.

‘90.7 FM every Wednesday, baby!’

You miss it, what can you say? You just can’t help yourself. Life flowed easier back then. Before the inevitability of success, of that gnawing feeling something’s going to go terribly wrong any minute now.

Before Michael.

Everything is categorized as either before or after him. Sometimes you can’t even tell the difference; the feeling of his teeth is like it’s always been there.

A phantom pain you’d feel when changing mixtapes for an article that was due, or those times you’d get goosebumps when tidying up the vinyls—late at the radio station, after a show—and his face would show up.

White suit over a black shirt; piercing eyes, soft face and even softer disposition; gold handwritten cursive reading Thriller.

You’d think, again and again, ‘Fuck, he’s gorgeous.’ The vinyl would sit tucked pretty between The Police’s Synchronicity and Bowie’s Let’s Dance, and that’d be it. Just another record on the shelf, another artist that floated above the common man not because of money or arrogance, or even success.

Simply because he was meant to be there. It was the rest of the world that was just catching up with him.

That’s what you thought then, at least. Before you met him and got to know him. Before falling for him rather than the idol plastered on every entertainment article (written by you, or otherwise). It simultaneously took you by surprise while also not being surprising at all. Everyone falls in love with Michael one way or another, you just didn’t think you would.

At least, more than a fan or an admirer of his art, professionally. Of course you were a fan. Your mom used to blast Jackson 5 records every Saturday morning, and you’d be peeling potatoes or sweeping the living room with Michael’s voice as an underscore.

You grew up with him. And, isn’t that sad? You were a kid, a real kid; crying over boys and homework and skinned knees while he was pumping out show after show and interview after interview. Even at eight, you remember feeling sad for him.

Your mother used to tell you you’re being silly. That the Jacksons loved to perform, and they got handsomely compensated for their artistry. That they wouldn’t have to work a real job a day in their life the way you or your dad were expected to. And, she was right. But the sadness was there, you could feel it.

When he released his first solo album, Got To Be There, you bought it with the weekly allowance you’d been saving up and surprised your mom. That weekend, the only thing echoing through the house was Rockin’ Robin. And when he put out his first proper solo album, Off The Wall, you were first in line at your local records store.

You loved him for a long time before you laid eyes on him, but that childish almost-affection quickly got eclipsed by something far stronger.

The date was February 28th of 1984, the Shrine Auditorium bursting like ripe citrus against a setting sun, palm trees swaying by the sheer size of the crowd. A heavy laminated card dangled from your neck, reading:

26th ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS, National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., PRESS.

You were with Rolling Stone, or with whatever crumbs of a presence they maintained in the West Coast after moving all their offices to New York years ago. Your editor, Ben, was a washed-up Rock-N-Roll purist who thought anything other than Elvis was ‘a fad,’ including the ever-rising pop scene.

Including Michael. 

Which is precisely why he sent you—the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed girl from Berkeley—to cover the Grammys instead of going himself. Thought it was a waste of time, and who were you to disagree with the man?

Ben could live in his past-and-gone glory days all he wanted; it was a new decade halfway on its way out already, with something in the air that felt historic. Primordial. You needed to be in that room, and if playing into Ben’s refusal to get with the times was your way in, fuck would you do it.

Of course, it did end up being historic. Michael had—has—that quality about him.

The backstage press room was pure pandemonium that night. Hot and stifling, reeking of hairspray and cigarette smoke, packed with aggressive reporters from Time, Newsweek, and television affiliates you couldn’t even begin naming. 

You think they saw you just like Ben did. Scratch that: you know they did. A kid without her big-girl pants on, thrust into the deep end for the sharks to feed on and scatter the scraps.

You’d earned your place there, as much as their stares did nothing to help the sweat on your back or the twitching of your lips. Watching from the designated press room, you bit through your lipstick as the nearly 7K-seat theater blew up with each win Michael brought home, growing louder the more the night progressed. 

You were not surprised at all. Thriller was a masterpiece, you knew it from the very first listen. And if anybody asked, you’d just point them to Page 30 of your portfolio: your best article. Your magnum opus. October of 1982, a thousand words typed on a clunky typewriter in the basement of Eshleman Hall, coffee stains on the margins. Written by a girl who saved up her waitress tips just to buy the record on release day; the same girl who’d saved up for Got To Be There all those years ago.

When Michael finally entered the press room, it erupted even louder than the theater had.

Much closer in proximity, shoulders and elbows pushing against ribs, a clunky brick-sized cassette recorder clutched so tight in your hand your knuckles shook. Someone kept thrashing against your back to get closer, but all they managed to do was push you right to the front. Right into Michael’s eyesight.

He was surrounded by publicists, security, and Quincy Jones, who was positively glowing. Somewhere to the side stood his date for the night, Brooke Shields, and Michael was holding a literal armful of golden gramophones. He was in a gold-embroidered blue-black military jacket, a single white glove, aviator sunglasses.

He looked otherworldly.

(Michael Jackson is not of this earth, that much was clear long before he died in sanguine ecstasy.)

A sea of camera flashes clicked with inhuman speed, swirling into a dizzying staccato reflecting off of him. And being with Rolling Stone—their dwindling influence in California notwithstanding—still meant you were with Rolling-fucking-Stone. You knew you had one sought-after chance at a question before security whisked him away, and you knew you had to make it count.

Asking anything along the lines of ‘how does it feel to have won’ or ‘broken the record’ were out of the question entirely. His answer would be tight and rehearsed, and you didn’t grind this hard just to waste something so monumental on a local-channel-news question at best.

Your hand shot up so many times you might’ve gotten whiplash, questions flying around the room in tandem with the trickling clock. Your heart dropped and kept dropping as publicists looked you over in favor of the men squeezing you from all sides. Until one publicist—female, older, a mirrored image—made eye contact and your world stuttered in place.

“Alright, alright, quiet down,” she commanded over the clamor. “We have time for just a couple more. Yes, you in the front.”

This was it. Your heart was hammering so deeply you felt it in your stomach, seeping down your legs and numbing them in the process. Your Berkeley instincts kicked in like fight-or-flight, forcing your voice to even out and raise. Holding up the recorder, you smiled through the sweat dripping down your face. 

“Mr. Jackson, congratulations on a historic night. I’m with Rolling Stone. On Billie Jean, you and your team famously spent weeks just mixing the bassline. Tonight, the world is celebrating the commercial success of Thriller. But as an artist, do you feel the industry finally understands the actual technical craftsmanship you put into this record?”

The room got quiet. Not truly silent, but just enough to hear your own heartbeat again, listen at just how loud you were breathing. A man coughed beside your ear, and you fought the urge to flinch.

Michael paused. He wordlessly handed a few gramophones to Quincy by his side, tilted his head just so, lowered the aviator glasses down his nose, and gave you a gentle smile.

Cameras click-click-clicked away.

You’d heard his speaking voice before that night, obviously. But hearing it from five feet apart had nothing on the shitty TV box in your apartment or the screens you’d watched the awards from backstage.

“That’s a beautiful question,” he breathed, and you pushed on your tiptoes to nudge the recorder closer. He sounded like soft velvet, making you shiver. “Yes. Yes, I do. People often just want to talk about the dancing or the charts, you know? But Quincy and I, we lived in that studio, and Bruce sweated over every single frequency. Billie Jean… that bassline is the heartbeat of the song. If the heartbeat isn’t perfect, the body doesn’t move. To have the Academy recognize that tonight… It’s a sign God is good, and that the hard work is understood. That means a lot to me. Thank you.”

That was it. Your one question, your headline, the article you were waiting to write ever since you heard his voice on vinyl that first Saturday morning. But you were never one to be satisfied, were you? No. You always wanted more, pushed harder, chased things quicker than your feet could keep up with.

The publicist was about to call one last question, but Michael hadn’t taken his eyes off you, so you did the one thing you’d been busting your ass three years off for.

You asked another.

Briefly meeting the publicist’s line of sight, you jumped back into Michael’s gaze. “Is that the standard for pop music now? Perfection or nothing?”

He pushed his aviators up again, chuckled something soft, smile so wide and blinding it bordered on catastrophic. He said: “Perfection is a nice goal, but it’s really about the magic. You can’t mix magic, you just have to catch it when it falls from heaven. Thank you, bless you.”

Bedazzled hand over his heart, hell broke loose with all its demons as Michael was led away. 

And that was how the new girl from Berkeley managed to snag a spot on the front-page cover of issue #419, right beside the pose of Eddie Murphy.

(You’d written for #417 too, but that issue hit the streets right before the Grammys. You’ll always mourn that cover; the lighting on Michael’s face made him look beautifully melancholic. Having your article plastered next to him might’ve actually killed you, so, yeah. Like you said: you lose some, you win some.)

You wouldn’t see Michael again for a couple of months. In reality, you didn’t think you’d see him again, period. Speaking to him once was already a utopic dream come true. A comet that only flies by once and you remember it forever, because there isn’t a chance you’ll see it again.

But the Rolling Stone higher-ups loved you. Okay, ‘love’ is a strong word. Though, being the only journalist to squeeze out a genuine answer from Michael on arguably the biggest night in pop-culture history? That made people do a double take when your name showed up. That’s all the love you needed.

Ben was weirdly jealous. It didn’t help when you asked him how many Grammys Elvis won in one night. Really dug a hole for yourself when you added, “Or, like, ever?”

He could do nothing when you were chosen to cover the preparations for the Victory Tour; granted exclusive access to Zoetrope Studios to attend the rehearsals. You’re surprised you didn’t pass out when Ben broke the news, with as much enthusiasm in his face as reading his monthly bill charges.

April of 1984. A boulevard packed with the busy fumes only a city as big as Los Angeles could produce, that same cassette recorder tucked inside your bag as you paid the cab driver and stood in the front doors of Zoetrope. The sun was slowly setting in the background when a production assistant came to grab you. Huffing and puffing while breezing through his notes, he hardly even looked back to see if you were following.

When he slipped you inside the auditorium, you chose a seat near the middle, the lights dimmed and the stage alight. You pulled out your notepad and got to work, words flying off the paper with hardly the need to look down at them.

You were mesmerized.

All of them were great, but they weren’t Michael.

When they started practising a Jackson 5 medley and you heard I’ll Be There echoing right in front of you, tears almost fell. You thought of your mom and how insane this was, sniffled, and continued jotting on your notepad.

The rehearsal ended, stage lights dimming until fluorescence zipped to life above the theater seats, and you had to squint against the onslaught. Your notes were a mess and your shirt sported a new ink smudge near the breast pocket, yet Michael recognized you anyway.

He was sweaty and tired, wearing a soaked white shirt, curls stuck on his forehead and cheeks. He had just downed an entire Evian water bottle, and some of it trickled past his lips and down his neck. He looked entirely spent, and all you could think was how much you’d kill to be the one to make him feel better.

Your head shook at that. Jesus, girl.

His demeanor was so different from when he was onstage. It’s like he took another form entirely. But down there he was just a guy, squinting at you through the exhaustion. You exited the seats and when he came close enough, you told him: “Hi, Mr. Jackson. I’m from—”

He cut you off. “Hold on… Don’t I know you?”

His voice was as soft as you’d remembered. It washed over you. From the back, his brothers’ boisterous laughter could be heard, but you clung to the softness. Faltering a little, you looked at your shoes before meeting his eyes again. Your smile was tight but genuine. He remembered you.

“Backstage at the Grammys. I asked you about the Billie Jean bassline…?” you trailed off.

And, his whole face just lit up. You should’ve known right there he’d be the thing to kill you. 

Snapping a finger, he laughed: “Yes! The craftsmanship question. I remembered your voice.” His shoulders fell in relaxation, like he was lighter. His hand dropped, that enthusiastically bright smile melting into something softer. Mellower. Looking straight into your soul all the while. “You wrote that beautiful piece for Rolling Stone. You actually… listened to the track.”

You chuckled a bit, feeling your neck flush. This wasn’t the Grammys press room or an official interview studio, with cameras or mics or anything other than his eyes to scrutinize you. This was private. Genuine. You were a kickass professional, but you were also human. He flustered you; way more than pride would have you admit out loud.

He read your article. Called it beautiful. Holy shit.

“I try to make it a habit. You’d be surprised how many people I work with that couldn’t tell you the difference between a chorus and a bridge.”

Cough. Ben. Cough.

That made him laugh. Fuck. Fuck! Leaning a hip against a seat, he crossed his arms and shook a curl off his forehead. His smile was fucking devastating. “Not you, though. Right?”

 “I mean, I hope so?” You made a joking grimace, something between cringing and shrugging. “There’s always a margin for improval, though.”

“I think so, too. Staying stagnant is one of my biggest fears.”

“You’re anything but stagnant, trust me,” you laughed, swallowed hard when he levelled you with a look that urged you to continue. “I–I mean, Off The Wall might’ve been your first fully solo album, but you’d already separated yourself from your brothers creatively. Completely. And, Thriller… What can I even say? They’re like day and night. So, yeah. Trust me,” you took a breath for what felt like the first time after a dive, “Journalistic integrity and all.”

He was nodding along, smile brightening the longer you rambled. In truth, you actually wanted to kind of kill yourself, but once you started there was no shutting it off. So, there you were, giving Michael Jackson a review of his own damn life’s work! What even was your life?

“You’ll be covering this,” he looked back halfheartedly, sighing, “uh, tour?”

Your brows furrowed. “The preparations, yeah.” Call it plain curiosity or your journalistic instincts kicking in, but it took you over. “Why’d you say it like that? Are you not… feeling this?”

He levelled you with a smirk. His eyes were hooded; tired, but sly. Oh, he was a problem, alright. “Not now that you’re here.”

He said it all smooth and suave, yet squinted his eyes a second later, softly laughing at himself and making you stutter through a laugh too.

“That’s–uh… Thank you. I appreciate it, Mr. Jackson. More than you know.”

“Michael,” he grinned at you. “For you, off the record, just Michael. We’ll be sharing a space for some time ‘til the tour.”

You nodded like an idiot, completely caught off-guard. Because, yeah, what the fuck. Sure. “Michael,” you repeated. Like an idiot.

A camera flashed from the side, a metaphorical bucket of ice-cold water getting dumped on you. All levity evaporated off of him, spotting the promotional photographer almost instantly and raising a dismissive hand.

“C’mon, man. Go bother Jermaine or somethin’.”

“O–of course, Mr. Jackson. Sorry!”

He left with his tail tucked between his legs, and you looked at Michael with a sniff. “He doesn’t call you Michael.”

“He’s not you, is he?”

“Guess not.” You glanced at your watch, eyes widening. “Oh! I have to go. I’ll see you next time. Um,” you giggled awkwardly and shook your head. Maybe it could be seen as endearing. At least, you hoped. “Goodnight, Michael.”

“Do you live close? Want me to get someone to call a cab?”

“I’m good,” you nodded softly at the thoughtfulness. It made you feel warm. “See you.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, hips jutting off of the seat he was leaning against, hands closing around the towel hanging from his neck. “I’ll see you.”

That night, you closed your apartment door and screamed so loud the old lady next door had to check on you. You were so over the moon that you slapped a kiss on each of her cheeks and gave her a bunch of leftover cookies you’d made the day before.

You weren’t scheduled to attend another rehearsal until next week. What you weren’t expecting to find at work two days later was a courier at your desk, a nondescript white package shoved into your arms as he urged you to sign. Your heart began pitter-pattering like a hailstorm as you carefully opened it with a pair of scissors, and not even Ben’s curious gaze was enough to stop you.

It was from him.

A rare, early white-label promotional vinyl pressing of Thriller, ‘NOT FOR SALE’ plastered front and center. Your heart genuinely dropped to your ass, head swimming as you turned it around your grip with a hung jaw.

You think Ben might’ve made some sarcastic comment about the feral look in your eyes, but you didn’t even register his presence. He was such a small blotch of importance in your mind, he might as well have not existed at all.

Your head was in upheaval, little-you’s running around with everything on fire, because… This wasn’t happening, right? What the hell?

There was a handwritten note attached, on what looked like to be Michael’s personal stationary: a gold-trimmed and thick cream paper sporting his handwriting. Your heart galloped harder, like it wanted to burst free with every line you read.

It was a wonderful surprise to see you at rehearsals. It’s rare to find someone who understands the magic we try to capture in the studio. I would love to talk more about music with you… Without all the flashing cameras next time. 

If you have some time this weekend, please call Bill (my security) at this number (213)XXX-XXXX. He will arrange for us to have some quiet time to talk.

Keep writing beautifully.

—Blessings, Michael

You were gone, in every sense of the word. Completely and utterly wiped out.

