kirbymm

New York, Y/N had decided on the third day of her visit, was a city best consumed through glass.

Preferably someone else's glass.

A television screen, perhaps, where everything glittered with a kind of orchestrated loneliness that still managed to appear beautiful beneath studio lighting. Or a movie theater screen, where women in long wool coats wandered down glowing sidewalks carrying baguettes and existential crises, where steam curled romantically from manhole covers and yellow taxicabs moved through the streets like schools of goldfish through dark water. 

Even photographs lied beautifully. Photographs flattened the smell. They could not capture the sourness of old snow melting into gutters, nor the thick ribbon of urine-scented steam unfurling from subway grates, nor the oily grit that settled invisibly against your skin after only an hour outside.

The city in winter was not cinematic, either. The streets were crowded even when they appeared empty. There was always movement somewhere. Men shouting through clouds of breath. Women with their shoulders drawn up tightly against the cold. Newspaper pages skidding violently along the sidewalks before collapsing into gray slush at the curbside. The traffic never seemed to cease entirely. It groaned and hissed through the avenues endlessly, taxicabs spraying dirty snow onto pedestrians who were too exhausted to react with anything stronger than resignation.

And everything smelled faintly burnt. Burnt coffee. Burnt chestnuts from street vendors standing beside rusted carts. Burnt engine oil. Burnt cigarettes crushed beneath boots outside bars glowing amber in the night. Even the air inside her tiny hotel room carried the stale scent of overheated pipes and ancient carpet dampened long ago by countless winters.

Still, everywhere she looked, the city seemed already occupied by people who knew how to belong to it. Men in long overcoats descending subway stairs without hesitation. Women laughing loudly inside crowded diners at midnight. Artists smoking cigarettes outside clubs in SoHo as though they had been born knowing exactly where to stand. Even the miserable people here appeared practiced.

Meanwhile, she spent half her time hopelessly lost.

The trip itself had been impulsive in the ugliest sense of the word, purchased less from courage than humiliation. Two weeks earlier, she had sat across from a literary editor whose face reminded her vaguely of an underfed bloodhound, all mournful folds and nicotine-yellowed fingers, while he flipped disinterestedly through her short stories.

"Technically proficient," he had called them.

The phrase had landed like a slap.

As though her writing were a machine functioning correctly despite lacking electricity.

He had leaned back afterward, studying her over the rims of his glasses with the exhausted expression of a man perpetually disappointed by the world.

"You write like someone who watches life through a window," he told her. "Everything's observed beautifully, but it feels untouched by life." She remembered smiling then, because she had not known what else to do. She remembered nodding politely while her chest hollowed itself out molecule by molecule beneath her sweater. "Go somewhere," he had said finally, tossing her manuscript onto the desk. "Do something regrettable. Fall in love with the wrong person. Drive down the wrong road. Get stranded. I don't care. But for God's sake, live a little before you write another word."

She hated him for it immediately. And she hated him even more now because part of her feared he might have been correct.

The stories she wrote were beautiful, yes. People always said so. Beautiful sentences. Beautiful atmosphere. Beautiful restraint. 

And so, in what she had briefly mistaken for spontaneity, she had travelled to New York the next day with one suitcase, a notebook, and the embarrassingly naïve belief that the city would rearrange her somehow.

Instead, the city ignored her completely.

She had wandered through museums feeling nothing except sore feet. Sat in cafés pretending to write while secretly eavesdropping on strangers she found infinitely more compelling than herself. Walked through Greenwich Village in the snow trying desperately to manufacture profundity from ordinary sights. She filled pages and pages in her notebook regardless, though rereading them later only deepened her irritation.

Y/N sighed and glanced toward the clock on the bedside table.

If she left now, she could still make the train. But she would return home exactly as she had arrived: observant but untouched. A spectator in her own life. 

With a groan, she pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes until color burst violently behind them.

Maybe she simply was not meant for this kind of life. Maybe certain people were born possessing whatever internal compass allowed them to move through cities gracefully, absorbing experience naturally, transforming existence into art without dissecting it to death first.

Y/N exhaled slowly and glanced again toward the window where snow drifted steadily through the electric blue glow of the neon sign across the street. The storm had calmed into soft flurries now, though enough snow had already accumulated to powder the sidewalks and soften the rooftops into pale uneven shapes.

Maybe she had judged the city too quickly.

Or maybe she simply owed herself one final attempt before admitting defeat.

Within minutes she was pulling on tights beneath her skirt and fastening the buttons of her wool coat while mentally flipping through the tourist brochures stuffed inside her bag. Most of the places listed had already disappointed her in person, but one remained unchecked. Some little attraction downtown she vaguely remembered seeing advertised repeatedly beneath phrases like hidden gem and quintessential New York experience, though now she could not entirely remember what the place actually was.

Ten minutes later she stepped out onto the street and immediately regretted not wearing thicker gloves.

The cold struck with violent immediacy, sharp enough to sting the inside of her nose when she inhaled. Snow crunched beneath her boots while gusts of wind funneled between the buildings hard enough to send powdered snow skittering along the sidewalks in silver ribbons. Around her, the city glowed.

Storefronts cast warm amber rectangles across the pavement. Christmas lights still clung stubbornly to certain windows despite the holidays having passed. Somewhere nearby a saxophone played faintly above the traffic noise, the melody warped occasionally by the wind until it sounded lonely enough to ache.

And God help her, but the city really was beautiful like this.

Its beauty existed in fragments, in overheard laughter drifting from diners. In the reflection of headlights across black ice. In strangers hurrying through snowfall with collars pulled high against their faces. Even the steam rising from subway grates looked strangely dreamlike beneath the streetlights.

Y/N tucked her chin deeper into her scarf and headed toward the subway entrance with renewed determination.

She nearly convinced herself, descending the cracked concrete stairs into the station below, that perhaps this had been what the editor meant all along. Not grand life-altering experiences necessarily, but participation. Existing somewhere fully enough to let it affect you.

A musician sat near the far wall playing guitar for an audience consisting primarily of exhausted commuters refusing eye contact. Somewhere farther down the tunnel, a train screeched loudly enough to rattle the tiled walls. Advertisements lined the station in faded rows: cigarettes, Broadway shows, department stores dressed festively for Christmas sales.

Y/N hurried toward the platform just as headlights appeared down the tunnel and almost immediately, everyone around her began moving faster in a terrifying collective instinct of people who understood the city's rhythm intimately. She found herself swept along automatically, clutching her bag against her side as wind from the approaching train rushed violently through the station.

The subway roared into place. Doors slid open. People spilled outward while others surged inward with barely controlled aggression.

Y/N hesitated half a second too long.

That was all New York required to punish indecision.

The doors shut directly in front of her face.

One moment there remained space enough to enter; the next there did not.

Y/N stood frozen inches from the closed subway doors while the train remained motionless for one horrible suspended second, long enough for her own reflection to stare back at her faintly through the smeared glass.

Then the train pulled away.

The platform quieted almost immediately afterward, the departing cars dragging a rush of stale wind through the station that lifted strands of hair loose from beneath her scarf.

For one catastrophic moment, Y/N genuinely believed she might burst into tears right there underground.

Her throat tightened painfully while heat rushed behind her eyes despite the cold station air. She became acutely aware of how alone she was underground among strangers who barely registered her existence. Somewhere nearby, the guitarist continued playing softly as though nothing significant had happened at all.

Embarrassment expanded inside her disproportionately until it felt enormous enough to swallow reason entirely. She imagined telling the story later and hearing how absurd it sounded aloud. Girl visits New York in hopes of becoming more interesting, nearly emotionally collapses because subway doors closed too quickly.

Y/N inhaled slowly through her nose and forced herself to laugh under her breath instead. Because honestly, if she could not survive one missed train without spiraling into existential despair, perhaps the editor had been right to criticize her.

Around her, the station continued existing with complete indifference. Another train would come eventually. People moved past carrying grocery bags and briefcases and exhaustion. Somewhere overhead, the city pulsed onward through snowfall whether she managed to keep pace with it or not.

And unexpectedly, the realization comforted her.

Maybe nothing meaningful had happened because meaning did not need to be extracted from every inconvenience like marrow from bone. Maybe a missed train could simply be a missed train.

Or perhaps, she thought suddenly as another gust of cold air swept through the tunnel, maybe she could walk.

Y/N adjusted the strap of her bag against her shoulder and turned toward the station stairs.