You called the number right there in the office, nervously fidgeted with the cord as you spoke with a sweet-voiced man on the other line who identified himself as the aforementioned Bill, chewed halfway through your lip when you gave him your address and arranged for him to pick you up on 8PM that Saturday.

Arrangements for Encino, the Jackson residence. To somehow—in some inconceivably mind-numbing way—meet up with Michael Jackson and… talk about music? You. And him. Alone in a house larger than your apartment complex and probably your old house combined.

You and him, alone, with his beautifully doe-like eyes and that soft voice that hasn’t left your mind ever since you heard him in the flesh. Fuck.

When you got home that day, you dropped everything by the door and flew to your mom’s old record player she insisted you take during the move. Punching the white-label in, you spent nearly the entire time between coming home and sleeping just listening to Thriller on repeat.

It sounded so… crisp. Clearer than the record back at Berkeley’s radio station, or the one currently sitting on your stack near the wilting spider-plant. If absolutely nothing else, it was a collector’s wet dream, and the most thoughtful thing anyone had done for you in a long time. Worst of all? He didn’t have to.

The thought had you smiling like an idiot inside your small apartment, with the smoke-stained walls smelling of cheap perfume, forgotten takeout, and that certain kind of loneliness only the dust gathering could spread.

God, you were so easy. But he was who he was, so you figured you’d cut yourself some slack.

That’s exactly the thing, though… He owed you nothing. Anybody else in his place would’ve probably forgotten about you the moment they stepped out the press room, let alone remembering you worked for Rolling Stone and waiting for the article to hit the streets? Are you kidding?

You never asked him why. That week came and went like water in a forest creek, swifter than a breath. Before you knew it, it was Saturday and 8PM loomed dangerously. Your room was in a state of disarray, which meant your bathroom too, which might as well have meant the entire apartment looked like site zero of nuclear testing.

Bill arrived at 8PM on the dot, bent his hat for hello as you descended the stairs, and drove you to Encino like he’s driven you a million times before. Like he would a million times again.

Michael greeted you by the fountain. Your heart did the thing that makes you think you’re having a heart attack, but no. He’d just smiled at you. Cheeks full of warmth, eyes bright, asking with a soft voice if you liked his gift. He said he didn’t want to come off as pretentious, but the way you spoke about Thriller made him think you’d appreciate it. 

You don’t even remember what you said; the most you remember about that night is everything you’d lose—

“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?” Michael’s voice cuts through the low hum of the cassette recorder, dragging you out of the spring of ‘84 and dropping you right back into the suffocating luxury of 1988.

You blink, focusing on him again. That sweet face full of promise gives way to what he is now: undead and frozen, disastrously beautiful, the best and worst thing to ever happen to you.

What he also is, is inside your mind. Literally.

The tape reels of the Sony TC-D5M turn between you, small plastic wheels trapping secrets that could burn the music industry to ash if they ever left this room. When they leave this room.

“I’m the one doing the interviewing. Get out of my head,” you quip, arms and legs crossed, every ghost of his gaze making your hair stand in attention. Clearing your throat, you adjust your position as if a straight back could shield you against him. “Who’s he?”

 “Yeah, yeah you are. C’mon, girl,” he tsks, waving you off. “You know exactly who he is. I don’t have to read your mind to know where you go when you look at me like that.”

“And where is that?” You level him with shaky blinks, almost afraid to take the risk of not seeing him for that fraction of a second it takes for your lids to open again. He’d never hurt you, you know that.

At least, more than you want. More than you crave to be hurt by him.

“Hayvenhurst, Zoetrope, the studio in Encino, that hole-in-the-wall record store…” he counts off on one hand, long curls falling over his eyes from the half-up/half-down updo he’d tucked them in. “Before. Stuck on something that’d never last to begin with. I’m right here, baby. Can’t you see that?”

He looks so good it makes you want to cry. Why did you agree to this?

Because he’s Michael. Because you love him. You loved him in 1984, and ‘85, ‘86 and ‘87, and you love him now too. No matter the blood. No matter his nature. He’s still the Michael you met in that crowded press room, no matter how much he insists he isn’t.

“So. The him in question is you, Mr. Jackson. You, before you turned?” Journalistic, professional, curt. That’s what he asked for, isn’t it? One final interview by his favorite journalist, revealing what he is to the world.

His eyes drift down to the recorder. It whirs and whirs and keeps on whirring. The almost 13K square feet take the silence and project it all throughout, until the house is louder because of it.

“Yeah. It’s me.” He breaks into a blinding smile. His fangs glint. “I’m thirty years old. I was turned the summer of ‘84, so I’ve been dead for about four years.”

“By all accounts then, still a child.” He doesn’t like that. Clenches his jaw, but says nothing. “Who turned you? How? I imagine those reading are most curious about that.” And then, almost too quiet for the cassette to pick up on, “I know I was.”

“You know what I think about?” He ignores your prompt completely, elbows resting on his spread thighs, eyeing you with that look he gets only where you’re involved. “Remember Dodger Stadium?”

Of course you do.

(December 9th, 1984. A sea of fifty-five thousand people thrashing and screaming, all there for the final night of the Jackson 5 Victory Tour you’d been vigorously covering since April of the same year.

Somewhere along the way, it became something else. Michael had kissed you under the dim lights of his personal studio in Encino, and you’d kissed him back. One hand on his nape, the other clawing at the curve of his waist. His arms curled around you like they belonged there, and his tongue tasted as good as he sounded.

He asked you to be his girl two weeks later. You protested halfheartedly—thinking of your career and the ethics—but in the end didn’t give half a shit. He was yours, you were his, and you continued being a kickass entertainment journalist in the meantime. Your sources just became a tad more direct.

And then, he died.

It was early August, their next concerts being scheduled for NYC. He flew you out, ready to show you off to his brothers like they didn’t already know, and you were over the moon.

Ever since the tour started and long distance became an inevitability, the landline by your bedside got hot every night before bed. He’d call, and you’d fall asleep with his sleepy voice as a lullaby. It left you aching in the best of ways.

You missed him like you knew him all your life. You were so happy to see him again, but… He was different. 

He looked… sick. Lips dry, eyes unfocused, limbs uncoordinated like it was the first time he wore his skin. He refused to leave the hotel while the sun was out, and looked at your neck like it was calling to him.

Well… His nature became clear when you found him draining a busboy behind the hotel. The guy looked deliriously elated to be dying: smile wide as blood-spurts flew like a fountain, bathing Michael in red as he gulped it all down.

He was onto you before you could even take a breath deep enough to scream.

Blood-stained hand against your mouth, wet against your skin, hot as it accidentally slithered past your lips. Your pupils shrunk into pinpricks, the bricks cold on your back as Michael caged you between him and the wall. 

You couldn’t breathe. You screamed against his hand so loud your throat burned, but it didn’t matter. Nothing came out. Only the hot, sizzling tears that mixed with the blood.

“Shh, shhh, baby, calm down,” he whispered. He was so close, inches away, the fresh blood metallic in your nostrils. You saw his fangs and screamed again, thrashing against his hold. “Please, I love you. I love you, baby, be quiet—”

You sobbed against his hand, head shaking as you desperately tried to get away. He kept shushing you with soft and loving praise, calling you beautiful, caging you harder. Your eyes fell on the busboy still dying, milky white skin drained of color as his blood stopped flying, and you knew he was dead.

“It’s over,” Michael whispered, kissing your forehead, lips lingering as he spoke against you: “It’s over, see? Stop cryin’ baby, you’re breaking my heart.”

“You killed him,” you wailed against his hand that was slowly retreating. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t think. You couldn’t move. “You killed him, Mike, he’s de–dead—” 

Your sobs were the only coherent thing that could come out of your mouth; the same mouth that now had the taste of that guy’s blood. You were going to be sick.

“Somethin’ happened in New Jersey… I changed. I changed, baby, and,” he pointed to the dead guy, “I asked his consent. He let me,” Michael laughed in disbelief. “I swear to you. Let’s just go back to the room, yeah?” He searched for your eyes.

You couldn’t look. You were petrified of what you’d find. Some monster, or the same sweet eyes he hid behind his hands when he shyly asked you to be his girl? You still don’t know what would’ve been worse.

“W–what…” you coughed, spit clogging your throat, tongue paralyzed because if you moved it too much you could taste the blood. “What are you?”

“I’m me, but different. I’m better.” That same soft voice, his characteristic lilt right in your ears.

“I want,” you heaved, “I–I want to go… I think. Michael, I just… Let me go.” You ducked your head down, one of your trembling hands ghosting over your jaw and the blood caked there. “Let me go, plea—”

“Can I kiss you?”

“What?” you cried, eyes finally meeting his. There the monster stood, with the same eyes you loved.

He slowly leaned on you, laying his delicious weight and grounding you despite being the reason for your turmoil. He closed his eyes, those soft curls tickling your cheeks, his hips completely flush against yours and making you gasp as he breathed you in. You were hot, boiling everywhere: neck, chest, hips, deep down your belly and spreading into every inch of your limbs.

He was everywhere. And, in spite of everything, you clutched him tight. One hand on his bicep, the other brushing on the curve of his waist, leg unconsciously lifting to curl around his. You exhaled into his open and waiting mouth, swallowing his lips when they crashed against you. You tasted the fresh blood in his mouth, and shivered as you accidentally licked his fangs.

All you could think was that you’d go to Hell. Not in some lighthearted, cursing-in-the-heat-of-the-moment way. The literal way. The biblical way. Damned for eternity, boiled alive and skinned with fire type of Hell. 

You moaned into him; half a whine, half a sob. He ate it all. He grinded his hips into you, hand buried in the meat of your thigh and bringing you even closer, closer to where he was hot too—

You were going to be sick.

And you did. Breaking the kiss for air, all that connected your mouths was a thin line of hot-red saliva mixed with blood.

And… Yep. There was your dinner: twisting in your stomach and up your esophagus, hitting you so viscerally you only had time to push Michael aside and hurl on the dirty concrete of some NYC back alley, trapped between a dead body and an undead one.

Fuck ‘a rock and a hard place’ and whoever made that shit up. Fuck them and their momma, too.

“What the fuck are you?” you rasped with a sore throat, wiping your red-crusted lips with the back of your hand. Half-kneeled over, you were gripping your knee with one palm so hard it hurt.

He smiled at you wide, fangs getting buried in his bottom lip. They glistened with your spit and that thick metallic tang you could still taste. His voice was still soft. Still his.

“Isn’t it obvious, girl? I’m a vampire.”

You just laughed.

Sudden, sharp, gut-deep. You don’t think you’ve ever laughed that hard in all your twenty-six years on this mortal coil. Twenty-two, then. You laughed and laughed until all you could do was inhale lungfuls of air that punched their way out of you seconds later.

You clapped two hands together and looked at Michael with a crazed beam, your mouth open and teeth showing, still laughing. He looked at you and started laughing too, that deep rumble you found so attractive. He returned the crazed look, hands moving to wrap around each of your shoulders as you ran out of breath.

When your laughter died out, you fainted into his arms, and that’s the last thing you remember about that night in the alley.

It’d been four months since August. Four long months of guilt and disbelief clouding your head every time you woke up, of haunting your nightmares in the form of that unnamed busboy each night you fell asleep.

Anyone normal would’ve turned Michael in to the cops. Would’ve called him psychotic over the vampire bullshit, and ran away to some corner of the world so obscure not even the CIA could’ve found them in.

You did none of that. You weren’t just anyone.

He showed you. That very same morning, with the hotel room blinds shut, he proved everything. Read your mind right back to you, extended and retracted his fangs on will, moved around the room in a dizzying rush of movement a million times faster than any normal human could run. He told you everything.

Your head hurt so much you couldn’t get out of bed for two days, thus ending up losing your flight back to LAX. He paid for another ticket without question.

It was a tough-as-shit pill to swallow, but swallow it you fucking did. Michael Jackson was a vampire. Because, yeah, sure! Vampires are real! That’s a totally normal thing to be aware of in the world.

Michael was a vampire, you loved him, he loved you. He called you his girl, you kissed him and ached for him the same way you did before. You just needed time.

Ben was hounding you about your pending article/review of Prince’s newly released Purple Rain, the ceiling in your bathroom began leaking while you were away and had to get fixed, and you just… needed time to get your head straight.

The four months flew by quicker than you could’ve anticipated. Even as Michael and his brothers touched down on LAX at 2AM on the penultimate Friday of November—just a week before their final six shows in LA—you had a hard time believing what really went down that night in August.

He called you during. Every night, just like before, the landline by your bed rang and you’d talk for so long that you’d wake up in the morning with the phone dangling off the side of your bed. Pretending everything was normal. Ignoring the elephant in the room probably big enough to get into the Guinness record.

He’d call, and all you could think about would be those late nights in his studio, laughing over nothing as you questioned what you were even doing. Of how insane it was to share such an intimate space with him. Of knowing him beyond that invisible wall between you and a person of such tremendous success.

Of how much more he was than anything a TV host or swooning fan could squeeze out of him.

You flew into his arms near the mini-bus that was scheduled to drive them home from the airport, chuckled over his shoulder when Bill made eye-contact with a smirk. Bill also knew. You and him were the only ones.

Well, if you exclude Michael’s maker. But you don’t like thinking about that, so you don’t.

“What does it taste like?” you asked him after the show on the 7th; the second to last. 

You were in his room in Encino, the lamps casting a warm glow over his endearing childhood clutter. Perched on top of his bed, naked and sweaty and spent, you rested your head on your wrist, arm bent at the elbow. Your other palm played with the dips of his chest, curling in indecipherable patterns.

He huffed a soft laugh. “You’ve already had a taste, baby.”

“Yeah, and I threw up,” you counter. “No, I mean, like… What’s it like to drink blood? Does it feel like drinking life itself?”

He chuckled, gave you a wet peck and pulled on your lip with his fangs. You sighed a moan. “Warm,” he whispered. “Thick, it’s… Well, it’s not the answer to life’s mystery, angel. It’s food. I need it.”

“And me? Right now?”

His pupils dilated. You saw it in real time, as he bit his lip and his gaze fell on your neck. Your heartbeat picked up, and he would’ve felt it anyway, vampire or not.

“I won’t lie to you. I sense it. Feel it,” he brushed a sharp nail softly against the skin on your carotid, “as it slides along your veins. I think about it, when we—”

He looked cute. Flushing at his own words, his own thoughts. Your thigh was draped over his naked lap, and he slid a hand across your skin to grip you tighter.

You didn’t think much when you said: “Take a sip, then.”

His head snapped at you, all of the flush gone and replaced by something of a different nature entirely. There you were, a lamb that’s survived the wolf and begging for it anyway. 

Th-thump, th-thump, th-th-thump, th-thump. You knew he felt it. Your skin was sizzling, and you wanted him to taste you.

“No,” he shook his head.

You raised a wrist near his face, waved it like a child, naked breasts brushing against him. Stupid fucking lamb. “Why not?” you asked, and you actually sounded hurt.

He kissed you, poured all his love into it. Palm cradling your head softly and shooing away your wrist from the danger-zone that was his mouth, he said: “Because,” a peck against your lips, “once I start,” on your cheeks, “I won’t stop.”

Deep down, even then, you know you wanted it—)

“That’s not what I asked,” you tell him now, eyes tight. The whirring recorder fills the silence.

His head drops for a moment with a quiet laugh, and when he speaks up, he looks at the recorder pointedly. As if to say, ‘Happy now?’

“It’s my story, isn’t it? My reckoning?”

You huff. “A story needs foundation. So far, all we’ve established is that Michael Jackson knocked his head sideways so hard while filming Thriller, he’s having delusions. You asked for this interview, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he smiles. He loves this. Of course he does.

“Then let me do my job. Now… When, how, and by whom were you turned?”

He sucks in a sharp breath, elbows on his knees, playing with his fingers. “I was turned in New Jersey, July 31st. My maker… is a patron of the arts. That’s what he told me, anyway. Why he did what he did. He said I should stay like this forever.”

You feel your heart bleeding. You know he can hear it, too. “And you will.”

“And I will.”

Michael should be alive right now. This shouldn’t be happening. He shouldn’t have so much blood on his hands, even though it’s so, so fucking hypocritical of you to think this way. The moment Michael died, he became something else. Something outside of human morality and comprehension.

He’s not human, but that image of his doe-eyes that first Saturday in Encino is engraved down to your bones. You just can’t let go.

You cough, clearing your throat, begging a higher power to stop the tears from pooling. You don’t fucking need this right now. “So, it wasn’t consensual?”

His smile changes, for just a fraction of a second. “No. It wasn’t. But I don’t think you’ll find many vampires to tell you it was.”

You look to your lap, at the notepad that’s still empty and the nervous tapping of your pen. “How does one turn? Please, walk us through the process.”

There it is, that smirk. Even when he gets like this, his smile is beautiful.

“Remember Dodger Stadium?” he repeats, a deeper timbre in his voice that lands right where you don’t need to be thinking right now. He doesn’t normally sound like this, to protect his voice.

Fuck.

The answer is yes, and he knows it is. He just wants you to say it. Wants to remind you, as if it could ever be erased.

December 9th, Dodger Stadium. Last night of the Victory Tour. The night Michael finally gave his piece-of-shit father a taste of his own goddamn medicine. The night Michael tasted you for the first time. The point of no return.

You were backstage, waiting for him and his brothers to be done, eardrums nearly bursting by the sheer excitement of the crowd. It should’ve overwhelmed you—and it nearly had—but he made it all okay. Had Bill standing by your side for the entirety of the concert, ensuring Michael would be the first person to see you after they got done. For good this time.

Joseph was there too, and you were fuming, but not as much as he’d be. The thought comforted you.

Michael looked high when he stormed towards you, sweat-soaked and iridescent, the throat-burning screams of an insatiable crowd echoing behind him like the croaks of vultures. He smiled at you, letting his fangs show as he took you by the hand, Joseph hot on his trail. Bill stopped him, and Michael didn’t look back once.

He crowded your every sense in some obscure corner of the stadium, nearly pitch-black. He kissed you like he hadn’t found your lips in days, like a thirsty man trekking the desert.

You welcomed it. You craved it. Arms thrown over his shoulders, one playing with the curls of his nape and the other burying itself in their thickness, you squeezed him like you wanted to be fused. Needed to.

“You did it,” you sighed with a big smile against his lips, moaning a soft exhale as his kisses trailed down and all over. “I’m so fucking proud of you, Mike, you did it—”

The first bite was soft. Just a nip, a barely-there graze of his fangs on your exposed neck. A slip-up, making him freeze in place as your heart echoed, pounding deeper and deeper against its boney cage.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. All color drained from his face. You panicked, clutched him tighter against you. He quivered: “Baby, no, I’m so sorr—”

“No,” you breathed. Th-thump, th-thump, th-th-thump, th-thump. You watched his eyes clouding, pupils blown as he zeroed in on your pulsing jugular. You felt the vein shifting your skin with its intensity. He damn-near drooled. “I want you to. I want you to have me, like this… I want you to taste me.” You licked into his open lips messily, tongue slipping on his fangs. “I trust you.”

He looked like he’d seen a ghost. 

“W–what?” he stuttered in that sweet voice, just like the boy he used to be. His pretty eyes drifted between your neck and eyes, lost and confused, like he hadn’t heard you right.

You smiled at him. With one finger, you traced his cheekbone, down his nose, across his lips. One of your legs was wrapped around his waist, and you tightened it. His hand instinctively buried itself in the meat of your thigh, thumb softly rubbing.

“I want you,” your hand pushed down your shirt collar, “to taste me, Michael. You deserve it.”

He morphed into something else; darkened eyes, something swirling inside them that surpassed lust by an absurd degree. You couldn’t understand it fully; you could only just revel in it.

He inhaled sharply, lips on your vein, voice blistering. He sounded breathless, air completely punched out of him. “I do, don’t I? You smell… so sweet, baby.” A kiss, sharp fangs prickling you, warning you of what’s to come. “My sweet thing, all mine… Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you begged, “yes, yes, ye–ah—!”

It was… euphoric.

To this day, there isn’t a more apt word for it. That first tasting felt better than any drug, any naturally produced hormone. And it was exactly that feeling of intimate carnage you’d been chasing ever since.

The truth is, Michael ruined you. You’ve come to terms with it.

How can you even put it into words? He’s in your head again, you can tell; reliving it from your perspective, letting the pain and pleasure of memory wash over him as he exhales. You exhale, too. You cross your legs, he adjusts his crotch, and neither of you says a thing.

The recorder whirs, tapes wasted over the silence.

Your brain shifts through the memories without your say. That hot prickling of his teeth into your neck—for just a second—to gently pierce the flesh and not cause too much damage. The way he licked over it as you moaned, something in his tongue that made the pain give way to ecstasy. 

You still haven’t figured that part out, but you doubt there’ll be any scientific studies done on the Dark Gift anytime soon. So, mystery it is.

The way he drank: lazily, his slender and strong arms wrapped around you like a vice, feeling him everywhere as your eyes swam. You turned boneless in his embrace, like putty. Completely at his mercy, and he drank every last drop you offered.

You were pulsing hot for him, and you are now too. Both times, he’s been able to feel it. That first time, though, he held back. Blood-drunk and greedy for more, he drew back with a sharp breath, two slim fingers finding the puncture wounds and pressing tight to stop the bleeding. Heaving as his tongue lapped over what was left still on his lips, completely gone.

You remember feeling hammered. Like you’d just downed a whole bottle of Hennessy and done three lines of coke. Fuck, that’s not something one can go through and just be normal afterwards, right? Well-adjusted and going on about their day?

Humans are vampire food, and that something in their saliva surely is to make your last moments on this earth somewhat enjoyable. That busboy looked so happy with his entire neck slashed in two. You’d been in ecstasy too, and just lived to tell about it.

He’s doing this on fucking purpose. Your thighs clench, eyes narrowing.

“I remember,” you hiss curtly. “But you knew that. You’re in my head right now, aren’t you?”

“What would I see?” he asks, breathless, leaning back on the cushions, hand on his crotch. Don’t look, don’t look. “If I was.”

Two can play that game. You force yourself to think of something insanely unsexy. Like that time you accidentally walked by Tito skinny-dipping in the pool in Hayvenhurst, one night you’d stayed over and wanted a glass of water in the middle of the night. You got an unforgettable view of his naked ass, and that’s exactly the image you project.

It takes merely a second for Michael to lose it. And, fuck. Fuck him and that stupidly deep laugh of his. Fuck him, and fuck you for finding it so disarming.

“You think my laugh’s disarming, sweet thing?”

Sweet thing. Just like he called you that night, drooling over the smell of your veins. It shouldn’t be as hot as it is.

“Mr. Jackson—”

“—Michael—”

“Michael—!” you give in and cut yourself off, his name a frustrated whisper. You clench your eyes tight, defeated. Then, because you’re you, you bite back. “Remember the AMAs? Or Rolling Stone’s 20th, remember that? Huh, Michael?”

(The American Music Awards of 1986. What can you even say about that shitshow of an awards night? The last time you’d been inside the Shrine Auditorium was as a young journalist, still unsure but certain to leave your mark.

And you clearly had, because the second time you stepped through those doors was while holding onto Michael’s arm. His date. His girl. Seated in the front row, wearing a pretty black dress to match his military jacket.

You don’t remember much about the ceremony or the afterparty, except for how much you wanted to strangle Diana Ross in that shiny red dress of hers. That old bitch.

Your and Michael’s relationship was kept mostly private from the public, but not from either of your circles. A badly-kept secret, so to speak. Of course Diana knew as she called him up the stage and held his arm, kissed him sloppily on both cheeks, danced tightly against him as all the artists involved sang We Are The World.

You fought with him about it afterward, really bad. Said some nasty shit you wish you could’ve phrased differently, because he just couldn’t see your point. He even defended her, right in your face! You remember saying something like: “She met you as a child, Michael! A grown woman! Called you sexy on national TV! What the fuck are you not seeing, exactly?”

He replied like: “Baby, it ain’t like that. Never was, never will. You’re overreacting. Please. Why are you bein’ like this?”

Bill drove you home ten minutes later, and you didn’t speak to Michael for over a week.

Your apartment got promptly filled with an apologetically handwritten card, some of your favorite pastries from Phoenix Bakery in Chinatown, and a brand new record of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love.

It was a week too fucking soon.

Yeah. Well, ‘86 and ‘87 were a couple of bad years for the both of you. You don’t know if you can confidently say you actually broke up, because how do two people break up when one’s tasted your blood? When you’ve let them? Can that connection ever be severed, even momentarily?

You sure as hell acted like it had.

You’d barely spoken to him in months—close to a year, almost—and the cards didn’t once stop appearing every week, like clockwork.

He called you once, too. Late into the night, your apartment quiet as you twisted and turned. You picked up on the third ring, breath catching in your throat when you heard his soft whiny breaths.

Michael. Heavy and hot, almost scratching the receiver. You recalled his scent, the way his perfume would linger on the pillows even hours later. The way you’d bury your face in those pillows as he wrecked you.

The soppy-wet sounds of his hand working over himself travelled the distance, landing right between your legs as you rubbed them together in shock. 

“Mike?” you whined, bit back a moan as he exhaled.

“Talk to me, baby, jus’ keep talking… A–ah, please, plea… I need to hear your voice…”

It was so loud under the silence. Your heart pounding, the heat between your legs slipping past the point of tolerance, the way his soft moans slithered on your skin and made you shudder. Your hand buried in your panties, mouth huffing and drooling over the headset, shuddering with each of Michael’s groans and whines, each wet echo of his hand as he got off to your voice alone.

He came with a shuddering breath that was enough to send you over the edge too, fingers cramping as you chased the feeling with your hips, your moans only prolonging his own high.

The quiet stretched over you both like a blanket, just the faint scratches of the connection breaking it, your breaths mingling even miles apart. You imagined what he’d look like right then: fucked out, needy, spent, curls a wet mess against his forehead and cheeks. The way he’d clench his eyes in pleasure and the way his thighs would quiver from it. The way you’d kiss every inch of him, lips sliding over his sweaty skin as he flushed; because, despite everything, he still got shy.

Panting, you punched the landline shut, like it’d burned you. And that was it.

While that period of time felt like ages to you, it must’ve been meaningless for an immortal who’s got nothing but time in his hands. You think he would’ve waited years had you not pulled the stunt you had.

The scene was this: November of 1987 inside the Hollywood Palladium, dimly lit table areas punctuated by blinding white follow-spots cutting through a thick layer of haze, the stage dominated by a giant ‘Rolling Stone: 20 Years’ neon sign. The air was heavy with the scent of expensive French perfume worn by every A-lister, spilled champagne, hairspray, and an omnipresent cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke.

You wore that black dress Michael bought for you to match him in the AMAs, because you knew he would attend. He’d said as much in his most recent card that he’d sprayed with his perfume. You weren’t proud of it, but you’d clutched it tight against your nose, inhaled a deep gulp of his sweet and honeyed musk, sighed as frustration and pettiness sprouted inside you like weeds.

You wore his dress, to match with another man. Like the selfish bitch you were, apparently.

His name was David; a sweet post-graduate from USC who’d clung to you like a duckling since his first day in the office. It didn’t take long for him to ask you to be his date for the anniversary party, and you could see in his eyes he hoped it’d lead to something more. A sloppy makeout with champagne-soaked lips, maybe some second-base action in the back of his red BMW in the parking lot. A textbook office romance that’d end up being nothing but a short-lived disappointment, because after Michael that’s what every relationship was doomed to burn down into.

It’d never happen, of course. The plan wasn’t to get under somebody else, it was to get under Michael’s skin. That’s just about how far you’d thought it through. Hindsight’s a nasty bitch, though, because you really should’ve second-guessed yourself a bit harder. You wouldn’t have David’s blood on your hands had you done that.

But, you’re getting ahead of yourself.

David looked like the American Dream personified. Tall and muscular, pretty blue eyes and long brunette hair. He was the kind of man destined to marry his high school sweetheart and live in a nice two-story house in the suburbs, driving that same BMW until either he or the car gave out. You have no idea what happened and he somehow ended up as an entertainment-journalism intern in the heart of LA, but everyone’s got a story, you suppose.

Michael’s arrival signalled mayhem. He’d just released Bad three months ago and embarked on his very first solo world tour since September: first stop in Japan, then back to the states for the near-month gap until the Australian leg of the tour. Bad was another masterpiece, but you’d known that already. 

You were with him for almost the entire time he was making it. You’d sat curled on his couch in the studio as he re-recorded his ‘83 demo for Liberian Girl, shuddering at his beautiful harmonies, kissing him in-between breaks.

Outside, the sidewalk was a warzone of the paparazzi’s flashing Xenon flashbulbs. Inside, the instrumental intro of Dirty Diana began blasting as everyone became aware of Michael’s arrival, and you had to fight the urge to glower. 

He’d told you it was fictional, a gritty pop-rock anthem about groupies. You knew he was telling the truth. It still pissed you the fuck off.

David was pulling at your hand, wanting to introduce you to Jann Wenner, who he’d just met himself. You know you should’ve been enthusiastically jumping at the chance to get acquainted with Rolling Stone’s co-founder, but all you could think about was Michael.

His look. The longer hair you’d been threading your fingers through, now slick with gel and held up in a half-bun, falling to his shoulders. The metallic buckles, the heavy black leather, the studs. He looked like sex, even from fifty feet apart. Even in the dark. Maybe especially in the dark; right at home.

His eyes found yours in the crowd, irises glinting unnaturally when you made eye-contact. You’d missed those eyes so much. He smiled at that, reading your thoughts from the distance.

Amidst the clamor of his arrival and the party which was in full drunken swing, he made every sound but his projected voice fade away; as if your ears got stuffed with cotton. It disoriented you, and for a second before his voice rang in your head, you thought you’d been drugged.

‘Hi, baby,’ he echoed around your skull.

Fuck—

A chuckle, in unnatural surround sound. ‘I missed you too.’

But then David drew closer, still chatting with Jann Wenner, laughing over something you hadn’t bothered to pay attention to. Not that you could. Michael was watching. And when David’s palm inched down to your waist, gripping your skin with the confidence of a much different man than who you’d become accustomed with… You knew. You could taste it in the air.

David was already dead.

Does it really matter what exactly happened next? How Michael cut a line through the crowd and laughed at David’s jokes, looked at you only when he invited him somewhere quieter to talk, acted fascinated with his infant career? How you did nothing to stop the growling predator from catching up with sweet David into one of the countless unmarked backrooms of Hollywood Palladium?

“Stop!” you cried as Michael had him by the throat, red-hot and thick rivulets of crimson painting the floor in heaps. David’s neck was bent for Michael’s teeth to latch onto, dark leather glistening with blood, his pretty eyes sizzling with an anger so deep it bordered on divine. “Mike, he’s no one, h–he’s nothing! He’s a fucking nobody! Just let him go!”

“A nobody?” he echoed, voice slick as he swallowed around the words. “Touching you? A nobody you wore this dress for? Our dress? Are you serious, girl?”

David was gargling on his own spit and blood, completely out of it, limbs spread like a plush-toy on the discount aisle. Your hands were shaking, gooseflesh prickling every exposed inch of skin.

“We can just t–take him to a hospital. Please, Mike,” you wheezed out, a sudden sob breaking through your voice. “It’s my fault… It’s my fault, I didn’t thi—”

“Think what? That I’d do this?”

You shook your head, eyes clenched, arms crossed over your torso unsurely. “Just, let’s ju—”

“We can’t take him anywhere, sweet thing. Or let him live.” He rose, slowly, the predator approaching the deer because it loves it despite everything. He came to you and cradled you by the nape, searched for your eyes as your breathing steadied. You gripped him by the waist as he brought you closer, going to kiss your forehead and stopping short because of the blood still dripping. “What happens when he wakes up and tells the police Michael Jackson tried to kill him?”

Fuck. You’re so fucking stupid. Idiot. Idiot, idiot, id—)

“Of course I remember,” Michael tells you. “If you’d told me to stop, I would’ve. But you didn’t. Why?”

You drop the pen, ink smudging the unmarked notepad before you throw it to the side completely. “You never actually wanted this interview, did you?” He smiles. “What is this? Some sort of sick trip down memory lane? Why the hell did you have me agree to this, Mike?”

“It’s Mike, again? Good, good…” he breathes, smile elated. “I didn’t have you agree to anything, baby. You agreed… because you wanted to. Just like you wanted me to drain David dry.” You look away. “Admit it,” he urges, wild.

(—iot, idiot, idiot.

“Scratch me,” he told you, breath hot and metallic. You almost leaned forward. “Push me. Bite me. Do anything, and I’ll stop. I’ll let him go.” He unravelled his arms from you, took a step back, eyes locked onto yours like anchors the entire time. He moved backwards, one painstakingly slow step at a time. “Anything. Move a muscle, and I stop.” Another step. Two, three. “Anything, baby.” He leaned down, grabbed David by his blooming neck, oozing in-between his fingers. He shook his head: “No?”

You didn’t move an inch. Not a twitch, or a tremor, or a step. Nothing. Because he was right. If David woke up, Michael’s life would be over. Yours too. You’re not ashamed to admit it; you love Michael too much to care about a life snuffed out before its time. Hell, you might’ve killed David yourself.