Michael had begun to suspect exhaustion possessed its own distinct sound.

It sounded like a particular flattening of the world. Conversations losing dimension around the edges until every voice blended into the same endless murmur of expectation. Recording equipment humming softly beneath fluorescent studio lights. Producers speaking in circles about sales projections and crossover appeal while cigarette smoke thickened the air molecule by molecule. The scratch of pencils against paper as schedules were rewritten again and again until entire weeks ceased resembling time at all and became instead a sequence of obligations arranged beside precise hours.

Lately his life sounded like that constantly.

Noise without rest.

By the time Michael arrived in New York, exhaustion had settled so deeply into his body he no longer experienced it as a feeling so much as an atmosphere surrounding him permanently. The city itself only intensified everything. The city moved with the same relentless momentum as the people managing his career, all sharp corners and constant urgency and voices speaking too quickly over one another. Everywhere he went, somebody wanted something. 

Success, Michael was learning slowly, did not create satisfaction nearly as often as it created appetite.

Everyone around him seemed hungry lately. Hungry for bigger numbers. Bigger audiences, headlines, records. Executives spoke constantly about "the next level" as though his career were some staircase without visible ending. Quincy talked about possibilities with the feverish intensity of a man who could already hear the future before anyone else. Executives discussed demographics and radio markets and mainstream crossover success using his music like currency spread across conference tables. Even praise had begun exhausting him because praise always arrived carrying expectation inside it.

Still, New York at least offered distance.

Distance from Hayvenhurst, from rehearsals with his brothers. Distance from Joseph pacing the edges of every room carrying disappointment like weather around him.

Michael had not entirely understood why his father agreed to let him come east in the first place. Perhaps Joseph believed the sessions important enough financially to justify the temporary loss of control. Perhaps he trusted the endless entourage surrounding Michael to keep him occupied and visible at all times.

Regardless, permission arrived eventually attached to conditions severe enough to drain the relief from receiving it.

"You come back and train twice as hard," Joseph told him before the trip. Then, after studying Michael's expression carefully, corrected himself. "No. Five times harder."

Michael remembered nodding automatically.

Arguing with Joseph required energy he no longer possessed.

So instead he accepted the conditions quietly and boarded the plane carrying exhaustion inside him like another piece of luggage.

And now here he was in New York during winter, moving endlessly between hotel rooms and recording studios while snow gathered against windows outside. Some nights he forgot entirely what part of the city he occupied because everything indoors looked identical after enough hours awake. Beige walls. Coffee growing cold beside soundboards. Men discussing music in increasingly abstract language.

Tonight had been particularly unbearable.

Three consecutive sessions stretched late into the evening beneath fluorescent lights harsh enough to make everyone appear vaguely ill. Somebody kept replaying the same section of music repeatedly while two producers argued about percussion levels in voices sharpened by exhaustion. Michael sat quietly through most of it with headphones hanging around his neck, rubbing absently at his eyes while conversation swelled and receded around him like static.

At some point somebody mentioned sales forecasts again.

Michael stopped listening after that.

Outside the studio windows, snow fell steadily through the dark. He found himself watching it instead.

The snowfall softened the city completely. Buildings blurred at the edges. Streetlights glowed hazily beneath drifting white flurries. The city's endless movement seemed briefly muted under weather like this.

Something inside him ached suddenly for air.

Before he fully considered the consequences, Michael stood quietly and slipped off the headphones resting around his neck.

"I'll be back," he murmured to no one specific.

Nobody paid much attention.

That was the strange thing about fame. People watched you constantly until eventually they stopped seeing you altogether. Everyone inside the studio remained too consumed by technical arguments to notice him moving toward the hallway.

A man glanced toward him briefly before looking away, likely assuming the bundled figure in the dark wool coat and scarf was merely another exhausted guest venturing outside for cigarettes or air.

Michael stepped into the night before anyone could stop him.

Immediately the cold struck hard enough to steal breath from his lungs.

And God, it felt wonderful.

He thought of the snow as a gift. Bad weather made people selfishly observant. Nobody studied strangers closely while hurrying home through freezing wind. Everyone kept their heads lowered, shoulders hunched inward against the cold. In Los Angeles anonymity barely existed anymore. Here, beneath layers of wool and snowfall and darkness, he could disappear almost completely.

No one notices celebrities in bad weather and the thought amused him enough to smile into his scarf.

At first Y/N moved without direction, guided primarily by the instinctive desire to place distance between herself and the subway station before the embarrassment could fully settle inside her. But the cold slowly worked its way through her gloves.

That, she thought irritably, seemed perfectly in character for the evening. Of course her gloves were inadequate. Of course her boots leaked slightly around the soles whenever she stepped too deeply into slush gathered near the curb. Of course New York, even while beautiful, insisted upon remaining physically uncomfortable at all times. 

Still, the walk steadied her.

Eventually, after several blocks and at least three wrong turns she stopped bothering to mentally correct, exhaustion began settling heavily into her legs. The cold had stiffened her fingers despite her gloves, and each inhale burned sharply inside her chest. Ahead, beneath the flickering glow of a streetlamp, stood a nearly empty bus stop enclosed partially by scratched plexiglass walls fogged faintly at the corners from old condensation.

Y/N crossed toward it without much thought.

The bench beneath the shelter was freezing. Even through layers of wool she could feel the cold radiating upward immediately, sharp enough to make her wince as she sat down while snow drifted lazily beyond the scratched glass walls.

She rubbed her gloved hands together vigorously and exhaled warm breath against her knuckles in a failed attempt at heat.

Y/N tilted her head backward briefly against the cold plexiglass behind her and closed her eyes and with a sigh, she reached into her bag and pulled out her notebook.

The pages had already swollen slightly from moisture over the past few days, the paper warped softly at the edges from melted snow and damp gloves and being carried endlessly through winter weather. Even the notebook itself looked exhausted now. Y/N flipped toward a blank page while outside the shelter the snowfall thickened again beneath the streetlamp.

This, she thought suddenly, was exactly the kind of moment she should write down.

Sitting alone at a bus stop after missing a train. Cold fingers. Wet boots. The strange aching beauty of the city at night when viewed through exhaustion rather than expectation. This at least felt real. Unpolished. Unimpressive in a way she could not romanticize fast enough to ruin.

She lowered the pen against the paper.

Nothing happened.

Y/N frowned immediately and scribbled harder across the page. The tip scratched faintly against damp paper without leaving more than a ghost of ink behind. "No, no, no —"

Her voice emerged sharper than intended before being swallowed almost instantly by the snow-muted night around her.

She shook the pen violently beside her ear and tried again. Still nothing. Tiny flecks of snow drifted sideways through the partially open shelter and melted instantly against the page beneath her hand, softening the paper visibly under the moisture.

"Oh, come on." Frustration surged through her disproportionately fast. She scribbled again furiously until the paper began tearing slightly beneath the pressure but the pen remained stubbornly dead in her hand.

Y/N groaned aloud and dropped her forehead briefly against the edge of the notebook while snow hissed softly against the shelter outside. For one deeply embarrassing second, she genuinely contemplated crying over the situation. 

Then suddenly, quietly, a hand entered her line of vision. Black leather dusted faintly with snow.

And within it, held carefully between long fingers, another pen.

Y/N blinked in surprise and for a moment she simply stared at it stupidly, too emotionally exhausted to process what was happening. Then slowly she lifted her gaze upward toward the stranger standing beside the shelter.

He was bundled heavily against the weather. Dark wool coat. Scarf wrapped high across the lower half of his face. Snow gathered lightly along his shoulders and in the dark curls escaping from beneath his hat. Under ordinary circumstances she might have found the outfit vaguely suspicious. Instead he looked oddly soft standing there beneath the streetlamp while snow drifted steadily around him.

But it was his eyes that caught her. Not merely pretty, though they were undeniably beautiful in a startling almost delicate way, framed by impossibly long lashes now dampened slightly by snow. It was the expression inside them that unsettled her momentarily. Something quietly amused and observant, as though he had witnessed the entire battle between her and the pen and found it endearing rather than pathetic.

Y/N became suddenly and painfully aware of how ridiculous she probably looked curled miserably on a freezing bus bench with damp notebook pages and visible frustration radiating from every inch of her posture.

Heat crept instantly into her face despite the cold. "Oh," she murmured softly, startled enough that the word escaped before thought could shape it properly.

The man extended the pen slightly farther toward her.