So, you did… nothing. You stood there idle, breathless as the soppy slaps of Michael’s lips and tongue drained David dry. And when he swiftly came in front of you—spat the remaining blood on the ground next to your heels and fixed you with his hunger—you kissed him.

Open-mouthed, hot, eating him from the inside out. David’s blood smearing on your skin, you moaned against Michael’s sizzling lips, your waist and neck bending as he leaned into you harder. He whined something soft, voice electrifying, just like he sounded all those times before. Even under the leather and the death, he was still your Michael.)

“Why did you call me here, Mike?”

“You know why. You’ve known from the start.”

You shake your head, petulant. “No, n—”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, you do.” He searches your eyes, an endless brown sea of stars, all trapped inside his irises. His brows furrow, and his voice suddenly loses its punch. “I need you with me. I… I can’t do this, not anymore.”

Your heart stutters. “What? What’re you talking about?”

He chuckles to himself a bit, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s something broken. “Eternity is lonely, and I love you s–so much…” He sucks in a sharp breath. “I don’t want to be alone anymore. I can’t.”

Oh… “Michael,” you breathe. Every human instinct in you screams to run, but every uneven beat of your heart screams the opposite. He can feel it. The way the blood surges through your veins, the way your breath catches somewhere in your throat, your eyes that trail down his figure you’ve memorized by heart.

Fuck. Fuck, f—

“What is it, baby?” he whispers. He might as well have yelled it. The way he’s looking at you makes the hairs on your nape stand tall, a shiver going through your shoulders you have no time to suppress.

You gulp. Eyes trailing down his arms, caressing his veins, falling into the trap of his slender hands. He’s beautiful everywhere. His pretty face and even prettier eyes, the long curls he’s grown out, his soft-spoken mouth with two fangs sharp enough to kill.

God. You love him so much. You need him. Not just for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years. Not to wilt away while he stays behind, watching you go with every sunset. No. You need to be… with him. Through all of it. You fucking need him.

“How… would you do it?” you whisper.

You don’t need to specify what ‘it’ is. His eyes are proof enough he understands exactly what you mean; holding you captive, like snares. You watch the way they darken, how his whole face shifts. It makes need pool deep down your belly. You twitch on the sofa, and he knows.

But you know, too. You can see the way he’s rubbing a hand on his thigh, adjusting in place, breathing a little heavier.

“I’d have to drain you first,” he punches out. One of his fingers traces his own throat in demonstration, sharp nail catching skin and leaving a trail. “I’d bite… here,” he stops at the carotid. “And,” his finger continues the trail, “here.” The jugular.

“Yeah?” You feel the vessels he’s pointing to galloping, pulsing harshly under your skin, like they’re getting ready for him. It’s like you can’t breathe properly anymore; the air gets stuck somewhere down your throat, your chest rising and falling in compensation. “And then?”

“Then…” He shifts, standing up, stalking towards you. “I’d stop, just before you die…”

Your neck needs to bend upwards to look him in the eye, eyebrows raising in performance. You’re eye-to-eye with his crotch, and you push down the urge to rub your cheek against it. You breathe: “Oh?”

“Mhm,” he hums, looming above you, all dark and handsome and yours. Fuck, you’d missed him. His palm comes up to cup your jaw, thumb softly tracing your bottom lip. “I’d slit my wrist… Right over this pretty mouth…” His thumb pushes in, and you take him gladly; tongue swirling around the digit as you huff a moan. It threatens to undo him. “I–I’d… Hm. I’d let you drink from me, as much as my baby needs… Yeah?” he asks, voice breaking into a high-pitched breath at the end.

“You will?” you ask when you release his spit-soaked thumb, giving the digit a kiss.

“Yes,” he exhales so hard his whole chest shudders. “I will, girl. I’ll give you every last drop.”

You don’t know who lunged first. All you know is that one second he’s looking down at you—mouth gaping as he pants, the heat between your legs spreading like tendrils over your nerves—and the next, you’re kissing.

Kissing is a kind term. You’re breathing each other in; licking and scraping teeth together like animals, whining against each other’s open mouths. His hold is bruising on your skin, his body an anchor as he turns you around in his hold.

Back against his lean chest, hips flush, his arm around you as his mouth comes down to your neck with a moan. He doesn’t bite, or even nip; he’s breathing you in. It makes you hotter, temperature rising dangerously.

“Sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted,” he sighs, words muffled on your skin. “My girl… All mine…”

“Do it,” you heave, bound in his arms. He freezes. “Make me. Right now. Do it, Mike—”

“Baby—”

His hold lightened, and you used it to turn around again, just as flush as before. You grab him by both cheeks, cradling him in equal parts softly and fiercely. You smile, and it widens when you realise how much the sight undoes him.

“You were right. I’ve wanted this… for a long time.” You lay a peck on his lips, moving back before he has a chance to return it. You remove your blouse with both hands, chest falling and rising deeper with each second more his gaze trails over you. Taking his palm in your hold, you bring it to your pulsing neck, letting his nails softly graze against it. “I trust you.”

Just like you’d told him in Dodger Stadium. The words cleave him in two, lids hooding over his eyes as he nods, leaning down to catch your lips in a wet kiss full of promise.

He lays you down on the big couch, your naked skin meeting the back cushions. He undresses, looming over you like a statue, something from another era entirely. Lean and catastrophically beautiful. The white shirt he wore lands somewhere near the still-whirring cassette recorder, and he’s on you in seconds. Careful hands cradling the back of your neck, kissing you all over as your breathing quickens.

He’s nervous. “I’ve never done this before.”

You giggle nervously. “Me neither.”

It lands just like you wanted it to; makes him chuckle. He meets your eyes, and you suddenly realise his eyes will be the last thing you see. What better a way to die? He breathes: “I love you. I love you so much.” You smile. “Say it back,” he begs.

With a shake of your head, you whisper: “After.”

What comes next can best be described as a… euphoric daydream. A split-screen montage of ache and pleasure, a film reel of your life the way people say it flashes in your eyes just before you step into the light. You never believed it when they said that. How can so many years fit into so few seconds? How can an entire life of mornings and afternoons and nights all fly by so quickly? How did you get here?

As Michael pierces your flesh—carotid and jugular throbbing together in thick, hot rivulets you faintly register bathing your skin—you feel no pain. The ceiling oozes and bends out of shape, your limbs grow numb, and your eyes swim. You moan, but it doesn’t sound right in your ears. Like you’re somewhere else, hearing it from a distance. And Michael keeps on drinking; gulping you down, your heart racing to make up for the loss, lips siphoning all of your nearly one-and-a-half gallon of blood out.

You’re not in Michael’s house anymore. You’re six, and your dad’s bought a brand new record player as a gift for your mom’s birthday; the one that’d later end up in your apartment. You jump excitedly as she punches in Abbey Road, and the three of you spend the entire morning dancing to Here Comes The Sun.

You’re fifteen, and a boy’s broken your heart for the first time. He’d asked you to the prom as a joke, making you come by his house only to find Donna Taylor dolled up and smushed against him, his parents snapping polaroids of their son and his real date. You were mortified, hardly got out of bed for a week.

Your first day at UC Berkeley. Your fresh start. Your passion. The new friends who didn’t give a shit about how you grew up or what you used to be. The endless caffeinated nights slaving away in Eshleman Hall. That small diner close to Sherry’s house you’d all spend your free nights at, gossiping and laughing and talking about the future with greasy fingers. Those Wednesday afternoons spent at the radio station hosting your show with Aisha and Susan, giggling over Michael Jackson’s vocals on the second verse of The Lady In My Life.

Michael. The Grammys of ‘84. His room in Hayvenhurst. The tiny mom-and-pop record store close to your apartment you’d both go incognito in and browse for records, even though the teenage girl behind the counter recognized him and swore to keep his secret with her life (as long as he promised to come back). Before he had the courage to kiss you. Before you had the courage to admit you wanted him to.

The memories are brighter now, images swirling and bleeding into one another, to the point where you don’t know where one ends and another begins. You see Michael’s younger face, before he turned, and he’s standing beside you as you were on your first day in Berkeley. You look good together.

You feel featherlight. Eyes drooping and—

Something warm drips on your lips. You didn’t realise before, but a breath was stuck in your throat, lethargic and slow. It punches you straight in the chest on its way out.

It’s so sweet. Hot and thick, better than anything you’ve ever tasted. Like a charged live-wire, you jump up. Things get less blurry, sanguine haze slipping into rhapsodic focus.

It’s Michael’s arm, his oozing wrist, his blood you’re gulping down. You’re so, so hungry. Starving. Like you haven’t eaten in years. Your hands wrap around his wrist like an animal, pushing it into your mouth, guzzling down his saccharine blood as it drips past your jaw and down your breasts. You hear him moan, deeply, erotic and charged. You gulp harder and harder—

He swipes his hand away, and you’re left whining.

“No,” you cry, whimpering, words slurred like you’re drunk. “Iwantmore, Michael, I need more—”

“I’ll give it to you, baby, I will,” he comforts. His hands cradle your face softly, wrist still bleeding, fingers trailing over your forehead and cheeks and lips in awe. “You’re here…”

“I love you,” you heave out. His blood is still thick on your tongue. With newfound strength, you overpower him, pushing him back down onto the couch and straddling his lap. He moans as you kiss him, making him taste himself, tongues swiping against each other. You want to eat him up. “Ineedit, M–mike…”

He’s hard against you, bulge pushing up against his pants, sensitive as your hips start rubbing against him. You feel drunk on it. You lick your own lips, chasing the last sweet remnants of his blood, gulping it down with his spit. It’s like every single sensation has been dialed up to a million.

He looks like a dream. Breathing heavily, his non-bleeding palm tight on your thigh as you move against him, head hanging back with an open mouth. He brings his wrist up lazily, blood seeping down his forearm, fangs biting his lip with a dangerous smirk.

“You want it?” he whispers, sharp. You nod feverishly. He hisses: “Take it then. Take what you want, girl—”

He moans so prettily when you take his wrist in your mouth again. A little calmer now, not like you’re starving but rather like you’re savouring. Every hot drop. You’re wet and aching, rubbing against his hardness, gulping him down as it all swirls into a fucked out bliss you never want to get out of.

You could listen to his sounds forever. You want to. He’s so breathy and soft, nothing like the men you’ve been with before who only grunt like brutes. You suck his wrist a little harder, drop your clothed center a bit firmer, his eyes rolling back as he lets out the most mouth-watering mewl.

He exhales an embarrassed breath a second later, feeling as you smile against his wrist, still drinking. He pulls his hand back, your lips smacking in its absence.

“How d’you feel?” he slurs, cupping your cheek.

Forgoing an answer, you drop a hand between your bodies, grinning when he shudders. You rub him over the cloth just like this, need growing stronger the more he falls into you.

You lean down and kiss him, blood and breaths mingling, gasping a small ‘oh!’ in his mouth when you feel those slender fingers sneaking past the hem of your skirt.

You’re shaking as his fingers make contact with your slick; so cold contrasted with the heat bubbling, exhaling into each other’s face as you rest your forehead against his. Your hand undoes his zipper, bypasses his underwear and closes around him.

Fuck. Fuck. You missed him so much.

You work him just the way he loves: fingers brushing over the tip, smearing the wetness, squeezing him just so as your grip glides up and down. In return, he works you too: thumb on your clit, rubbing tight circles without missing a single beat, not even when he slips two fingers inside and you falter, moaning in his mouth.

“It feels so good, Mike…” you hiccup.

“I know,” he whines, “I know, sweet thing… You’re so good f’me… Here,” he brings his wrist up, “drink. Dri–a–ah, mhh—”

He tastes so fucking good. Is all blood like this? Is it just Michael? You don’t know nor do you care, you just need to keep drinking. You hold his lean arm tight against your torso, veined forearm lodged right in-between your breasts, wrist bent as he continues working you to a climax.

He stops his ministrations on you and closes around the hand that’s sloppily working him, slips his hardness out, single-handedly ripping your underwear in two. Fuck. Fu—

You shudder when he slaps the tip against your sensitive clit. “Mike,” you cry through a full mouth, nearly choking on a gulp. You shove your wrist in his face, brows furrowed, begging: “Fuck me.”

The sounds he makes slides over you like hot molasses. And when he slips in, it feels right at home.

His fangs break the skin on your wrist, mirroring your greedy gulps and you move against each other, skin slapping against skin. He’s everywhere. Everything. Him feeding on you feels as euphoric as it had that very first time, when you were still alive and mortal, fragile in front of the beast. The sensations travel from the puncture wounds and up your arm, tingling and erotic. They mix with the feeling of his dick driving in and out of you until you can’t tell where one sensation ends and the other begins.

You make for a sinful sight. Damned. Fucking on his couch, blood dripping down the leather, drinking each other up as you’re steadily shoved towards your peak. You feel it coming suddenly, his arm still held tight between your tits, his wrist limp as you detach your lips from the wound because you’re—

“M–mike—” you sob, voice wrecked, “I’m, I–I’m—”

“Yeah?” he breathes. He kisses you, hand slipping to your clit, and you come harder—fiercer—than you’ve had in your entire life.

The feeling threatens to drown you all over again. It travels from your bud and up your belly, spreading like tendrils and meeting with the tingling of his mouth that’s latched to your wrist again. Not drinking now, just kissing. Tiny wet pecks as the skin tries to heal itself, veins throbbing.

It takes a few more desperate bumps of his hips and your fangs—fangs!—teasing his ear for him to cum inside you. He shudders whole, his moans the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard, his head falling back and chest rising arrhythmically.

He doesn’t pull out, and you don’t want him to. You’re content to lie like this, chest to chest, connected and aching in the best of ways. Still breathing hard, you kiss him on the cheek, and he smiles at you so brightly, tears gather on your lashes. Happy tears.

“My baby,” he whispers, pretty doe-eyes drifting across your features. He kisses you, just for a second longer than you had. “My girl…”

“Look!” you giggle, brushing the pad of one finger against a fang, mouth hanging open like an idiot. He laughs. “I’ave’angs now!”

“I love you so much,” he murmurs, “but you need to rest. You’re not gonna wake up so happy, trust me.” You hum, smirking, squeezing your walls around his sensitive and softening dick. His hand comes down your ass in a sharp slap, making you smirk wider. “C’mon now, girl,” he smiles, pecking your nose. “Don’t start.”

“Okay,” you smile against him.

You spend the rest of the afternoon in bed, resting just like he told you, listening to him explain how most things work now. It makes your head ring—and you have a million and one things you need to figure out and come to terms with—but none of it mattered for that small window of time you spent cuddled in his bed, all your problems and concerns unable to reach you past the warmth bubbling in your chest.

You died. Michael died. You were both on equal ground now, undead and damned, as you always suspected it was meant to be. Ever since you locked eyes beneath a sea of camera bulbs flashing.

(The night after your turn, you burned the forgotten Sony TC-D5M and the reels inside it. The interview was never going to see the light of day, anyway. He just needed to remind you of something you’d wanted from the start. He had to make you remember. He couldn’t stand your absence any longer. That you-shaped emptiness that threatened to stretch out for years while you’d force yourself to move on, leaving a void behind you that could’ve never been filled.

You loved him just as he loved you, and that was rare. Even before he died, he’d never felt it quite like he did with you. Every relationship of his scrutinized or twisted out of context, unable to exist with someone without offering explanations. He didn’t have that with you.

You’re a journalist, you know the ins and outs of the industry, and what you didn’t know you learned. Because you were good. With you, he was free to just exist.

So, yeah.

That’s the story of how Michael Jackson killed you, and that’s the end of it. There’s nothing else.)

3leni © 2026 — i do not consent to my work being republished on other platforms or put into ai. do not copy or plagiarize.

Michael Jackson lived just like he died: on the margins, despite having every spotlight on himself. Biggest star of the world—resplendent, untouchable—someone to look at in a museum display with awe instead of knowing. Of learning.

Of loving.

Michael Jackson came into your life still breathing, cheeks full of warmth, alive. So, so alive it hurts to think about. He’d just broken the Grammys in half, forever splitting himself apart from any other artist that’s walked the same halls and earned the same awards.

They weren’t him. No one would or ever could be.

The year was 1984. At the beginning of spring, the time when earth wakes up and stirs people into living again. But it stirs hunger, too. Blood-red and sopping with a never-ending repetition that rarely gives and only takes.

You didn’t know it then and neither did he, but the spring of ‘84 would be the last spring Michael ever saw as mortal. Where he could wake in the morning and tiptoe outside, glimpse at the birds perched on his balcony and watch the sunrise without it being suicidal.

You were nervous back then, still green while the industry was blooming all in technicolor around you, trying to carve a space for yourself in metaphorically unmoving stone.

You’d just gotten out of a hellish job waiting tables near Marina Del Rey. Ready to take the world by storm, carrying your clip-book full of articles everywhere like ID. It was your baby, fully yours, born from three years’ worth of endless nights and cramped fingers and all the sweat going into that.

UC Berkeley’s Mass Communications alumna. Magna Cum Laude, although you had to fight for it because, well… Life gets hard sometimes, right? But you got it in the end, and it felt good as shit.

That waitress job was temporary, you’d swore to yourself it would be. Your dreams were much bigger than a sleazy diner only serving those small enough to fit in it. It got you through school though, so there’s not much to pine about. You lose some, you win some.

And you won big.

Worked your ass off for that win, too. Written a banging thesis on the rise of MTV, built a portfolio of music reviews for The Daily Cal, co-hosted a weekly pop culture slash entertainment show on KALX with some campus friends.

‘90.7 FM every Wednesday, baby!’

You miss it, what can you say? You just can’t help yourself. Life flowed easier back then. Before the inevitability of success, of that gnawing feeling something’s going to go terribly wrong any minute now.

Before Michael.

Everything is categorized as either before or after him. Sometimes you can’t even tell the difference; the feeling of his teeth is like it’s always been there.

A phantom pain you’d feel when changing mixtapes for an article that was due, or those times you’d get goosebumps when tidying up the vinyls—late at the radio station, after a show—and his face would show up.

White suit over a black shirt; piercing eyes, soft face and even softer disposition; gold handwritten cursive reading Thriller.

You’d think, again and again, ‘Fuck, he’s gorgeous.’ The vinyl would sit tucked pretty between The Police’s Synchronicity and Bowie’s Let’s Dance, and that’d be it. Just another record on the shelf, another artist that floated above the common man not because of money or arrogance, or even success.

Simply because he was meant to be there. It was the rest of the world that was just catching up with him.

That’s what you thought then, at least. Before you met him and got to know him. Before falling for him rather than the idol plastered on every entertainment article (written by you, or otherwise). It simultaneously took you by surprise while also not being surprising at all. Everyone falls in love with Michael one way or another, you just didn’t think you would.

At least, more than a fan or an admirer of his art, professionally. Of course you were a fan. Your mom used to blast Jackson 5 records every Saturday morning, and you’d be peeling potatoes or sweeping the living room with Michael’s voice as an underscore.

You grew up with him. And, isn’t that sad? You were a kid, a real kid; crying over boys and homework and skinned knees while he was pumping out show after show and interview after interview. Even at eight, you remember feeling sad for him.

Your mother used to tell you you’re being silly. That the Jacksons loved to perform, and they got handsomely compensated for their artistry. That they wouldn’t have to work a real job a day in their life the way you or your dad were expected to. And, she was right. But the sadness was there, you could feel it.

When he released his first solo album, Got To Be There, you bought it with the weekly allowance you’d been saving up and surprised your mom. That weekend, the only thing echoing through the house was Rockin’ Robin. And when he put out his first proper solo album, Off The Wall, you were first in line at your local records store.

You loved him for a long time before you laid eyes on him, but that childish almost-affection quickly got eclipsed by something far stronger.

The date was February 28th of 1984, the Shrine Auditorium bursting like ripe citrus against a setting sun, palm trees swaying by the sheer size of the crowd. A heavy laminated card dangled from your neck, reading:

26th ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS, National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., PRESS.

You were with Rolling Stone, or with whatever crumbs of a presence they maintained in the West Coast after moving all their offices to New York years ago. Your editor, Ben, was a washed-up Rock-N-Roll purist who thought anything other than Elvis was ‘a fad,’ including the ever-rising pop scene.

Including Michael. 

Which is precisely why he sent you—the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed girl from Berkeley—to cover the Grammys instead of going himself. Thought it was a waste of time, and who were you to disagree with the man?

Ben could live in his past-and-gone glory days all he wanted; it was a new decade halfway on its way out already, with something in the air that felt historic. Primordial. You needed to be in that room, and if playing into Ben’s refusal to get with the times was your way in, fuck would you do it.

Of course, it did end up being historic. Michael had—has—that quality about him.

The backstage press room was pure pandemonium that night. Hot and stifling, reeking of hairspray and cigarette smoke, packed with aggressive reporters from Time, Newsweek, and television affiliates you couldn’t even begin naming. 

You think they saw you just like Ben did. Scratch that: you know they did. A kid without her big-girl pants on, thrust into the deep end for the sharks to feed on and scatter the scraps.

You’d earned your place there, as much as their stares did nothing to help the sweat on your back or the twitching of your lips. Watching from the designated press room, you bit through your lipstick as the nearly 7K-seat theater blew up with each win Michael brought home, growing louder the more the night progressed. 

You were not surprised at all. Thriller was a masterpiece, you knew it from the very first listen. And if anybody asked, you’d just point them to Page 30 of your portfolio: your best article. Your magnum opus. October of 1982, a thousand words typed on a clunky typewriter in the basement of Eshleman Hall, coffee stains on the margins. Written by a girl who saved up her waitress tips just to buy the record on release day; the same girl who’d saved up for Got To Be There all those years ago.

When Michael finally entered the press room, it erupted even louder than the theater had.

Much closer in proximity, shoulders and elbows pushing against ribs, a clunky brick-sized cassette recorder clutched so tight in your hand your knuckles shook. Someone kept thrashing against your back to get closer, but all they managed to do was push you right to the front. Right into Michael’s eyesight.

He was surrounded by publicists, security, and Quincy Jones, who was positively glowing. Somewhere to the side stood his date for the night, Brooke Shields, and Michael was holding a literal armful of golden gramophones. He was in a gold-embroidered blue-black military jacket, a single white glove, aviator sunglasses.

He looked otherworldly.

(Michael Jackson is not of this earth, that much was clear long before he died in sanguine ecstasy.)

A sea of camera flashes clicked with inhuman speed, swirling into a dizzying staccato reflecting off of him. And being with Rolling Stone—their dwindling influence in California notwithstanding—still meant you were with Rolling-fucking-Stone. You knew you had one sought-after chance at a question before security whisked him away, and you knew you had to make it count.

Asking anything along the lines of ‘how does it feel to have won’ or ‘broken the record’ were out of the question entirely. His answer would be tight and rehearsed, and you didn’t grind this hard just to waste something so monumental on a local-channel-news question at best.

Your hand shot up so many times you might’ve gotten whiplash, questions flying around the room in tandem with the trickling clock. Your heart dropped and kept dropping as publicists looked you over in favor of the men squeezing you from all sides. Until one publicist—female, older, a mirrored image—made eye contact and your world stuttered in place.

“Alright, alright, quiet down,” she commanded over the clamor. “We have time for just a couple more. Yes, you in the front.”

This was it. Your heart was hammering so deeply you felt it in your stomach, seeping down your legs and numbing them in the process. Your Berkeley instincts kicked in like fight-or-flight, forcing your voice to even out and raise. Holding up the recorder, you smiled through the sweat dripping down your face. 

“Mr. Jackson, congratulations on a historic night. I’m with Rolling Stone. On Billie Jean, you and your team famously spent weeks just mixing the bassline. Tonight, the world is celebrating the commercial success of Thriller. But as an artist, do you feel the industry finally understands the actual technical craftsmanship you put into this record?”

The room got quiet. Not truly silent, but just enough to hear your own heartbeat again, listen at just how loud you were breathing. A man coughed beside your ear, and you fought the urge to flinch.

Michael paused. He wordlessly handed a few gramophones to Quincy by his side, tilted his head just so, lowered the aviator glasses down his nose, and gave you a gentle smile.

Cameras click-click-clicked away.

You’d heard his speaking voice before that night, obviously. But hearing it from five feet apart had nothing on the shitty TV box in your apartment or the screens you’d watched the awards from backstage.

“That’s a beautiful question,” he breathed, and you pushed on your tiptoes to nudge the recorder closer. He sounded like soft velvet, making you shiver. “Yes. Yes, I do. People often just want to talk about the dancing or the charts, you know? But Quincy and I, we lived in that studio, and Bruce sweated over every single frequency. Billie Jean… that bassline is the heartbeat of the song. If the heartbeat isn’t perfect, the body doesn’t move. To have the Academy recognize that tonight… It’s a sign God is good, and that the hard work is understood. That means a lot to me. Thank you.”

That was it. Your one question, your headline, the article you were waiting to write ever since you heard his voice on vinyl that first Saturday morning. But you were never one to be satisfied, were you? No. You always wanted more, pushed harder, chased things quicker than your feet could keep up with.

The publicist was about to call one last question, but Michael hadn’t taken his eyes off you, so you did the one thing you’d been busting your ass three years off for.

You asked another.

Briefly meeting the publicist’s line of sight, you jumped back into Michael’s gaze. “Is that the standard for pop music now? Perfection or nothing?”

He pushed his aviators up again, chuckled something soft, smile so wide and blinding it bordered on catastrophic. He said: “Perfection is a nice goal, but it’s really about the magic. You can’t mix magic, you just have to catch it when it falls from heaven. Thank you, bless you.”

Bedazzled hand over his heart, hell broke loose with all its demons as Michael was led away. 

And that was how the new girl from Berkeley managed to snag a spot on the front-page cover of issue #419, right beside the pose of Eddie Murphy.

(You’d written for #417 too, but that issue hit the streets right before the Grammys. You’ll always mourn that cover; the lighting on Michael’s face made him look beautifully melancholic. Having your article plastered next to him might’ve actually killed you, so, yeah. Like you said: you lose some, you win some.)

You wouldn’t see Michael again for a couple of months. In reality, you didn’t think you’d see him again, period. Speaking to him once was already a utopic dream come true. A comet that only flies by once and you remember it forever, because there isn’t a chance you’ll see it again.

But the Rolling Stone higher-ups loved you. Okay, ‘love’ is a strong word. Though, being the only journalist to squeeze out a genuine answer from Michael on arguably the biggest night in pop-culture history? That made people do a double take when your name showed up. That’s all the love you needed.

Ben was weirdly jealous. It didn’t help when you asked him how many Grammys Elvis won in one night. Really dug a hole for yourself when you added, “Or, like, ever?”

He could do nothing when you were chosen to cover the preparations for the Victory Tour; granted exclusive access to Zoetrope Studios to attend the rehearsals. You’re surprised you didn’t pass out when Ben broke the news, with as much enthusiasm in his face as reading his monthly bill charges.

April of 1984. A boulevard packed with the busy fumes only a city as big as Los Angeles could produce, that same cassette recorder tucked inside your bag as you paid the cab driver and stood in the front doors of Zoetrope. The sun was slowly setting in the background when a production assistant came to grab you. Huffing and puffing while breezing through his notes, he hardly even looked back to see if you were following.

When he slipped you inside the auditorium, you chose a seat near the middle, the lights dimmed and the stage alight. You pulled out your notepad and got to work, words flying off the paper with hardly the need to look down at them.

You were mesmerized.

All of them were great, but they weren’t Michael.

When they started practising a Jackson 5 medley and you heard I’ll Be There echoing right in front of you, tears almost fell. You thought of your mom and how insane this was, sniffled, and continued jotting on your notepad.

The rehearsal ended, stage lights dimming until fluorescence zipped to life above the theater seats, and you had to squint against the onslaught. Your notes were a mess and your shirt sported a new ink smudge near the breast pocket, yet Michael recognized you anyway.

He was sweaty and tired, wearing a soaked white shirt, curls stuck on his forehead and cheeks. He had just downed an entire Evian water bottle, and some of it trickled past his lips and down his neck. He looked entirely spent, and all you could think was how much you’d kill to be the one to make him feel better.

Your head shook at that. Jesus, girl.

His demeanor was so different from when he was onstage. It’s like he took another form entirely. But down there he was just a guy, squinting at you through the exhaustion. You exited the seats and when he came close enough, you told him: “Hi, Mr. Jackson. I’m from—”

He cut you off. “Hold on… Don’t I know you?”

His voice was as soft as you’d remembered. It washed over you. From the back, his brothers’ boisterous laughter could be heard, but you clung to the softness. Faltering a little, you looked at your shoes before meeting his eyes again. Your smile was tight but genuine. He remembered you.

“Backstage at the Grammys. I asked you about the Billie Jean bassline…?” you trailed off.

And, his whole face just lit up. You should’ve known right there he’d be the thing to kill you. 

Snapping a finger, he laughed: “Yes! The craftsmanship question. I remembered your voice.” His shoulders fell in relaxation, like he was lighter. His hand dropped, that enthusiastically bright smile melting into something softer. Mellower. Looking straight into your soul all the while. “You wrote that beautiful piece for Rolling Stone. You actually… listened to the track.”

You chuckled a bit, feeling your neck flush. This wasn’t the Grammys press room or an official interview studio, with cameras or mics or anything other than his eyes to scrutinize you. This was private. Genuine. You were a kickass professional, but you were also human. He flustered you; way more than pride would have you admit out loud.

He read your article. Called it beautiful. Holy shit.

“I try to make it a habit. You’d be surprised how many people I work with that couldn’t tell you the difference between a chorus and a bridge.”

Cough. Ben. Cough.

That made him laugh. Fuck. Fuck! Leaning a hip against a seat, he crossed his arms and shook a curl off his forehead. His smile was fucking devastating. “Not you, though. Right?”

 “I mean, I hope so?” You made a joking grimace, something between cringing and shrugging. “There’s always a margin for improval, though.”

“I think so, too. Staying stagnant is one of my biggest fears.”

“You’re anything but stagnant, trust me,” you laughed, swallowed hard when he levelled you with a look that urged you to continue. “I–I mean, Off The Wall might’ve been your first fully solo album, but you’d already separated yourself from your brothers creatively. Completely. And, Thriller… What can I even say? They’re like day and night. So, yeah. Trust me,” you took a breath for what felt like the first time after a dive, “Journalistic integrity and all.”

He was nodding along, smile brightening the longer you rambled. In truth, you actually wanted to kind of kill yourself, but once you started there was no shutting it off. So, there you were, giving Michael Jackson a review of his own damn life’s work! What even was your life?

“You’ll be covering this,” he looked back halfheartedly, sighing, “uh, tour?”

Your brows furrowed. “The preparations, yeah.” Call it plain curiosity or your journalistic instincts kicking in, but it took you over. “Why’d you say it like that? Are you not… feeling this?”

He levelled you with a smirk. His eyes were hooded; tired, but sly. Oh, he was a problem, alright. “Not now that you’re here.”

He said it all smooth and suave, yet squinted his eyes a second later, softly laughing at himself and making you stutter through a laugh too.

“That’s–uh… Thank you. I appreciate it, Mr. Jackson. More than you know.”

“Michael,” he grinned at you. “For you, off the record, just Michael. We’ll be sharing a space for some time ‘til the tour.”

You nodded like an idiot, completely caught off-guard. Because, yeah, what the fuck. Sure. “Michael,” you repeated. Like an idiot.

A camera flashed from the side, a metaphorical bucket of ice-cold water getting dumped on you. All levity evaporated off of him, spotting the promotional photographer almost instantly and raising a dismissive hand.

“C’mon, man. Go bother Jermaine or somethin’.”

“O–of course, Mr. Jackson. Sorry!”

He left with his tail tucked between his legs, and you looked at Michael with a sniff. “He doesn’t call you Michael.”

“He’s not you, is he?”

“Guess not.” You glanced at your watch, eyes widening. “Oh! I have to go. I’ll see you next time. Um,” you giggled awkwardly and shook your head. Maybe it could be seen as endearing. At least, you hoped. “Goodnight, Michael.”

“Do you live close? Want me to get someone to call a cab?”

“I’m good,” you nodded softly at the thoughtfulness. It made you feel warm. “See you.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, hips jutting off of the seat he was leaning against, hands closing around the towel hanging from his neck. “I’ll see you.”

That night, you closed your apartment door and screamed so loud the old lady next door had to check on you. You were so over the moon that you slapped a kiss on each of her cheeks and gave her a bunch of leftover cookies you’d made the day before.

You weren’t scheduled to attend another rehearsal until next week. What you weren’t expecting to find at work two days later was a courier at your desk, a nondescript white package shoved into your arms as he urged you to sign. Your heart began pitter-pattering like a hailstorm as you carefully opened it with a pair of scissors, and not even Ben’s curious gaze was enough to stop you.

It was from him.

A rare, early white-label promotional vinyl pressing of Thriller, ‘NOT FOR SALE’ plastered front and center. Your heart genuinely dropped to your ass, head swimming as you turned it around your grip with a hung jaw.