For some reason the gesture felt strangely intimate in its simplicity. As though he had noticed a problem and decided, without turning it into performance, to solve it.

Y/N reached forward quickly and accepted the pen from his gloved hand. Their fingers brushed briefly. Even through the gloves she registered warmth.

"Thanks," she whispered, her voice worn thin by exhaustion but entirely genuine.

The stranger nodded once after she thanked him, a small movement nearly lost beneath the layers of scarf and snowfall, before gesturing quietly toward the empty space beside her on the bench.

Y/N looked at him for half a second too long, momentarily startled by the fact that he was asking permission at all.

New York did not strike her as a city where people asked permission for space.

The bench itself was long enough for several more people comfortably, yet she instinctively shifted slightly toward the left anyway, making room for him despite the unnecessary gesture. Perhaps because he was a stranger. Perhaps because something about him felt unexpectedly gentle, and gentleness from strangers always made her suddenly aware of herself in uncomfortable ways.

He sat carefully beside her. The distance between them remained polite and deliberate, though the small bus shelter suddenly felt warmer occupied by another person. Snow drifted steadily beyond the scratched plexiglass walls while headlights slid intermittently through the storm, illuminating the shelter in passing bands of pale gold before disappearing again into darkness.

Y/N had expected awkwardness. Most silences between strangers required maintenance, some mutual effort to prevent the atmosphere from curdling into discomfort. This silence simply existed. Calm and oddly companionable beneath the weather. The stranger rested his gloved hands loosely together while snow melted slowly along the shoulders of his dark coat.

Beside her, her notebook remained open uselessly across her lap. The new pen sat untouched between her fingers. She realized belatedly she still had not actually written anything.

Instead, against her better judgment, she found herself glancing sideways at him.

Only briefly at first.

A quick observational flicker of attention born more from habit than curiosity. She was an observer after all. The editor had made that painfully clear. Y/N noticed things compulsively. The shape of people's hands while they talked. The cadence of strangers' footsteps. The way exhaustion altered posture. Observation happened instinctively for her now, so automatic she often forgot she was doing it until caught.

And this stranger was... difficult not to observe.

Not because he looked dangerous or unusual. If anything, he seemed intentionally unremarkable beneath the heavy coat and scarf and hat. But something about him resisted blending fully into the background regardless of effort. The way he sat perhaps. There was a strange carefulness to his movements, almost delicate but not fragile. Or maybe it was his eyes again. Large, dark, impossibly expressive eyes that seemed to absorb everything around them with quiet alertness.

And beneath all that bundled anonymity, he felt oddly familiar.

The sensation nagged at her immediately. It wasn't familiar in the personal sense, of course. She had never met this man before in her life. Yet something about him tugged persistently at recognition. A voice remembered faintly through another room. A face glimpsed once in passing. The feeling intensified the more she studied him discreetly from the corner of her eye.

Apparently not discreetly enough.

Because after her third or fourth glance, the stranger shifted slightly beside her and tugged the scarf higher across the lower half of his face, even though it already concealed nearly everything except his eyes.

Y/N instantly felt heat crawl into her cheeks.

Great, she was staring.

Embarrassment rushed through her so quickly she looked away at once, pretending sudden intense interest in the wet pages of her notebook while internally scolding herself with genuine severity. Wonderful. Now she looked deranged. Some strange woman at a bus stop openly studying strangers in the middle of the night.

For several seconds she considered apologizing.

Then, before she could decide whether apologizing would somehow make the situation even worse, the thought surfaced fully formed in her mind with startling clarity.

The realization arrived strangely gradual and immediate at the same time, like a photograph developing beneath darkroom chemicals. Certain pieces aligned suddenly in ways impossible to ignore afterward. The eyes. The posture. The carefulness. And beneath the scarf, barely visible now in profile beneath the streetlamp, the unmistakable shape of his mouth whenever he moved.

Y/N blinked.

That was ridiculous.

What would Michael Jackson be doing alone at a bus stop at night?

Then again, what was anyone doing anywhere in New York at night? The city itself seemed composed entirely of improbable moments stitched together by exhaustion.

Beside her, the stranger shifted slightly again.

Y/N stared at her notebook intensely for another few seconds while internally debating whether saying anything at all would be humiliating beyond recovery.

Finally curiosity won.

She glanced sideways toward him once more, careful this time not to stare openly. "Has anyone ever told you," she began slowly, her voice softened automatically by the snow-muted quiet around them, "that you look exactly like Michael Jackson?"

The stranger turned toward her fully then, and though the scarf concealed most of his expression, she saw it anyway.

The smile. Not visibly, exactly, but unmistakably present in the way his cheeks lifted slightly beneath the wool and how warmth entered his eyes all at once like light switched suddenly behind dark windows.

He shrugged one shoulder lightly. "Sometimes," he murmured. His voice was soft and musical and unmistakably familiar in a way no disguise could fully conceal. Recognition slid through her instantly afterward, absolute and surreal enough to momentarily hollow the air from her lungs.

She did not gasp or lurch forward or begin babbling frantically the way she imagined most people might. Instead she simply stared at him for one startled second longer before something warm and disbelieving unfolded slowly inside her chest.

For a while after the realization settled between them, neither of them spoke.

Y/N sat very still beside him, notebook forgotten entirely in her lap. The quiet stretched long enough that eventually Y/N became aware she was still clutching his pen uselessly in her hand. "Oh," she murmured softly, startled by the realization. "Sorry." She held it back toward him.

Michael glanced at the pen, then at her notebook still spread open across her lap. "You can keep it," he said gently.

"Thanks," she said again, this time with a small laugh tucked awkwardly into the words. "Mine apparently decided it couldn't survive New York."

Michael's eyes warmed slightly above the scarf. "A city like this can do that."

Y/N looked down at the notebook in her lap for a second before gathering courage carefully inside herself. She could feel opportunity hovering nearby now, fragile and strange. 

"Can I ask you something?" she said finally.

Beside her, Michael stilled almost imperceptibly.

The question itself was ordinary enough, but years in the spotlight had trained anticipation into him automatically. Internally, he prepared himself with practiced speed. An autograph perhaps. A question about his family or fame. People often asked things they believed intimate while forgetting entirely they spoke to a stranger.

Still, he nodded politely. "Sure."

Y/N hesitated briefly, suddenly worried the question in her head might sound ridiculous aloud. Yet the curiosity had already rooted itself too deeply to ignore now that he sat beside her in actual reach.

"How," she asked slowly, "do you write songs the way you do?"

Michael blinked once.

Y/N continued before nervousness could stop her.

"I mean..." She frowned slightly, struggling toward precision. "How do you make people feel when they listen to your music." Her voice softened unconsciously then, growing more earnest the farther she moved into the question.

Michael stared at her because for the first time in what felt like months, maybe longer, he found himself genuinely caught off guard. He lowered his gaze briefly toward his gloved hands, shaking his head once as though buying himself time.

"That's..." He laughed softly again. "That's a hard question."

"Oh God," she muttered, glancing down toward her notebook. "Sorry. You probably get weird questions constantly —"

"No," Michael interrupted gently.

She looked back up. And something in her expression made him pause. Because she looked genuinely hopeful. Hopeful in the painfully earnest way artists looked when asking questions they secretly believed might change their lives.

Michael felt something tighten unexpectedly in his chest. So he tried to answer honestly. "Well," he began slowly, "it's not really just me."

Even saying it felt vaguely disappointing.

"There are producers. Musicians. Writers." He shrugged lightly beneath the heavy coat. "Quincy helps a lot. Songs get rewritten all the time. Arrangements change. Lyrics change. Sometimes a song sounds completely different after enough people touch it."

As he spoke, his voice settled automatically into practicality. Years of interviews had taught him how to redirect attention away from mythologizing himself. Music was collaboration. Work. Revision. Endless revision.

"You don't really make records alone," he said quietly. "There's always a whole team behind it."

Beside him, Y/N visibly deflated. The slight fall of her shoulders and her gaze dropped toward the notebook again. Something dimmed briefly across her face, disappointment flickering there before she could fully hide it.

Michael noticed immediately.

He had spent most of his life studying expressions carefully for danger, approval, anger, expectation. He noticed small emotional shifts instinctively now.

Y/N nodded politely after his explanation finished, because it was not that his answer had been bad.

It simply was not the answer she had been searching for. Some irrational part of her had hoped for something else entirely.