You think Ben might’ve made some sarcastic comment about the feral look in your eyes, but you didn’t even register his presence. He was such a small blotch of importance in your mind, he might as well have not existed at all.

Your head was in upheaval, little-you’s running around with everything on fire, because… This wasn’t happening, right? What the hell?

There was a handwritten note attached, on what looked like to be Michael’s personal stationary: a gold-trimmed and thick cream paper sporting his handwriting. Your heart galloped harder, like it wanted to burst free with every line you read.

It was a wonderful surprise to see you at rehearsals. It’s rare to find someone who understands the magic we try to capture in the studio. I would love to talk more about music with you… Without all the flashing cameras next time. 

If you have some time this weekend, please call Bill (my security) at this number (213)XXX-XXXX. He will arrange for us to have some quiet time to talk.

Keep writing beautifully.

—Blessings, Michael

You were gone, in every sense of the word. Completely and utterly wiped out.

You called the number right there in the office, nervously fidgeted with the cord as you spoke with a sweet-voiced man on the other line who identified himself as the aforementioned Bill, chewed halfway through your lip when you gave him your address and arranged for him to pick you up on 8PM that Saturday.

Arrangements for Encino, the Jackson residence. To somehow—in some inconceivably mind-numbing way—meet up with Michael Jackson and… talk about music? You. And him. Alone in a house larger than your apartment complex and probably your old house combined.

You and him, alone, with his beautifully doe-like eyes and that soft voice that hasn’t left your mind ever since you heard him in the flesh. Fuck.

When you got home that day, you dropped everything by the door and flew to your mom’s old record player she insisted you take during the move. Punching the white-label in, you spent nearly the entire time between coming home and sleeping just listening to Thriller on repeat.

It sounded so… crisp. Clearer than the record back at Berkeley’s radio station, or the one currently sitting on your stack near the wilting spider-plant. If absolutely nothing else, it was a collector’s wet dream, and the most thoughtful thing anyone had done for you in a long time. Worst of all? He didn’t have to.

The thought had you smiling like an idiot inside your small apartment, with the smoke-stained walls smelling of cheap perfume, forgotten takeout, and that certain kind of loneliness only the dust gathering could spread.

God, you were so easy. But he was who he was, so you figured you’d cut yourself some slack.

That’s exactly the thing, though… He owed you nothing. Anybody else in his place would’ve probably forgotten about you the moment they stepped out the press room, let alone remembering you worked for Rolling Stone and waiting for the article to hit the streets? Are you kidding?

You never asked him why. That week came and went like water in a forest creek, swifter than a breath. Before you knew it, it was Saturday and 8PM loomed dangerously. Your room was in a state of disarray, which meant your bathroom too, which might as well have meant the entire apartment looked like site zero of nuclear testing.

Bill arrived at 8PM on the dot, bent his hat for hello as you descended the stairs, and drove you to Encino like he’s driven you a million times before. Like he would a million times again.

Michael greeted you by the fountain. Your heart did the thing that makes you think you’re having a heart attack, but no. He’d just smiled at you. Cheeks full of warmth, eyes bright, asking with a soft voice if you liked his gift. He said he didn’t want to come off as pretentious, but the way you spoke about Thriller made him think you’d appreciate it. 

You don’t even remember what you said; the most you remember about that night is everything you’d lose—

“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?” Michael’s voice cuts through the low hum of the cassette recorder, dragging you out of the spring of ‘84 and dropping you right back into the suffocating luxury of 1988.

You blink, focusing on him again. That sweet face full of promise gives way to what he is now: undead and frozen, disastrously beautiful, the best and worst thing to ever happen to you.

What he also is, is inside your mind. Literally.

The tape reels of the Sony TC-D5M turn between you, small plastic wheels trapping secrets that could burn the music industry to ash if they ever left this room. When they leave this room.

“I’m the one doing the interviewing. Get out of my head,” you quip, arms and legs crossed, every ghost of his gaze making your hair stand in attention. Clearing your throat, you adjust your position as if a straight back could shield you against him. “Who’s he?”

 “Yeah, yeah you are. C’mon, girl,” he tsks, waving you off. “You know exactly who he is. I don’t have to read your mind to know where you go when you look at me like that.”

“And where is that?” You level him with shaky blinks, almost afraid to take the risk of not seeing him for that fraction of a second it takes for your lids to open again. He’d never hurt you, you know that.

At least, more than you want. More than you crave to be hurt by him.

“Hayvenhurst, Zoetrope, the studio in Encino, that hole-in-the-wall record store…” he counts off on one hand, long curls falling over his eyes from the half-up/half-down updo he’d tucked them in. “Before. Stuck on something that’d never last to begin with. I’m right here, baby. Can’t you see that?”

He looks so good it makes you want to cry. Why did you agree to this?

Because he’s Michael. Because you love him. You loved him in 1984, and ‘85, ‘86 and ‘87, and you love him now too. No matter the blood. No matter his nature. He’s still the Michael you met in that crowded press room, no matter how much he insists he isn’t.

“So. The him in question is you, Mr. Jackson. You, before you turned?” Journalistic, professional, curt. That’s what he asked for, isn’t it? One final interview by his favorite journalist, revealing what he is to the world.

His eyes drift down to the recorder. It whirs and whirs and keeps on whirring. The almost 13K square feet take the silence and project it all throughout, until the house is louder because of it.

“Yeah. It’s me.” He breaks into a blinding smile. His fangs glint. “I’m thirty years old. I was turned the summer of ‘84, so I’ve been dead for about four years.”

“By all accounts then, still a child.” He doesn’t like that. Clenches his jaw, but says nothing. “Who turned you? How? I imagine those reading are most curious about that.” And then, almost too quiet for the cassette to pick up on, “I know I was.”

“You know what I think about?” He ignores your prompt completely, elbows resting on his spread thighs, eyeing you with that look he gets only where you’re involved. “Remember Dodger Stadium?”

Of course you do.

(December 9th, 1984. A sea of fifty-five thousand people thrashing and screaming, all there for the final night of the Jackson 5 Victory Tour you’d been vigorously covering since April of the same year.

Somewhere along the way, it became something else. Michael had kissed you under the dim lights of his personal studio in Encino, and you’d kissed him back. One hand on his nape, the other clawing at the curve of his waist. His arms curled around you like they belonged there, and his tongue tasted as good as he sounded.

He asked you to be his girl two weeks later. You protested halfheartedly—thinking of your career and the ethics—but in the end didn’t give half a shit. He was yours, you were his, and you continued being a kickass entertainment journalist in the meantime. Your sources just became a tad more direct.

And then, he died.

It was early August, their next concerts being scheduled for NYC. He flew you out, ready to show you off to his brothers like they didn’t already know, and you were over the moon.

Ever since the tour started and long distance became an inevitability, the landline by your bedside got hot every night before bed. He’d call, and you’d fall asleep with his sleepy voice as a lullaby. It left you aching in the best of ways.

You missed him like you knew him all your life. You were so happy to see him again, but… He was different. 

He looked… sick. Lips dry, eyes unfocused, limbs uncoordinated like it was the first time he wore his skin. He refused to leave the hotel while the sun was out, and looked at your neck like it was calling to him.

Well… His nature became clear when you found him draining a busboy behind the hotel. The guy looked deliriously elated to be dying: smile wide as blood-spurts flew like a fountain, bathing Michael in red as he gulped it all down.

He was onto you before you could even take a breath deep enough to scream.

Blood-stained hand against your mouth, wet against your skin, hot as it accidentally slithered past your lips. Your pupils shrunk into pinpricks, the bricks cold on your back as Michael caged you between him and the wall. 

You couldn’t breathe. You screamed against his hand so loud your throat burned, but it didn’t matter. Nothing came out. Only the hot, sizzling tears that mixed with the blood.

“Shh, shhh, baby, calm down,” he whispered. He was so close, inches away, the fresh blood metallic in your nostrils. You saw his fangs and screamed again, thrashing against his hold. “Please, I love you. I love you, baby, be quiet—”

You sobbed against his hand, head shaking as you desperately tried to get away. He kept shushing you with soft and loving praise, calling you beautiful, caging you harder. Your eyes fell on the busboy still dying, milky white skin drained of color as his blood stopped flying, and you knew he was dead.

“It’s over,” Michael whispered, kissing your forehead, lips lingering as he spoke against you: “It’s over, see? Stop cryin’ baby, you’re breaking my heart.”

“You killed him,” you wailed against his hand that was slowly retreating. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t think. You couldn’t move. “You killed him, Mike, he’s de–dead—” 

Your sobs were the only coherent thing that could come out of your mouth; the same mouth that now had the taste of that guy’s blood. You were going to be sick.

“Somethin’ happened in New Jersey… I changed. I changed, baby, and,” he pointed to the dead guy, “I asked his consent. He let me,” Michael laughed in disbelief. “I swear to you. Let’s just go back to the room, yeah?” He searched for your eyes.

You couldn’t look. You were petrified of what you’d find. Some monster, or the same sweet eyes he hid behind his hands when he shyly asked you to be his girl? You still don’t know what would’ve been worse.

“W–what…” you coughed, spit clogging your throat, tongue paralyzed because if you moved it too much you could taste the blood. “What are you?”

“I’m me, but different. I’m better.” That same soft voice, his characteristic lilt right in your ears.

“I want,” you heaved, “I–I want to go… I think. Michael, I just… Let me go.” You ducked your head down, one of your trembling hands ghosting over your jaw and the blood caked there. “Let me go, plea—”

“Can I kiss you?”

“What?” you cried, eyes finally meeting his. There the monster stood, with the same eyes you loved.

He slowly leaned on you, laying his delicious weight and grounding you despite being the reason for your turmoil. He closed his eyes, those soft curls tickling your cheeks, his hips completely flush against yours and making you gasp as he breathed you in. You were hot, boiling everywhere: neck, chest, hips, deep down your belly and spreading into every inch of your limbs.

He was everywhere. And, in spite of everything, you clutched him tight. One hand on his bicep, the other brushing on the curve of his waist, leg unconsciously lifting to curl around his. You exhaled into his open and waiting mouth, swallowing his lips when they crashed against you. You tasted the fresh blood in his mouth, and shivered as you accidentally licked his fangs.

All you could think was that you’d go to Hell. Not in some lighthearted, cursing-in-the-heat-of-the-moment way. The literal way. The biblical way. Damned for eternity, boiled alive and skinned with fire type of Hell. 

You moaned into him; half a whine, half a sob. He ate it all. He grinded his hips into you, hand buried in the meat of your thigh and bringing you even closer, closer to where he was hot too—

You were going to be sick.

And you did. Breaking the kiss for air, all that connected your mouths was a thin line of hot-red saliva mixed with blood.

And… Yep. There was your dinner: twisting in your stomach and up your esophagus, hitting you so viscerally you only had time to push Michael aside and hurl on the dirty concrete of some NYC back alley, trapped between a dead body and an undead one.

Fuck ‘a rock and a hard place’ and whoever made that shit up. Fuck them and their momma, too.

“What the fuck are you?” you rasped with a sore throat, wiping your red-crusted lips with the back of your hand. Half-kneeled over, you were gripping your knee with one palm so hard it hurt.

He smiled at you wide, fangs getting buried in his bottom lip. They glistened with your spit and that thick metallic tang you could still taste. His voice was still soft. Still his.

“Isn’t it obvious, girl? I’m a vampire.”

You just laughed.

Sudden, sharp, gut-deep. You don’t think you’ve ever laughed that hard in all your twenty-six years on this mortal coil. Twenty-two, then. You laughed and laughed until all you could do was inhale lungfuls of air that punched their way out of you seconds later.

You clapped two hands together and looked at Michael with a crazed beam, your mouth open and teeth showing, still laughing. He looked at you and started laughing too, that deep rumble you found so attractive. He returned the crazed look, hands moving to wrap around each of your shoulders as you ran out of breath.

When your laughter died out, you fainted into his arms, and that’s the last thing you remember about that night in the alley.

It’d been four months since August. Four long months of guilt and disbelief clouding your head every time you woke up, of haunting your nightmares in the form of that unnamed busboy each night you fell asleep.

Anyone normal would’ve turned Michael in to the cops. Would’ve called him psychotic over the vampire bullshit, and ran away to some corner of the world so obscure not even the CIA could’ve found them in.

You did none of that. You weren’t just anyone.

He showed you. That very same morning, with the hotel room blinds shut, he proved everything. Read your mind right back to you, extended and retracted his fangs on will, moved around the room in a dizzying rush of movement a million times faster than any normal human could run. He told you everything.

Your head hurt so much you couldn’t get out of bed for two days, thus ending up losing your flight back to LAX. He paid for another ticket without question.

It was a tough-as-shit pill to swallow, but swallow it you fucking did. Michael Jackson was a vampire. Because, yeah, sure! Vampires are real! That’s a totally normal thing to be aware of in the world.

Michael was a vampire, you loved him, he loved you. He called you his girl, you kissed him and ached for him the same way you did before. You just needed time.

Ben was hounding you about your pending article/review of Prince’s newly released Purple Rain, the ceiling in your bathroom began leaking while you were away and had to get fixed, and you just… needed time to get your head straight.

The four months flew by quicker than you could’ve anticipated. Even as Michael and his brothers touched down on LAX at 2AM on the penultimate Friday of November—just a week before their final six shows in LA—you had a hard time believing what really went down that night in August.

He called you during. Every night, just like before, the landline by your bed rang and you’d talk for so long that you’d wake up in the morning with the phone dangling off the side of your bed. Pretending everything was normal. Ignoring the elephant in the room probably big enough to get into the Guinness record.

He’d call, and all you could think about would be those late nights in his studio, laughing over nothing as you questioned what you were even doing. Of how insane it was to share such an intimate space with him. Of knowing him beyond that invisible wall between you and a person of such tremendous success.

Of how much more he was than anything a TV host or swooning fan could squeeze out of him.

You flew into his arms near the mini-bus that was scheduled to drive them home from the airport, chuckled over his shoulder when Bill made eye-contact with a smirk. Bill also knew. You and him were the only ones.

Well, if you exclude Michael’s maker. But you don’t like thinking about that, so you don’t.

“What does it taste like?” you asked him after the show on the 7th; the second to last. 

You were in his room in Encino, the lamps casting a warm glow over his endearing childhood clutter. Perched on top of his bed, naked and sweaty and spent, you rested your head on your wrist, arm bent at the elbow. Your other palm played with the dips of his chest, curling in indecipherable patterns.

He huffed a soft laugh. “You’ve already had a taste, baby.”

“Yeah, and I threw up,” you counter. “No, I mean, like… What’s it like to drink blood? Does it feel like drinking life itself?”

He chuckled, gave you a wet peck and pulled on your lip with his fangs. You sighed a moan. “Warm,” he whispered. “Thick, it’s… Well, it’s not the answer to life’s mystery, angel. It’s food. I need it.”

“And me? Right now?”

His pupils dilated. You saw it in real time, as he bit his lip and his gaze fell on your neck. Your heartbeat picked up, and he would’ve felt it anyway, vampire or not.

“I won’t lie to you. I sense it. Feel it,” he brushed a sharp nail softly against the skin on your carotid, “as it slides along your veins. I think about it, when we—”

He looked cute. Flushing at his own words, his own thoughts. Your thigh was draped over his naked lap, and he slid a hand across your skin to grip you tighter.

You didn’t think much when you said: “Take a sip, then.”

His head snapped at you, all of the flush gone and replaced by something of a different nature entirely. There you were, a lamb that’s survived the wolf and begging for it anyway. 

Th-thump, th-thump, th-th-thump, th-thump. You knew he felt it. Your skin was sizzling, and you wanted him to taste you.

“No,” he shook his head.

You raised a wrist near his face, waved it like a child, naked breasts brushing against him. Stupid fucking lamb. “Why not?” you asked, and you actually sounded hurt.

He kissed you, poured all his love into it. Palm cradling your head softly and shooing away your wrist from the danger-zone that was his mouth, he said: “Because,” a peck against your lips, “once I start,” on your cheeks, “I won’t stop.”

Deep down, even then, you know you wanted it—)

“That’s not what I asked,” you tell him now, eyes tight. The whirring recorder fills the silence.

His head drops for a moment with a quiet laugh, and when he speaks up, he looks at the recorder pointedly. As if to say, ‘Happy now?’

“It’s my story, isn’t it? My reckoning?”

You huff. “A story needs foundation. So far, all we’ve established is that Michael Jackson knocked his head sideways so hard while filming Thriller, he’s having delusions. You asked for this interview, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he smiles. He loves this. Of course he does.

“Then let me do my job. Now… When, how, and by whom were you turned?”

He sucks in a sharp breath, elbows on his knees, playing with his fingers. “I was turned in New Jersey, July 31st. My maker… is a patron of the arts. That’s what he told me, anyway. Why he did what he did. He said I should stay like this forever.”

You feel your heart bleeding. You know he can hear it, too. “And you will.”

“And I will.”

Michael should be alive right now. This shouldn’t be happening. He shouldn’t have so much blood on his hands, even though it’s so, so fucking hypocritical of you to think this way. The moment Michael died, he became something else. Something outside of human morality and comprehension.

He’s not human, but that image of his doe-eyes that first Saturday in Encino is engraved down to your bones. You just can’t let go.

You cough, clearing your throat, begging a higher power to stop the tears from pooling. You don’t fucking need this right now. “So, it wasn’t consensual?”

His smile changes, for just a fraction of a second. “No. It wasn’t. But I don’t think you’ll find many vampires to tell you it was.”

You look to your lap, at the notepad that’s still empty and the nervous tapping of your pen. “How does one turn? Please, walk us through the process.”

There it is, that smirk. Even when he gets like this, his smile is beautiful.

“Remember Dodger Stadium?” he repeats, a deeper timbre in his voice that lands right where you don’t need to be thinking right now. He doesn’t normally sound like this, to protect his voice.

Fuck.

The answer is yes, and he knows it is. He just wants you to say it. Wants to remind you, as if it could ever be erased.

December 9th, Dodger Stadium. Last night of the Victory Tour. The night Michael finally gave his piece-of-shit father a taste of his own goddamn medicine. The night Michael tasted you for the first time. The point of no return.

You were backstage, waiting for him and his brothers to be done, eardrums nearly bursting by the sheer excitement of the crowd. It should’ve overwhelmed you—and it nearly had—but he made it all okay. Had Bill standing by your side for the entirety of the concert, ensuring Michael would be the first person to see you after they got done. For good this time.

Joseph was there too, and you were fuming, but not as much as he’d be. The thought comforted you.

Michael looked high when he stormed towards you, sweat-soaked and iridescent, the throat-burning screams of an insatiable crowd echoing behind him like the croaks of vultures. He smiled at you, letting his fangs show as he took you by the hand, Joseph hot on his trail. Bill stopped him, and Michael didn’t look back once.

He crowded your every sense in some obscure corner of the stadium, nearly pitch-black. He kissed you like he hadn’t found your lips in days, like a thirsty man trekking the desert.

You welcomed it. You craved it. Arms thrown over his shoulders, one playing with the curls of his nape and the other burying itself in their thickness, you squeezed him like you wanted to be fused. Needed to.

“You did it,” you sighed with a big smile against his lips, moaning a soft exhale as his kisses trailed down and all over. “I’m so fucking proud of you, Mike, you did it—”

The first bite was soft. Just a nip, a barely-there graze of his fangs on your exposed neck. A slip-up, making him freeze in place as your heart echoed, pounding deeper and deeper against its boney cage.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. All color drained from his face. You panicked, clutched him tighter against you. He quivered: “Baby, no, I’m so sorr—”

“No,” you breathed. Th-thump, th-thump, th-th-thump, th-thump. You watched his eyes clouding, pupils blown as he zeroed in on your pulsing jugular. You felt the vein shifting your skin with its intensity. He damn-near drooled. “I want you to. I want you to have me, like this… I want you to taste me.” You licked into his open lips messily, tongue slipping on his fangs. “I trust you.”

He looked like he’d seen a ghost. 

“W–what?” he stuttered in that sweet voice, just like the boy he used to be. His pretty eyes drifted between your neck and eyes, lost and confused, like he hadn’t heard you right.

You smiled at him. With one finger, you traced his cheekbone, down his nose, across his lips. One of your legs was wrapped around his waist, and you tightened it. His hand instinctively buried itself in the meat of your thigh, thumb softly rubbing.

“I want you,” your hand pushed down your shirt collar, “to taste me, Michael. You deserve it.”

He morphed into something else; darkened eyes, something swirling inside them that surpassed lust by an absurd degree. You couldn’t understand it fully; you could only just revel in it.

He inhaled sharply, lips on your vein, voice blistering. He sounded breathless, air completely punched out of him. “I do, don’t I? You smell… so sweet, baby.” A kiss, sharp fangs prickling you, warning you of what’s to come. “My sweet thing, all mine… Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you begged, “yes, yes, ye–ah—!”

It was… euphoric.

To this day, there isn’t a more apt word for it. That first tasting felt better than any drug, any naturally produced hormone. And it was exactly that feeling of intimate carnage you’d been chasing ever since.

The truth is, Michael ruined you. You’ve come to terms with it.

How can you even put it into words? He’s in your head again, you can tell; reliving it from your perspective, letting the pain and pleasure of memory wash over him as he exhales. You exhale, too. You cross your legs, he adjusts his crotch, and neither of you says a thing.

The recorder whirs, tapes wasted over the silence.

Your brain shifts through the memories without your say. That hot prickling of his teeth into your neck—for just a second—to gently pierce the flesh and not cause too much damage. The way he licked over it as you moaned, something in his tongue that made the pain give way to ecstasy. 

You still haven’t figured that part out, but you doubt there’ll be any scientific studies done on the Dark Gift anytime soon. So, mystery it is.

The way he drank: lazily, his slender and strong arms wrapped around you like a vice, feeling him everywhere as your eyes swam. You turned boneless in his embrace, like putty. Completely at his mercy, and he drank every last drop you offered.

You were pulsing hot for him, and you are now too. Both times, he’s been able to feel it. That first time, though, he held back. Blood-drunk and greedy for more, he drew back with a sharp breath, two slim fingers finding the puncture wounds and pressing tight to stop the bleeding. Heaving as his tongue lapped over what was left still on his lips, completely gone.

You remember feeling hammered. Like you’d just downed a whole bottle of Hennessy and done three lines of coke. Fuck, that’s not something one can go through and just be normal afterwards, right? Well-adjusted and going on about their day?

Humans are vampire food, and that something in their saliva surely is to make your last moments on this earth somewhat enjoyable. That busboy looked so happy with his entire neck slashed in two. You’d been in ecstasy too, and just lived to tell about it.

He’s doing this on fucking purpose. Your thighs clench, eyes narrowing.

“I remember,” you hiss curtly. “But you knew that. You’re in my head right now, aren’t you?”

“What would I see?” he asks, breathless, leaning back on the cushions, hand on his crotch. Don’t look, don’t look. “If I was.”

Two can play that game. You force yourself to think of something insanely unsexy. Like that time you accidentally walked by Tito skinny-dipping in the pool in Hayvenhurst, one night you’d stayed over and wanted a glass of water in the middle of the night. You got an unforgettable view of his naked ass, and that’s exactly the image you project.

It takes merely a second for Michael to lose it. And, fuck. Fuck him and that stupidly deep laugh of his. Fuck him, and fuck you for finding it so disarming.

“You think my laugh’s disarming, sweet thing?”

Sweet thing. Just like he called you that night, drooling over the smell of your veins. It shouldn’t be as hot as it is.

“Mr. Jackson—”

“—Michael—”

“Michael—!” you give in and cut yourself off, his name a frustrated whisper. You clench your eyes tight, defeated. Then, because you’re you, you bite back. “Remember the AMAs? Or Rolling Stone’s 20th, remember that? Huh, Michael?”

(The American Music Awards of 1986. What can you even say about that shitshow of an awards night? The last time you’d been inside the Shrine Auditorium was as a young journalist, still unsure but certain to leave your mark.

And you clearly had, because the second time you stepped through those doors was while holding onto Michael’s arm. His date. His girl. Seated in the front row, wearing a pretty black dress to match his military jacket.

You don’t remember much about the ceremony or the afterparty, except for how much you wanted to strangle Diana Ross in that shiny red dress of hers. That old bitch.

Your and Michael’s relationship was kept mostly private from the public, but not from either of your circles. A badly-kept secret, so to speak. Of course Diana knew as she called him up the stage and held his arm, kissed him sloppily on both cheeks, danced tightly against him as all the artists involved sang We Are The World.

You fought with him about it afterward, really bad. Said some nasty shit you wish you could’ve phrased differently, because he just couldn’t see your point. He even defended her, right in your face! You remember saying something like: “She met you as a child, Michael! A grown woman! Called you sexy on national TV! What the fuck are you not seeing, exactly?”

He replied like: “Baby, it ain’t like that. Never was, never will. You’re overreacting. Please. Why are you bein’ like this?”

Bill drove you home ten minutes later, and you didn’t speak to Michael for over a week.

Your apartment got promptly filled with an apologetically handwritten card, some of your favorite pastries from Phoenix Bakery in Chinatown, and a brand new record of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love.

It was a week too fucking soon.

Yeah. Well, ‘86 and ‘87 were a couple of bad years for the both of you. You don’t know if you can confidently say you actually broke up, because how do two people break up when one’s tasted your blood? When you’ve let them? Can that connection ever be severed, even momentarily?

You sure as hell acted like it had.

You’d barely spoken to him in months—close to a year, almost—and the cards didn’t once stop appearing every week, like clockwork.

He called you once, too. Late into the night, your apartment quiet as you twisted and turned. You picked up on the third ring, breath catching in your throat when you heard his soft whiny breaths.

Michael. Heavy and hot, almost scratching the receiver. You recalled his scent, the way his perfume would linger on the pillows even hours later. The way you’d bury your face in those pillows as he wrecked you.

The soppy-wet sounds of his hand working over himself travelled the distance, landing right between your legs as you rubbed them together in shock. 

“Mike?” you whined, bit back a moan as he exhaled.

“Talk to me, baby, jus’ keep talking… A–ah, please, plea… I need to hear your voice…”

It was so loud under the silence. Your heart pounding, the heat between your legs slipping past the point of tolerance, the way his soft moans slithered on your skin and made you shudder. Your hand buried in your panties, mouth huffing and drooling over the headset, shuddering with each of Michael’s groans and whines, each wet echo of his hand as he got off to your voice alone.

He came with a shuddering breath that was enough to send you over the edge too, fingers cramping as you chased the feeling with your hips, your moans only prolonging his own high.

The quiet stretched over you both like a blanket, just the faint scratches of the connection breaking it, your breaths mingling even miles apart. You imagined what he’d look like right then: fucked out, needy, spent, curls a wet mess against his forehead and cheeks. The way he’d clench his eyes in pleasure and the way his thighs would quiver from it. The way you’d kiss every inch of him, lips sliding over his sweaty skin as he flushed; because, despite everything, he still got shy.

Panting, you punched the landline shut, like it’d burned you. And that was it.

While that period of time felt like ages to you, it must’ve been meaningless for an immortal who’s got nothing but time in his hands. You think he would’ve waited years had you not pulled the stunt you had.

The scene was this: November of 1987 inside the Hollywood Palladium, dimly lit table areas punctuated by blinding white follow-spots cutting through a thick layer of haze, the stage dominated by a giant ‘Rolling Stone: 20 Years’ neon sign. The air was heavy with the scent of expensive French perfume worn by every A-lister, spilled champagne, hairspray, and an omnipresent cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke.

You wore that black dress Michael bought for you to match him in the AMAs, because you knew he would attend. He’d said as much in his most recent card that he’d sprayed with his perfume. You weren’t proud of it, but you’d clutched it tight against your nose, inhaled a deep gulp of his sweet and honeyed musk, sighed as frustration and pettiness sprouted inside you like weeds.

You wore his dress, to match with another man. Like the selfish bitch you were, apparently.

His name was David; a sweet post-graduate from USC who’d clung to you like a duckling since his first day in the office. It didn’t take long for him to ask you to be his date for the anniversary party, and you could see in his eyes he hoped it’d lead to something more. A sloppy makeout with champagne-soaked lips, maybe some second-base action in the back of his red BMW in the parking lot. A textbook office romance that’d end up being nothing but a short-lived disappointment, because after Michael that’s what every relationship was doomed to burn down into.

It’d never happen, of course. The plan wasn’t to get under somebody else, it was to get under Michael’s skin. That’s just about how far you’d thought it through. Hindsight’s a nasty bitch, though, because you really should’ve second-guessed yourself a bit harder. You wouldn’t have David’s blood on your hands had you done that.

But, you’re getting ahead of yourself.

David looked like the American Dream personified. Tall and muscular, pretty blue eyes and long brunette hair. He was the kind of man destined to marry his high school sweetheart and live in a nice two-story house in the suburbs, driving that same BMW until either he or the car gave out. You have no idea what happened and he somehow ended up as an entertainment-journalism intern in the heart of LA, but everyone’s got a story, you suppose.

Michael’s arrival signalled mayhem. He’d just released Bad three months ago and embarked on his very first solo world tour since September: first stop in Japan, then back to the states for the near-month gap until the Australian leg of the tour. Bad was another masterpiece, but you’d known that already. 

You were with him for almost the entire time he was making it. You’d sat curled on his couch in the studio as he re-recorded his ‘83 demo for Liberian Girl, shuddering at his beautiful harmonies, kissing him in-between breaks.

Outside, the sidewalk was a warzone of the paparazzi’s flashing Xenon flashbulbs. Inside, the instrumental intro of Dirty Diana began blasting as everyone became aware of Michael’s arrival, and you had to fight the urge to glower. 

He’d told you it was fictional, a gritty pop-rock anthem about groupies. You knew he was telling the truth. It still pissed you the fuck off.

David was pulling at your hand, wanting to introduce you to Jann Wenner, who he’d just met himself. You know you should’ve been enthusiastically jumping at the chance to get acquainted with Rolling Stone’s co-founder, but all you could think about was Michael.

His look. The longer hair you’d been threading your fingers through, now slick with gel and held up in a half-bun, falling to his shoulders. The metallic buckles, the heavy black leather, the studs. He looked like sex, even from fifty feet apart. Even in the dark. Maybe especially in the dark; right at home.

His eyes found yours in the crowd, irises glinting unnaturally when you made eye-contact. You’d missed those eyes so much. He smiled at that, reading your thoughts from the distance.

Amidst the clamor of his arrival and the party which was in full drunken swing, he made every sound but his projected voice fade away; as if your ears got stuffed with cotton. It disoriented you, and for a second before his voice rang in your head, you thought you’d been drugged.

‘Hi, baby,’ he echoed around your skull.

Fuck—

A chuckle, in unnatural surround sound. ‘I missed you too.’

But then David drew closer, still chatting with Jann Wenner, laughing over something you hadn’t bothered to pay attention to. Not that you could. Michael was watching. And when David’s palm inched down to your waist, gripping your skin with the confidence of a much different man than who you’d become accustomed with… You knew. You could taste it in the air.

David was already dead.

Does it really matter what exactly happened next? How Michael cut a line through the crowd and laughed at David’s jokes, looked at you only when he invited him somewhere quieter to talk, acted fascinated with his infant career? How you did nothing to stop the growling predator from catching up with sweet David into one of the countless unmarked backrooms of Hollywood Palladium?

“Stop!” you cried as Michael had him by the throat, red-hot and thick rivulets of crimson painting the floor in heaps. David’s neck was bent for Michael’s teeth to latch onto, dark leather glistening with blood, his pretty eyes sizzling with an anger so deep it bordered on divine. “Mike, he’s no one, h–he’s nothing! He’s a fucking nobody! Just let him go!”

“A nobody?” he echoed, voice slick as he swallowed around the words. “Touching you? A nobody you wore this dress for? Our dress? Are you serious, girl?”

David was gargling on his own spit and blood, completely out of it, limbs spread like a plush-toy on the discount aisle. Your hands were shaking, gooseflesh prickling every exposed inch of skin.

“We can just t–take him to a hospital. Please, Mike,” you wheezed out, a sudden sob breaking through your voice. “It’s my fault… It’s my fault, I didn’t thi—”

“Think what? That I’d do this?”

You shook your head, eyes clenched, arms crossed over your torso unsurely. “Just, let’s ju—”

“We can’t take him anywhere, sweet thing. Or let him live.” He rose, slowly, the predator approaching the deer because it loves it despite everything. He came to you and cradled you by the nape, searched for your eyes as your breathing steadied. You gripped him by the waist as he brought you closer, going to kiss your forehead and stopping short because of the blood still dripping. “What happens when he wakes up and tells the police Michael Jackson tried to kill him?”

Fuck. You’re so fucking stupid. Idiot. Idiot, idiot, id—)

“Of course I remember,” Michael tells you. “If you’d told me to stop, I would’ve. But you didn’t. Why?”

You drop the pen, ink smudging the unmarked notepad before you throw it to the side completely. “You never actually wanted this interview, did you?” He smiles. “What is this? Some sort of sick trip down memory lane? Why the hell did you have me agree to this, Mike?”