Some hidden mechanism she herself had failed to discover. A particular way of seeing the world that explained why his music could crawl beneath people's skin so effortlessly. Why his songs felt alive in ways her own writing never quite managed no matter how carefully she assembled sentences.

And sitting beside Michael Jackson in the middle of a snowstorm while he explained producers and rewrites and studio arrangements somehow made artistry sound disappointingly ordinary.

"Oh," she murmured softly after a moment. "Right."

Snow drifted steadily beyond the shelter while traffic hissed through slush-covered streets nearby. A bus passed several blocks away, its brakes screeching sharply before fading again into the city's endless nighttime murmur.

Michael glanced sideways at her.

She was staring down at her notebook now, fingers resting against damp warped pages while the pen sat loosely between her hands. Her expression had folded inward subtly, thoughtful in a way that looked almost embarrassed.

He slowly pulled one glove from his hand, the motion caught Y/N's attention immediately.

She looked up just as he flexed his bare fingers briefly against the cold before lifting his hand slightly between them.

"Listen," he said quietly.

Y/N blinked once.

At first she assumed he meant listen to him. She shifted instinctively, expecting him to continue speaking.

Instead, Michael tilted his head slightly toward the street beyond the shelter.

His fingers snapped softly once in the cold air. Then he pointed lightly toward the street where taxis moved through wet slush with a rhythmic hiss.

"Hear that?" 

Y/N frowned slightly. Before she could answer, he pointed elsewhere.

A crossing signal clicking steadily at the corner. A burst of distant laughter somewhere farther down the block. Wind rushing briefly between buildings hard enough to rattle the plastic advertisement panel beside the bench. The squeal of bus brakes. Footsteps compressing snow. A car horn. Another horn answering farther away.

Michael nodded softly to it all. Like he was following something invisible moving beneath the surface of the noise.

The scarf had slipped lower now while he talked, exposing more of his face without him seeming to notice. Snowflakes gathered briefly against his curls before melting there. In the pale streetlight, his expression looked transformed somehow, animated suddenly with quiet intensity.

He hummed under his breath, like he was tracing the city's sounds back to some hidden structure underneath them. His fingers began drumming lightly against the bench beside him in time with something only he fully understood.

"The city already has music," he murmured, almost to himself. Michael glanced toward her briefly before looking back out toward the street again. "People think songs start with words," he continued quietly. "But usually they don't. Usually it's rhythm first."

His fingers tapped again against the bench. "Sometimes I hear something and it stays." He pointed lightly toward the crossing signal clicking in the distance. "Or a train. Or somebody talking." Another nod toward the street where tires dragged through slush in long wet bursts. "And your brain starts putting things together."

As he spoke, Y/N realized with growing astonishment that he was not hearing the city the way she heard it at all.

To her, New York had always sounded crowded. Chaotic. An avalanche of disconnected noise constantly competing for attention.

To him, it sounded layered.

Michael leaned forward slightly, elbows resting against his knees while his fingers continued tapping absent rhythms against the bench.

"It's everywhere," he said softly. "Feeling too." The words settled heavily into the cold air between them. "You just..." He paused, searching. "Have to notice where it's hiding."

Something inside Y/N shifted painfully then. Because suddenly she understood what separated artists from everyone else. 

Michael looked at the world differently. Or perhaps more accurately, he allowed the world to remain alive instead of flattening it into background noise the way most people did.

The crossing signal clicked steadily. Snow whispered against wool coats outside the shelter. A couple hurried past laughing breathlessly beneath one umbrella.

And beside her, Michael Jackson quietly nodded along to the rhythm of the city like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You can feel rhythm before you understand it," he murmured. "That's why babies dance before they can talk." Michael glanced toward her again then, suddenly almost shy as though realizing how much he'd started rambling. "I probably sound crazy," he said with a quiet laugh.

But Y/N was staring at him with such naked astonishment he actually faltered slightly beneath it. "No," she whispered immediately.

After that, conversation came easily.

Naturally, as though something subtle inside the rhythm of the night had shifted into alignment. The pauses between them shortened. Questions stopped feeling carefully constructed and became instinctive instead. Words flowed forward without either of them seeming entirely responsible for directing them.

At some point, neither of them acknowledged exactly when, the bus stop stopped making sense as a place to remain.

Perhaps it was the cold finally settling too deeply through the bench. Perhaps it was simply that the city beyond the shelter kept glowing invitingly through snowfall, enormous and alive around them. Whatever the reason, Michael stood first, tugging his glove back over his bare hand while snow drifted steadily against the streetlights.

A few moments later they were walking side-by-side through Manhattan beneath the snow.

The city had changed again while they sat talking. Midnight had pushed deeper into morning territory now, thinning the crowds slightly without ever fully emptying the streets. Storefront lights glowed warmly against the dark while steam curled upward from subway grates in thick silver ribbons. Snow softened the sidewalks into blurred white edges where footprints overlapped endlessly atop one another.

Beside her, Michael moved with increasing ease the farther they walked.

At the bus stop he had carried tension visibly in his posture, shoulders drawn slightly inward beneath the heavy coat as though instinctively attempting to occupy less space than his fame allowed him. Now that tension loosened little by little beneath conversation. His scarf slipped lower occasionally when he laughed before he remembered himself and tugged it back upward again.

Still, almost no one recognized him.

The weather protected him exactly the way he'd hoped.

People hurried through snow selfishly, too cold and exhausted to study strangers closely. Everyone kept their heads lowered against the wind. To the city around them, they were simply another pair of people wandering the city at night.

The anonymity transformed him. Or perhaps revealed him more accurately.

Because the farther they walked, the less Michael Jackson he became and the more simply Michael. Curious and observant. Funny in unexpectedly dry little ways that caught her off guard repeatedly. He asked questions carefully and listened to answers with startling sincerity, as though conversation itself interested him more than performance ever could.

And Y/N, despite herself, began rambling and she told him everything. About the editor. About the humiliating criticism that had lodged itself inside her ribs like splintered glass. About traveling to New York in a burst of stubborn recklessness disguised poorly as artistic ambition.

"The worst part," she confessed while they waited for traffic at an intersection glowing red through snowfall, "is that he wasn't wrong."

Michael glanced sideways toward her beneath the streetlight. "How?"

Y/N shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets. "I think I spend too much time trying to understand life instead of participating in it." She laughed softly, though there was embarrassment folded into the sound. "I narrate things while they're happening. Constantly."

Michael smiled slightly at that. "That's not a bad thing."

"It is a bad."

"No," he said gently. "It sounds like writing."

Around them, New York shimmered beneath snowfall with such aggressive cinematic beauty that eventually even Y/N herself had to acknowledge the absurdity of it all.

A struggling writer wandering after midnight with a celebrity that felt startlingly normal.

It sounded fake.

Every time conversation lulled naturally, something appeared to restart it. A saxophonist beneath an awning playing against the snow. A bookstore window glowing warmly enough to pull them toward it. A diner filled with exhausted strangers and fogged windows that looked stolen directly from a film set.

The night kept escalating itself structurally.

Y/N found herself smiling at the thought before she could stop it.

Beside her, Michael noticed immediately. "What?"

She laughed softly and shook her head.

"No, it's just..." She glanced around at the city glowing beneath snowfall. "This is ridiculous."

Michael's eyes warmed with amusement. "Ridiculous good or ridiculous bad?"

"Ridiculous fiction."

He frowned slightly. "What's the difference?"

Y/N looked at him for a second, delighted suddenly by the question. "In real life," she explained, "things usually lose momentum. The longer something goes on, the more ordinary it becomes." Michael nodded thoughtfully beside her. "But stories escalate," she continued. "They build. And every time this night should logically become less interesting, it somehow gets more interesting instead."

Every writer secretly waited for moments that felt narratively alive while living them, moments possessing their own internal momentum and symbolism and impossible timing. Most of life refused structure entirely. Most conversations dissolved into forgettable static afterward.

And suddenly Y/N found herself treating it less like reality and more like an unfolding experiment in storytelling.

Because structurally speaking, things could not possibly keep improving from here.

The impulse arrived so abruptly she barely processed it before acting. One moment she and Michael were walking side-by-side beneath the snow, and the next Y/N abruptly veered away from him down a side street without explanation.

Michael blinked in surprise behind her.

"Hey —"

But she kept walking. Faster now.

Snow crunched sharply beneath her boots while the wind swept loose strands of hair across her face. Behind her she heard Michael laugh once in startled confusion before his footsteps quickened too.

"Where are you going?"