“It’s Mike, again? Good, good…” he breathes, smile elated. “I didn’t have you agree to anything, baby. You agreed… because you wanted to. Just like you wanted me to drain David dry.” You look away. “Admit it,” he urges, wild.

(—iot, idiot, idiot.

“Scratch me,” he told you, breath hot and metallic. You almost leaned forward. “Push me. Bite me. Do anything, and I’ll stop. I’ll let him go.” He unravelled his arms from you, took a step back, eyes locked onto yours like anchors the entire time. He moved backwards, one painstakingly slow step at a time. “Anything. Move a muscle, and I stop.” Another step. Two, three. “Anything, baby.” He leaned down, grabbed David by his blooming neck, oozing in-between his fingers. He shook his head: “No?”

You didn’t move an inch. Not a twitch, or a tremor, or a step. Nothing. Because he was right. If David woke up, Michael’s life would be over. Yours too. You’re not ashamed to admit it; you love Michael too much to care about a life snuffed out before its time. Hell, you might’ve killed David yourself.

So, you did… nothing. You stood there idle, breathless as the soppy slaps of Michael’s lips and tongue drained David dry. And when he swiftly came in front of you—spat the remaining blood on the ground next to your heels and fixed you with his hunger—you kissed him.

Open-mouthed, hot, eating him from the inside out. David’s blood smearing on your skin, you moaned against Michael’s sizzling lips, your waist and neck bending as he leaned into you harder. He whined something soft, voice electrifying, just like he sounded all those times before. Even under the leather and the death, he was still your Michael.)

“Why did you call me here, Mike?”

“You know why. You’ve known from the start.”

You shake your head, petulant. “No, n—”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, you do.” He searches your eyes, an endless brown sea of stars, all trapped inside his irises. His brows furrow, and his voice suddenly loses its punch. “I need you with me. I… I can’t do this, not anymore.”

Your heart stutters. “What? What’re you talking about?”

He chuckles to himself a bit, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s something broken. “Eternity is lonely, and I love you s–so much…” He sucks in a sharp breath. “I don’t want to be alone anymore. I can’t.”

Oh… “Michael,” you breathe. Every human instinct in you screams to run, but every uneven beat of your heart screams the opposite. He can feel it. The way the blood surges through your veins, the way your breath catches somewhere in your throat, your eyes that trail down his figure you’ve memorized by heart.

Fuck. Fuck, f—

“What is it, baby?” he whispers. He might as well have yelled it. The way he’s looking at you makes the hairs on your nape stand tall, a shiver going through your shoulders you have no time to suppress.

You gulp. Eyes trailing down his arms, caressing his veins, falling into the trap of his slender hands. He’s beautiful everywhere. His pretty face and even prettier eyes, the long curls he’s grown out, his soft-spoken mouth with two fangs sharp enough to kill.

God. You love him so much. You need him. Not just for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years. Not to wilt away while he stays behind, watching you go with every sunset. No. You need to be… with him. Through all of it. You fucking need him.

“How… would you do it?” you whisper.

You don’t need to specify what ‘it’ is. His eyes are proof enough he understands exactly what you mean; holding you captive, like snares. You watch the way they darken, how his whole face shifts. It makes need pool deep down your belly. You twitch on the sofa, and he knows.

But you know, too. You can see the way he’s rubbing a hand on his thigh, adjusting in place, breathing a little heavier.

“I’d have to drain you first,” he punches out. One of his fingers traces his own throat in demonstration, sharp nail catching skin and leaving a trail. “I’d bite… here,” he stops at the carotid. “And,” his finger continues the trail, “here.” The jugular.

“Yeah?” You feel the vessels he’s pointing to galloping, pulsing harshly under your skin, like they’re getting ready for him. It’s like you can’t breathe properly anymore; the air gets stuck somewhere down your throat, your chest rising and falling in compensation. “And then?”

“Then…” He shifts, standing up, stalking towards you. “I’d stop, just before you die…”

Your neck needs to bend upwards to look him in the eye, eyebrows raising in performance. You’re eye-to-eye with his crotch, and you push down the urge to rub your cheek against it. You breathe: “Oh?”

“Mhm,” he hums, looming above you, all dark and handsome and yours. Fuck, you’d missed him. His palm comes up to cup your jaw, thumb softly tracing your bottom lip. “I’d slit my wrist… Right over this pretty mouth…” His thumb pushes in, and you take him gladly; tongue swirling around the digit as you huff a moan. It threatens to undo him. “I–I’d… Hm. I’d let you drink from me, as much as my baby needs… Yeah?” he asks, voice breaking into a high-pitched breath at the end.

“You will?” you ask when you release his spit-soaked thumb, giving the digit a kiss.

“Yes,” he exhales so hard his whole chest shudders. “I will, girl. I’ll give you every last drop.”

You don’t know who lunged first. All you know is that one second he’s looking down at you—mouth gaping as he pants, the heat between your legs spreading like tendrils over your nerves—and the next, you’re kissing.

Kissing is a kind term. You’re breathing each other in; licking and scraping teeth together like animals, whining against each other’s open mouths. His hold is bruising on your skin, his body an anchor as he turns you around in his hold.

Back against his lean chest, hips flush, his arm around you as his mouth comes down to your neck with a moan. He doesn’t bite, or even nip; he’s breathing you in. It makes you hotter, temperature rising dangerously.

“Sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted,” he sighs, words muffled on your skin. “My girl… All mine…”

“Do it,” you heave, bound in his arms. He freezes. “Make me. Right now. Do it, Mike—”

“Baby—”

His hold lightened, and you used it to turn around again, just as flush as before. You grab him by both cheeks, cradling him in equal parts softly and fiercely. You smile, and it widens when you realise how much the sight undoes him.

“You were right. I’ve wanted this… for a long time.” You lay a peck on his lips, moving back before he has a chance to return it. You remove your blouse with both hands, chest falling and rising deeper with each second more his gaze trails over you. Taking his palm in your hold, you bring it to your pulsing neck, letting his nails softly graze against it. “I trust you.”

Just like you’d told him in Dodger Stadium. The words cleave him in two, lids hooding over his eyes as he nods, leaning down to catch your lips in a wet kiss full of promise.

He lays you down on the big couch, your naked skin meeting the back cushions. He undresses, looming over you like a statue, something from another era entirely. Lean and catastrophically beautiful. The white shirt he wore lands somewhere near the still-whirring cassette recorder, and he’s on you in seconds. Careful hands cradling the back of your neck, kissing you all over as your breathing quickens.

He’s nervous. “I’ve never done this before.”

You giggle nervously. “Me neither.”

It lands just like you wanted it to; makes him chuckle. He meets your eyes, and you suddenly realise his eyes will be the last thing you see. What better a way to die? He breathes: “I love you. I love you so much.” You smile. “Say it back,” he begs.

With a shake of your head, you whisper: “After.”

What comes next can best be described as a… euphoric daydream. A split-screen montage of ache and pleasure, a film reel of your life the way people say it flashes in your eyes just before you step into the light. You never believed it when they said that. How can so many years fit into so few seconds? How can an entire life of mornings and afternoons and nights all fly by so quickly? How did you get here?

As Michael pierces your flesh—carotid and jugular throbbing together in thick, hot rivulets you faintly register bathing your skin—you feel no pain. The ceiling oozes and bends out of shape, your limbs grow numb, and your eyes swim. You moan, but it doesn’t sound right in your ears. Like you’re somewhere else, hearing it from a distance. And Michael keeps on drinking; gulping you down, your heart racing to make up for the loss, lips siphoning all of your nearly one-and-a-half gallon of blood out.

You’re not in Michael’s house anymore. You’re six, and your dad’s bought a brand new record player as a gift for your mom’s birthday; the one that’d later end up in your apartment. You jump excitedly as she punches in Abbey Road, and the three of you spend the entire morning dancing to Here Comes The Sun.

You’re fifteen, and a boy’s broken your heart for the first time. He’d asked you to the prom as a joke, making you come by his house only to find Donna Taylor dolled up and smushed against him, his parents snapping polaroids of their son and his real date. You were mortified, hardly got out of bed for a week.

Your first day at UC Berkeley. Your fresh start. Your passion. The new friends who didn’t give a shit about how you grew up or what you used to be. The endless caffeinated nights slaving away in Eshleman Hall. That small diner close to Sherry’s house you’d all spend your free nights at, gossiping and laughing and talking about the future with greasy fingers. Those Wednesday afternoons spent at the radio station hosting your show with Aisha and Susan, giggling over Michael Jackson’s vocals on the second verse of The Lady In My Life.

Michael. The Grammys of ‘84. His room in Hayvenhurst. The tiny mom-and-pop record store close to your apartment you’d both go incognito in and browse for records, even though the teenage girl behind the counter recognized him and swore to keep his secret with her life (as long as he promised to come back). Before he had the courage to kiss you. Before you had the courage to admit you wanted him to.

The memories are brighter now, images swirling and bleeding into one another, to the point where you don’t know where one ends and another begins. You see Michael’s younger face, before he turned, and he’s standing beside you as you were on your first day in Berkeley. You look good together.

You feel featherlight. Eyes drooping and—

Something warm drips on your lips. You didn’t realise before, but a breath was stuck in your throat, lethargic and slow. It punches you straight in the chest on its way out.

It’s so sweet. Hot and thick, better than anything you’ve ever tasted. Like a charged live-wire, you jump up. Things get less blurry, sanguine haze slipping into rhapsodic focus.

It’s Michael’s arm, his oozing wrist, his blood you’re gulping down. You’re so, so hungry. Starving. Like you haven’t eaten in years. Your hands wrap around his wrist like an animal, pushing it into your mouth, guzzling down his saccharine blood as it drips past your jaw and down your breasts. You hear him moan, deeply, erotic and charged. You gulp harder and harder—

He swipes his hand away, and you’re left whining.

“No,” you cry, whimpering, words slurred like you’re drunk. “Iwantmore, Michael, I need more—”

“I’ll give it to you, baby, I will,” he comforts. His hands cradle your face softly, wrist still bleeding, fingers trailing over your forehead and cheeks and lips in awe. “You’re here…”

“I love you,” you heave out. His blood is still thick on your tongue. With newfound strength, you overpower him, pushing him back down onto the couch and straddling his lap. He moans as you kiss him, making him taste himself, tongues swiping against each other. You want to eat him up. “Ineedit, M–mike…”

He’s hard against you, bulge pushing up against his pants, sensitive as your hips start rubbing against him. You feel drunk on it. You lick your own lips, chasing the last sweet remnants of his blood, gulping it down with his spit. It’s like every single sensation has been dialed up to a million.

He looks like a dream. Breathing heavily, his non-bleeding palm tight on your thigh as you move against him, head hanging back with an open mouth. He brings his wrist up lazily, blood seeping down his forearm, fangs biting his lip with a dangerous smirk.

“You want it?” he whispers, sharp. You nod feverishly. He hisses: “Take it then. Take what you want, girl—”

He moans so prettily when you take his wrist in your mouth again. A little calmer now, not like you’re starving but rather like you’re savouring. Every hot drop. You’re wet and aching, rubbing against his hardness, gulping him down as it all swirls into a fucked out bliss you never want to get out of.

You could listen to his sounds forever. You want to. He’s so breathy and soft, nothing like the men you’ve been with before who only grunt like brutes. You suck his wrist a little harder, drop your clothed center a bit firmer, his eyes rolling back as he lets out the most mouth-watering mewl.

He exhales an embarrassed breath a second later, feeling as you smile against his wrist, still drinking. He pulls his hand back, your lips smacking in its absence.

“How d’you feel?” he slurs, cupping your cheek.

Forgoing an answer, you drop a hand between your bodies, grinning when he shudders. You rub him over the cloth just like this, need growing stronger the more he falls into you.

You lean down and kiss him, blood and breaths mingling, gasping a small ‘oh!’ in his mouth when you feel those slender fingers sneaking past the hem of your skirt.

You’re shaking as his fingers make contact with your slick; so cold contrasted with the heat bubbling, exhaling into each other’s face as you rest your forehead against his. Your hand undoes his zipper, bypasses his underwear and closes around him.

Fuck. Fuck. You missed him so much.

You work him just the way he loves: fingers brushing over the tip, smearing the wetness, squeezing him just so as your grip glides up and down. In return, he works you too: thumb on your clit, rubbing tight circles without missing a single beat, not even when he slips two fingers inside and you falter, moaning in his mouth.

“It feels so good, Mike…” you hiccup.

“I know,” he whines, “I know, sweet thing… You’re so good f’me… Here,” he brings his wrist up, “drink. Dri–a–ah, mhh—”

He tastes so fucking good. Is all blood like this? Is it just Michael? You don’t know nor do you care, you just need to keep drinking. You hold his lean arm tight against your torso, veined forearm lodged right in-between your breasts, wrist bent as he continues working you to a climax.

He stops his ministrations on you and closes around the hand that’s sloppily working him, slips his hardness out, single-handedly ripping your underwear in two. Fuck. Fu—

You shudder when he slaps the tip against your sensitive clit. “Mike,” you cry through a full mouth, nearly choking on a gulp. You shove your wrist in his face, brows furrowed, begging: “Fuck me.”

The sounds he makes slides over you like hot molasses. And when he slips in, it feels right at home.

His fangs break the skin on your wrist, mirroring your greedy gulps and you move against each other, skin slapping against skin. He’s everywhere. Everything. Him feeding on you feels as euphoric as it had that very first time, when you were still alive and mortal, fragile in front of the beast. The sensations travel from the puncture wounds and up your arm, tingling and erotic. They mix with the feeling of his dick driving in and out of you until you can’t tell where one sensation ends and the other begins.

You make for a sinful sight. Damned. Fucking on his couch, blood dripping down the leather, drinking each other up as you’re steadily shoved towards your peak. You feel it coming suddenly, his arm still held tight between your tits, his wrist limp as you detach your lips from the wound because you’re—

“M–mike—” you sob, voice wrecked, “I’m, I–I’m—”

“Yeah?” he breathes. He kisses you, hand slipping to your clit, and you come harder—fiercer—than you’ve had in your entire life.

The feeling threatens to drown you all over again. It travels from your bud and up your belly, spreading like tendrils and meeting with the tingling of his mouth that’s latched to your wrist again. Not drinking now, just kissing. Tiny wet pecks as the skin tries to heal itself, veins throbbing.

It takes a few more desperate bumps of his hips and your fangs—fangs!—teasing his ear for him to cum inside you. He shudders whole, his moans the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard, his head falling back and chest rising arrhythmically.

He doesn’t pull out, and you don’t want him to. You’re content to lie like this, chest to chest, connected and aching in the best of ways. Still breathing hard, you kiss him on the cheek, and he smiles at you so brightly, tears gather on your lashes. Happy tears.

“My baby,” he whispers, pretty doe-eyes drifting across your features. He kisses you, just for a second longer than you had. “My girl…”

“Look!” you giggle, brushing the pad of one finger against a fang, mouth hanging open like an idiot. He laughs. “I’ave’angs now!”

“I love you so much,” he murmurs, “but you need to rest. You’re not gonna wake up so happy, trust me.” You hum, smirking, squeezing your walls around his sensitive and softening dick. His hand comes down your ass in a sharp slap, making you smirk wider. “C’mon now, girl,” he smiles, pecking your nose. “Don’t start.”

“Okay,” you smile against him.

You spend the rest of the afternoon in bed, resting just like he told you, listening to him explain how most things work now. It makes your head ring—and you have a million and one things you need to figure out and come to terms with—but none of it mattered for that small window of time you spent cuddled in his bed, all your problems and concerns unable to reach you past the warmth bubbling in your chest.

You died. Michael died. You were both on equal ground now, undead and damned, as you always suspected it was meant to be. Ever since you locked eyes beneath a sea of camera bulbs flashing.

(The night after your turn, you burned the forgotten Sony TC-D5M and the reels inside it. The interview was never going to see the light of day, anyway. He just needed to remind you of something you’d wanted from the start. He had to make you remember. He couldn’t stand your absence any longer. That you-shaped emptiness that threatened to stretch out for years while you’d force yourself to move on, leaving a void behind you that could’ve never been filled.

You loved him just as he loved you, and that was rare. Even before he died, he’d never felt it quite like he did with you. Every relationship of his scrutinized or twisted out of context, unable to exist with someone without offering explanations. He didn’t have that with you.

You’re a journalist, you know the ins and outs of the industry, and what you didn’t know you learned. Because you were good. With you, he was free to just exist.

So, yeah.

That’s the story of how Michael Jackson killed you, and that’s the end of it. There’s nothing else.)

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