Y/N turned halfway around while still walking backward briefly through the snowfall.

Streetlight illuminated her face in flashes between drifting white flurries. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold and from excitement now building visibly beneath her skin.

"I'm testing the narrative!" she called brightly.

For one deeply amusing second his expression went completely blank with bewilderment.

But Y/N only laughed and turned another corner before he could properly catch up.

Michael hurried after her through the snow, genuinely laughing now despite himself.

She was insane.

The kind of person who experienced life and immediately began interrogating its symbolic structure for entertainment. And somehow, instead of exhausting him, her energy felt contagious. The city itself seemed brighter around her.

Ahead of him, Y/N moved quickly through the storm with visible delight, boots slipping slightly against packed snow as she crossed another intersection. She glanced behind herself once, spotted him still following, and laughed again beneath her breath.

Ahead, at the far end of the block, headlights glowed through the snowfall.

A bus stopped directly at the curb with its doors still open.

Y/N slowed immediately, then smiled.

The sight felt almost hilariously perfect.

This was how the story naturally ended. Two strangers wandered New York for one magical night before circumstance separated them again. Public transportation. Timing. Near misses. That was the language of serendipitous stories. The bus arriving now felt almost aggressively narratively appropriate.

And before Michael could even fully reach the corner —

Y/N ran for it.

Her boots splashed through slush while the driver glanced up in mild surprise as she bounded breathlessly onto the nearly empty bus. The doors remained open just long enough for her to step inside and turn immediately toward the window.

Outside, Michael finally rounded the corner.

Snow drifted around him while he stared at the bus with open disbelief, chest rising sharply from hurrying after her through the cold. For one utterly priceless second he looked genuinely flabbergasted, standing there beneath the streetlights in his dark coat while the city hissed quietly around him.

Y/N pressed herself lightly against the window from inside the bus, grinning so brightly she could barely contain it.

Michael pointed toward her through the glass in exaggerated disbelief, laughing now despite the obvious confusion written across his face. Y/N laughed harder watching him react, warmth flooding through her chest so intensely she nearly forgot about the cold entirely.

The bus doors finally hissed shut between them.

And still she looked thrilled.

The bus lurched forward slowly through the snow while Michael remained standing at the curb watching it pull away, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and complete bewilderment.

As the bus pulled away from the curb, Y/N remained pressed lightly against the window, smiling so hard her cheeks ached from it.

Outside, Michael grew smaller through the snowfall. Still standing there and visibly stunned.

If the night truly possessed the kind of impossible momentum she suspected it did, then they would meet again. Somehow. Ridiculously. The city would fold back in on itself and return him to her through coincidence so absurd it bordered on divine intervention.

Yet another possibility lingered beneath the excitement now too, colder and quieter.

Maybe she had ruined it.

Maybe she had stepped off the natural path of the evening and broken the fragile magic holding everything together. Stories required tension, yes, but they also required timing. What if she had pushed too hard? What if Michael simply laughed about the strange girl who abandoned him for narrative experimentation and went back to his hotel afterward?

What if she had just sabotaged the best thing she would ever write?

The thought tightened unexpectedly around her ribs.

Y/N stared out at the blurred city sliding past beyond the fogged glass while snow continued drifting steadily downward through the dark. Somewhere farther downtown, lights shimmered against the river like scattered gold. The bus groaned around corners and lurched unevenly through slush-covered streets.

She had absolutely no idea where she was going.

Which, oddly enough, felt appropriate.

Several stops passed in thoughtful silence before the bus finally hissed to another halt beside a nearly empty stretch of street lined with darkened storefronts and construction fencing.

Without fully thinking it through, Y/N stood abruptly and stepped off and the bus pulled away behind her with a low mechanical groan, disappearing slowly into the snowfall while she remained standing alone beneath the streetlights with her scarf pulled high against the wind.

Around her, the city had thinned into near stillness.

New York no longer felt bustling at this hour. Instead it resembled some enormous sleeping animal breathing quietly beneath layers of snow and neon and steam. The streets stretched emptier here. Buildings loomed dark and silent above her while traffic moved only occasionally through distant intersections.

Y/N wandered aimlessly down the block and then she saw it.

An ice rink.

Or rather, the beginning of one.

Construction fencing surrounded most of it, though portions remained unfinished beneath the snow. Temporary floodlights cast pale bluish light across the frozen surface while metal scaffolding rose skeletal against the dark. It looked abandoned for the night, suspended halfway between creation and completion.

Completely empty.

Y/N slowed instinctively. Something about the sight struck her immediately as almost offensively cinematic.

Laughing softly beneath her breath, she stepped closer until her gloved hands rested lightly against the cold metal barricade surrounding the rink.

For a moment she simply stood there breathing. Then slowly, unexpectedly, she closed her eyes.

Y/N inhaled deeply through the cold. At first she heard almost nothing. The city had quieted too much at this hour.

No crossing signals. No laughter. No crowded sidewalks humming with layered rhythm. Just distant traffic moving somewhere far enough away to sound almost oceanic beneath the snowfall.

She smiled without opening her eyes.

"There you are."

The voice behind her arrived warm with breathlessness and amusement.

Y/N's eyes flew open instantly.

She turned so fast snow slipped beneath her boots slightly, catching herself against the railing before staring toward the figure emerging through the snowfall behind her.

Dark coat dusted white again. Scarf loosened now around his neck. Breath visible in soft clouds around him from clearly hurrying through the cold.

For one suspended second, Y/N could only stare. Then delight exploded visibly across her face.

"You found me."

The words came out almost reverent with disbelief.

Michael laughed quietly, bending slightly at the waist while catching his breath.

"You disappeared onto a moving vehicle," he said. "I asked the taxi driver to drop me off bus stops until I decided on one."

Y/N grinned so brightly it physically hurt, "and you still found me."

Michael straightened slowly beneath the falling snow while looking at her with an expression hovering somewhere between exasperation and fascination.

"You're very strange," he informed her gently.

"I know."

"You left me standing in the street."

"That was important for the narrative."

He laughed again despite himself, shaking his head. "The narrative."

"Yes."

Y/N stepped backward slightly toward the rink, eyes glowing now with delighted triumph.

"See?" she continued breathlessly. "This is exactly what I meant. Realistically, we should not be here right now."

Michael folded his arms loosely against the cold. "And yet."

"And yet," she echoed softly.

Then Michael glanced past her toward the unfinished ice rink glowing pale beneath the floodlights. "You came here on purpose?"

Y/N followed his gaze before smiling sheepishly. "No," she admitted. "I got off the bus because I had no idea where it was taking me."

"You got onto a random bus with no plan?" That startled another laugh out of him.

"I was testing fate."

Michael looked at her for a long second beneath the snowfall. Then, quieter now: "And what's the verdict so far?"

She shrugged. "Do you know what serendipity is?" she asked suddenly.

Michael frowned thoughtfully. "I've heard the word."

"But?"

"But I don't think I could define it."

"It's basically a fortunate accident," she explained. "Like finding something wonderful while looking for something else entirely." Michael listened quietly. "I think it's a connection to fate," she continued, "but softer than fate. Less controlling."

His brows lifted slightly. "There are levels of fate?"

"I think so."

"Have you thought about this a lot.?"

"I'm a writer," she said as though that explained everything. "Thinking too much is the entire job."

The corner of his mouth lifted. "So serendipity is... what? Destiny?"

Y/N groaned immediately. "A little more complicated," she admitted.

"How?"

"I don't think life is fully predestined," she said slowly. "I don't think people are trapped on rails moving toward unavoidable endings or anything like that."

Michael nodded once, watching her carefully.

"But I do think..." She hesitated briefly before continuing. "I think life offers signs sometimes."

"What kind of signs?"

She gestured vaguely toward the city around them.

"Coincidences. Timing. Moments that feel unusually aligned." Her eyes brightened slightly as she spoke, the ideas clearly becoming more alive the farther she moved into them. "Like missing a train and meeting someone because of it. Or getting onto a random bus and somehow ending up exactly where you're supposed to."

Michael's gaze softened faintly.

"And you think that means something?"

"I think people decide whether it means something," Y/N corrected immediately.

That intrigued him visibly. "How's that different?"

"Because fate isn't forcing anyone." She pushed away gently from the railing now, pacing a few slow steps through the snow while talking. "That's the important part. People still make their own choices. Fate just..." She searched for the word. "Offers little openings." She turned back toward him. "Tiny moments where life nudges you toward something. But whether you follow the nudge or ignore it is still entirely up to you."

Snowflakes caught briefly in her eyelashes while she spoke.

"So if someone misses the sign," Michael asked quietly, "then what?"

Y/N smiled. "Then they miss it."

"That's sad."

Instead of answering, Y/N stepped forward abruptly and grabbed his arm through the heavy wool of his coat.

"Come with me."

Before he could properly react, she was already pulling him away from the rink and back toward the street.

Michael laughed immediately in startled confusion, nearly slipping slightly on packed snow as she tugged him along through the storm.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

"Just tell me!"

"It's a surprise."

The city blurred past in glowing streaks of gold and silver beneath the weather. Y/N still held loosely onto his sleeve as though worried he might vanish if she let go, her excitement practically radiating into the freezing air around them.

Michael found himself laughing despite having absolutely no idea what was happening anymore.

Eventually she slowed suddenly at the corner of another block.

"There," she announced triumphantly.

Michael followed her gaze.

Across the street stood a hotel wrapped almost obscenely in Christmas decorations. Warm white lights cascaded from the awning in glowing strands while enormous wreaths framed the revolving entrance doors. Red ribbons fluttered faintly in the wind beside polished brass railings already dusted in snow. The lobby beyond the glass windows glowed amber and warm against the freezing blue darkness outside.

The entire building looked like something invented by a screenwriter.

Michael looked sideways toward her slowly. "You've gotta be kidding me."

"I'm absolutely not kidding." Y/N grinned.

Then promptly darted across the street toward the hotel entrance.

Heat rushed around them in soft waves carrying the scent of polished wood and old carpet and faint pine from the enormous Christmas tree dominating the center of the lobby. Gold garlands curled around stair railings while soft jazz drifted lazily through hidden speakers overhead. Compared to the frozen city outside, the hotel felt almost dreamlike.

Y/N laughed breathlessly as she pushed damp snow from her coat sleeves.

Across the lobby, the night receptionist glanced up from behind the desk with mild curiosity. His eyes moved briefly between the snow-covered pair standing in the entrance at nearly three in the morning before settling back toward the magazine spread open in front of him with the deeply perfected indifference unique to hotel employees.

Michael lowered his voice immediately. "You brought me into a hotel?"

Y/N ignored him entirely. Instead she grabbed his sleeve again and pointed dramatically toward the elevators at the far end of the lobby.

Two identical golden elevator doors stood side-by-side beneath warm chandelier light.

Michael stared at them. Then at her. Then back at the elevators.

"Oh no."

"Oh yes."

"You have a plan."

"Think of it as an experiment."

"That's worse."

Y/N practically glowed now with excitement.

"Okay," she said quickly, pulling him toward the elevators. "If fate really keeps trying to force this ridiculous narrative together —"

"You mean the narrative you keep sabotaging?"

"Testing," she corrected immediately. "I'm testing it."

Michael laughed softly under his breath. "Right. Sorry. Testing."

Y/N immediately positioned herself in front of the left one while Michael, already smiling helplessly now, moved toward the right.

The polished brass doors reflected them faintly beneath the warm lobby lighting. Snow still melted slowly from their coats onto the marble floor beneath their feet.

"So here's the rule," Y/N explained, pointing between them. "We each pick a random floor."

"And?"

"And if fate's actually with us tonight," she said, eyes bright with delight, "we'll choose the same one."

Michael stared at her for a long moment then slowly shook his head in disbelief. "You really think the universe has this much free time?"

"I think the universe loves drama."

"That sounds exhausting for the universe."

The elevator beside Y/N dinged softly.

The doors slid open.

At nearly the exact same moment, Michael's elevator opened too.

Y/N gasped theatrically. The symmetry of it nearly made her dizzy.

The elevator doors slid shut between them with a soft mechanical whisper. And suddenly Y/N was alone again.

The elevator remained still while she stared at the glowing panel of numbered buttons beside the door. Floors stretched upward in neat illuminated rows, each one suddenly carrying absurd emotional significance despite being nothing more than architecture.

Y/N inhaled slowly. Then reached out, clicking her lucky number.

The button lit amber beneath her fingertip. Soft jazz music drifted faintly through hidden speakers while the floors climbed steadily upward one by one. Y/N leaned back lightly against the mirrored wall, arms folded loosely around herself now as anticipation fluttered embarrassingly through her chest.

What if he picked the same number too? The possibility made her grin instantly.

Meanwhile, several floors away inside the other elevator, Michael stared at the buttons with increasing distress. Because suddenly he realized he had absolutely no idea what number to choose.

The doors had barely closed before his brain immediately betrayed him by trying to strategize fate.

Which presumably defeated the entire point.

Michael rubbed one gloved hand anxiously against the back of his neck while the elevator remained waiting patiently for instruction. The mirrored walls reflected his exhausted expression back at him endlessly from every angle.

His first instinct said lower floors. Something simple. Seven maybe. Or three. Numbers people picked instinctively in games and stories.

But immediately another part of his brain objected. No, she'd expect that. Which somehow made the twenties feel more logical. Except now he was overthinking it entirely.

Michael laughed once under his breath, genuinely exasperated with himself.

"You're losing your mind," he muttered softly. Finally, impulsively, he hit twenty-eight.

The farther the elevator climbed, the more convinced he became that somewhere below him Y/N was probably standing on a much smaller floor laughing about how fate apparently hated them after all.

The thought unsettled him more than it should have. By the time the doors opened onto the twenty-eighth floor, Michael barely glanced outward before hitting another button immediately.

He stared out at the empty hallway for barely two seconds. No Y/N. The doors slid shut again. He hit another button. Then immediately afterward: another.

Meanwhile, on her floor, Y/N stepped out into a silent hallway lined with ornate carpet and dim golden sconces and waited.

The opposite elevator remained closed. She stared at it hopefully at first, then patiently, then with growing disappointment.

The hallway remained perfectly still around her. Somewhere farther down the corridor an ice machine hummed softly in the quiet, but otherwise there was only silence.

Y/N folded her arms loosely against herself. "Hm," she murmured softly. A strange ache settled unexpectedly beneath her ribs with the quiet sadness of momentum ending.

Because perhaps this was the point where reality finally reclaimed the night from fiction. The test had failed. The narrative had stretched as far as coincidence allowed before collapsing back into ordinary randomness.

Y/N looked once more toward the unopened elevator doors before sighing softly and stepping back inside her own elevator.

As the elevator descended, she leaned back tiredly against the mirrored wall while exhaustion finally began creeping fully into her bones. It was really late now. Her feet hurt. Her hair was damp from snow. Somewhere beneath the thrill of the night, reality slowly waited to reclaim her entirely.

The elevator dinged softly upon reaching the lobby.

And at the exact same moment —

The other elevator opened too.

Across the marble floor, Michael stood inside the opposite elevator looking utterly disheveled.

His curls were messier now from repeatedly tugging gloves through his hair in frustration. His scarf hung half undone around his neck. There was visible anxiety still lingering across his expression from whatever chaotic journey he had apparently just endured through the hotel.

For one stunned second they simply stared at each other.

Then Y/N's eyes widened so dramatically it almost hurt. Laughter burst out of her immediately afterward, loud and uncontrollable and bright enough to echo across the nearly empty lobby. She clapped both hands over her mouth in complete astonishment while staring at him across the marble floor like she could barely process what she was seeing.

Michael just stood there smiling, profoundly, visibly relieved.

"You look guilty." Y/N accused breathlessly through laughter.

"I may have panicked." That only made her laugh harder. "I figured," he said softly, "there's only one entrance and exit to this hotel." Michael looked at her for another second before laughing softly to himself, exhaustion finally catching up visibly now that the adrenaline had worn off. "Thank God I picked the lobby eventually," he admitted. "Or I probably would've lost you forever."

By the time they stepped back outside the hotel, the city had softened into that strange fragile hour belonging neither to night nor morning.

Four in the morning approached invisibly now beneath the snowfall.

The hotel elevator moment had shifted something invisible. now there existed undeniable awareness humming quietly beneath every conversation afterward. The realization that neither of them had wanted the night to end. That both of them had, in their own embarrassing ways, searched for the other.

The knowledge settled warmly between them now like a shared secret neither seemed eager to expose directly.

So instead they kept walking. And talking.

Conversation unfurled endlessly through the snowy streets with almost unnatural momentum. One story led effortlessly into another until entire blocks disappeared beneath laughter and questions and tangents. Y/N spoke with her hands when excited, Michael noticed. Especially when talking about books. Her fingers moved constantly through the cold air as though physically arranging thoughts in front of herself while she spoke.

Meanwhile, Michael told stories quietly, which had surprised her. She had expected someone raised inside fame to speak like an entertainer even casually, shaping anecdotes toward reaction automatically. Instead Michael told stories almost shyly at first, eyes lowering occasionally while he laughed at his own memories midway through recounting them.

He told her about recording sessions that lasted until sunrise. About learning choreography until his legs physically gave out beneath him. About sneaking candy into places he technically wasn't supposed to. About childhood pranks with his brothers during tours.

And Y/N listened greedily to all of it because he was fascinating.

At one point while crossing an intersection, Michael abruptly stopped mid-conversation because a shop window displayed elaborate wind-up toys moving mechanically beneath fake snow.

Y/N turned around after realizing he'd vanished beside her.

His face practically illuminated beneath the glow of the display window while tiny mechanical ballerinas spun endlessly behind the glass.

Michael glanced at her sheepishly without moving away from the window.

Eventually, after several more blocks of wandering through snow and conversation, they stumbled across a diner glowing warmly at the corner of a nearly empty street.

The neon sign buzzed faintly overhead in pink and blue.

Inside, chrome fixtures gleamed beneath fluorescent lights while sleepy jazz hummed softly from a jukebox near the counter. A tired waitress looked up briefly as they entered before returning to refilling coffee for a truck driver sitting alone near the window.

They slid into a booth near the back beneath fogged windows streaked with melting snow. The vinyl seats squeaked quietly beneath their coats while laminated menus spread open between them across the table.

Y/N immediately became invested in the menu with alarming seriousness. "I never order the same thing twice," she informed him proudly.

"What if you hate it?"

"Then I hate it."

The waitress arrived sleepily beside the table not long afterward, pencil poised above her notepad.

Y/N ordered an absurd milkshake flavor immediately simply because she had never tried it before.

He shook his head, smiling helplessly before ordering a chocolate milkshake himself.

The waitress returned several minutes later balancing the tray carefully through the nearly empty diner, one hand steady against the underside while the tiny silver bracelets on her wrist jingled softly with each step. The overhead fluorescent lights reflected against the chrome milkshake glasses so brightly they almost looked theatrical by the time she reached their booth.

Y/N straightened immediately in anticipation.

The old woman placed Michael's milkshake down first.

It looked comfortingly traditional. Thick chocolate ice cream blended smooth beneath a generous swirl of whipped cream, the cherry on top glossy and impossibly red beneath the diner lights. Condensation already gathered along the metal cup beside it while cold mist curled faintly from the surface. It looked like the kind of milkshake advertised in old magazines from the fifties.

Then the waitress set Y/N's down.

Michael blinked. Because hers looked absolutely insane.

The glass practically disappeared beneath chaos. Rainbow sprinkles coated the whipped cream in glittering layers while bright syrup dripped extravagantly down the sides. Tiny crushed candies clung stubbornly to the rim. And sticking proudly from the very top was a miniature sparkling sprinkler actively crackling and fizzing golden sparks into the air like a tiny firework display.

Her entire face lit up with such sincere delight that Michael immediately started laughing because the joy radiating from her expression looked almost childlike in its honesty. She leaned toward the glass with both hands pressed lightly together beneath her chin while the sparks reflected brightly in her eyes.

"This is the greatest thing I've ever seen."

Michael shook his head slowly, grinning helplessly while glancing between her and the aggressively decorated drink. "It looks like a parade float," he informed her. 

The old waitress looked between them with visible amusement softening her tired features. She had probably spent decades watching people pass through this diner at impossible hours of the night, yet something about the two snow-soaked strangers tucked into the back booth clearly entertained her.

"You two complement each other's spark," she remarked casually.

The sentence settled warmly into the space between them.

Y/N blinked in surprise before laughing softly beneath her breath, embarrassed suddenly by how intimate the comment sounded coming from a stranger.

But Michael  smiled so widely at the remark it physically transformed his entire face.

Before Y/N could properly process that expression, she leaned forward and blew gently toward the tiny sprinkler atop her milkshake. The sparks fizzled dramatically into smoke while she laughed quietly to herself at the ridiculousness of it all.

The waitress chuckled. "Well," she murmured while collecting empty coffee mugs from a neighboring table, "you two enjoy yourselves."

Then she wandered back toward the counter beneath the low hum of fluorescent lights and sleepy jazz music.

Y/N reached across the table and stole a sip from his milkshake entirely on instinct. And Michael let her, he had too many siblings so this was familiar. 

The straw made a quiet sound against the thick chocolate as she tasted it, and almost immediately her eyebrows lifted.

Michael watched her reaction with visible amusement. "Well?"

She swallowed. "So good."

His grin widened immediately and before she could say anything else, Michael leaned forward and took a sip from hers in return.

He froze almost instantly afterward. "What?"

"This is way better."

She looked genuinely horrified. "No, it's not."

"It is."

"It's radioactive."

"No, it's good I swear."

The sincerity of the answer startled a laugh out of her.

Michael took another sip before sliding the glass reluctantly back toward her. "I should've ordered this."

"You absolutely should not have."

"I'm serious."

"You don't mean that."

"I do."

"You're having a temporary lapse in judgment because of the sprinkles."

Michael shook his head once, still smiling faintly. "I'm getting this from now on."

"No," she decided. "You can't."

Michael tilted his head slightly. "Why not?"

"Because if we ever come back here —" The words slipped out naturally. Neither acknowledged it directly. Still, something soft flickered briefly through Michael's expression afterward. "— then I need you to order the reliable milkshake while I try new things without risking complete disappointment because I'll still have yours."

Michael stared at her in mild disbelief.

"So your plan was stealing my milkshake from the beginning."

"Our milkshake," she corrected absentmindedly.

By the time they left the diner, the night had begun unraveling around the edges.

Cold morning air greeted them immediately upon stepping outside, sharper now than it had been hours earlier. Snow still blanketed the sidewalks in soft uneven layers, though the sky above had begun changing almost imperceptibly from black into deep bruised blue. The darkness no longer felt endless. Somewhere far beyond the buildings, dawn waited patiently beneath the horizon.

Y/N pulled her coat tighter around herself while the diner door swung shut behind them with a muted little bell chime. For a second she simply stood there breathing in the freezing air again, her cheeks still warm from the diner heat and sugar and laughter.

Beside her, Michael looked upward toward the sky.

The expression crossing his face afterward was subtle enough most people would have missed it entirely.

Night had protected them somehow. Snow and darkness and empty streets had blurred the impossible parts of their encounter into something private and suspended outside ordinary life. But morning would return structure to everything. People would wake up. Traffic would swell. Sidewalks would crowd. Michael Jackson would stop being simply Michael again.

The city would recognize him eventually.

Michael shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets while cold wind curled visibly around them. Internally, something restless had begun clawing quietly beneath his ribs.

He did not want to go back yet.

He did not want handlers or schedules or recording sessions or meetings about sales projections and market expectations. He did not want people watching him again. He especially did not want the strange bright version of himself that had emerged tonight to disappear the second daylight touched the city.

Because somewhere between the bus stop and the diner booth, he had become simply a boy wandering New York with a girl who listened to the world like music.

And now morning threatened to take that away.

"So," he murmured beside her, "what act are we in now?"

Y/N looked toward him immediately. "What?"

"In the narrative," he clarified. "You're the expert."

She smiled faintly. "Oh." Their breath curled pale into the cold air while dawn stretched slowly across the skyline behind them. "Hm," she murmured thoughtfully. "Definitely late second act."

Michael looked ahead toward the slowly waking streets. "And what happens after that?"

Y/N shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets before answering. "Usually?" she said carefully. "The characters have to decide whether the story was important enough to change them."

Michael fell quiet after that. "And if they don't change?" he asked eventually.

Y/N glanced toward him. "Then the story wasn't very good."

A small smile touched his mouth at that, though it faded quickly afterward into something more thoughtful.

"You really see life like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like moments are chapters."

"No," she admitted. "I think moments are moments."

"Then why turn them into stories?"

"I think..." She hesitated briefly. "I think stories are the only way people know how to keep things from disappearing."

"You're scared of forgetting?" he asked softly.

Y/N laughed once beneath her breath, though no humor reached it. "I'm terrified of it." She kept walking while speaking now, eyes fixed ahead on the pale horizon beginning to bloom gold behind Manhattan's buildings. "People think writing is about creating things," she continued quietly. "But most of it's really just trying to hold onto moments before they vanish."

His mouth parted slightly. His brows pulled together in that thoughtful way they always did whenever she said something that unsettled him emotionally. She could practically see the question forming behind his eyes before he even spoke it.

But before either of them could continue — A sharp car horn split through the morning air.

The sound shattered the fragile stillness instantly.

A dark car sat idling near the curb half a block away, exhaust curling pale into the freezing dawn. The passenger door had already swung open before the vehicle even fully stopped, and a tall man hurried out immediately afterward wearing an expression balanced somewhere between fury and overwhelming relief.

"Michael!" The name echoed loudly through the waking street.

Michael visibly froze.

Y/N felt it happen beside her physically, like watching someone pulled suddenly backward into themselves after hours spent forgetting who they were required to be.

The man strode toward them quickly through the snow. The entire atmosphere changed around him instantly. The playfulness dissolved. The wandering-night softness evaporated beneath something sharper and more structured. Morning sunlight touched the city fully now, illuminating everything too clearly.

Bill finally reached them, breathing hard from obvious panic and frustration both.

"Jesus Christ, Mike," he said, dragging one gloved hand down his face. "Do you have any idea how long we've been looking for you?"

Michael immediately looked guilty. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Bill repeated incredulously. "Man, everybody's been losing their minds since midnight. We checked the studio, the hotel, the streets —" He stopped abruptly, exhaling hard through his nose before looking upward briefly like he was physically trying to lower his blood pressure. 

Bill finally looked toward her then for the first time properly. His expression softened almost immediately afterward. Because suddenly the situation became painfully obvious to him in ways neither Michael nor Y/N fully realized themselves yet.

Two young people standing together beneath the pale light of morning looking at one another like they had accidentally wandered too far into something neither was ready to lose.

Bill sighed quietly. "I'm just glad you're okay," he muttered more gently this time, mostly to Michael. "Been chasing you across Manhattan all night."

Michael rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I didn't mean to disappear that long."

"I know."

Michael turned toward her then and suddenly all the playful ease from earlier vanished beneath something far more vulnerable.

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

The apology hurt more than she expected.

Y/N smiled gently anyway. "You don't have to apologize."

Michael looked like he wanted to argue with that.

Before he could, Bill stepped slightly forward and extended one hand politely toward her. "Bill Bray," he introduced quietly. "I'm the poor guy responsible for making sure he stays alive."

That startled a soft laugh out of her. Y/N shook his hand warmly despite the ache beginning to spread slowly through her chest. "Y/N."

The moment the name left her mouth, Michael's eyes lifted sharply toward her.

And suddenly she realized.

Not once all night had she exchanged her name.

After everything — the bus stop and the diner and the elevators and the endless wandering streets beneath the snow — they had somehow remained strangers in the simplest possible way.

Michael repeated her name softly beneath his breath like he was trying to memorize its shape immediately. The way he said it made her heart twist painfully.

The older man glanced briefly away afterward, giving them both a small mercy of privacy before sighing heavily. "I'm gonna give you two a minute," he said quietly to Michael. Then, gentler: "Say your goodbyes and get in the car."

Bill stepped back toward the curb afterward, leaving them standing alone together again beneath the pale morning light.

Y/N swallowed softly against the ache beginning to settle inside her chest. Then smiled anyway. "Well," she murmured quietly, "may we meet again." Y/N tucked her hands deeper into her coat pockets before continuing, her breath curling pale around the edges of her voice. "One final test for fate," she said softly.

Michael laughed quietly beneath his breath. But the sound carried sadness through it now. "I think," he said slowly, carefully, "I believe in it a little now." Michael glanced back up toward her afterward, almost sheepish suddenly. "Just a little," he clarified quietly. "I'm not completely convinced yet."

Y/N smiled faintly. "That's probably healthier."

"I mean it," he continued, voice softer now. "Before tonight I thought people just... met each other. Randomly. But this..." He laughed once under his breath, shaking his head slightly. "This didn't feel random."

Something painful and warm twisted simultaneously through her chest.

Y/N looked at him carefully. Then finally, honestly: "I had a really good time with you."

The sentence sounded heartbreakingly small compared to what the night had actually become.

His expression softened almost immediately into something quieter. "So did I." Then Michael laughed softly beneath his breath again, though this time the sound carried embarrassment through it. "You know what's strange?"

"What?"

"When I was with you..." He hesitated briefly like he was trying to find the exact shape of the thought before continuing. "It was nice not having to talk so much."

Michael shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets while speaking, eyes lowering briefly toward the snow beneath his shoes. "Usually I feel like I have to keep people entertained all the time," he admitted quietly. "Like if I stop performing for even a second, everything gets awkward."

"But with you..." He smiled faintly. "It was nice to just listen."

Y/N felt her throat tighten unexpectedly. Then, despite herself, she laughed softly. "That's funny."

"Why?"

"Because I think it was the opposite for me."

His brows lifted slightly. 

She smiled down toward the snow briefly before continuing.

"I usually stay quiet around people," she admitted. "I spend most of my time observing instead of talking. I like listening better." Michael watched her carefully. "But with you," she said softly, "I kept wanting to tell you everything."

Y/N swallowed hard against the ache rising into her throat.

Then slowly, gently, she stepped closer toward him.

Without saying anything, Y/N began pulling her gloves off finger by finger, the cold air striking instantly against her skin. Her fingers had gone pink from the weather, slightly numb now from wandering Manhattan for hours beneath the snow.

Michael watched her carefully, confused at first.

Then she reached for his hands.

The movement startled him enough that he almost pulled back instinctively before realizing what she meant. Y/N smiled softly at the hesitation and tugged lightly at his gloves until he finally let her remove those too.

Cold air rushed against both their bare hands immediately.

And then finally — Skin against skin.

After an entire night spent beside one another, this was somehow the first time they had touched.

Then gently, almost ceremonially, Y/N folded both his hands together between her own until they rested like something fragile she was trying very carefully not to break.

Her thumbs brushed lightly over his knuckles once. Twice. Then softly, beneath the pale winter morning:

"To our one and only night together."

Y/N tapped lightly against one side of his clasped hands with her finger. Then the other.

The tiny movement felt unbearably intimate somehow. Childlike. Sacred. Like creating a ritual for something too beautiful to survive ordinary language.

Michael stared down at their hands silently, then up at her.

And suddenly the sadness inside his smile became almost impossible to bear. His throat moved slightly before he spoke again, voice rougher now than before. "I didn't ask you enough questions."

Michael laughed once beneath his breath afterward, though the sound broke halfway through.

"I spent the whole night talking about myself."

"That's not true." The vulnerability in his voice cracked straight through her chest. Michael looked at her like he was trying desperately to memorize what little time remained. "I never asked you what's your favorite time of day." he said suddenly. Michael continued before she could answer. "Or your favorite flower." His voice softened further. "Or what's your favorite cloud shape."

Snow drifted quietly around them.

"I don't know what kind of books made you wanna start writing," he continued, words tumbling faster now like he was afraid time itself might interrupt him. "Or what your room looks like. Or if you like thunderstorms or if they scare you."

Y/N felt emotion rise so sharply inside her she physically could not speak for a moment.

Michael looked down briefly before laughing softly again through the ache. "I don't even know your favorite color."

She stepped forward fast enough that Michael barely had time to react before her arms wrapped tightly around him.

Michael inhaled sharply the second she touched him.

Then immediately, impossibly, held her even tighter.

His arms wrapped around her completely while the city disappeared around them both. Y/N buried her face against the cold wool of his coat, breathing in winter air and faint traces of diner sugar and snow and something heartbreakingly him beneath it all.

Y/N closed her eyes tightly. The ache inside her chest had grown too large now for language alone. So instead she whispered softly against him: "When we meet again..." Michael's grip tightened almost imperceptibly. "I promise I'll answer those questions."

A tear slipping warm against the side of her face where his cheek rested briefly against her hair.

Michael exhaled shakily. And very quietly, like the words themselves frightened him with how much he meant them: "Let's meet again."

The separation happened slowly, reluctantly, like untangling something fragile thread by thread. Michael's hands lingered at her waist for half a second longer than necessary while Y/N's fingers remained curled lightly into the fabric of his coat as though her body had not yet accepted the goodbye her mind understood perfectly.

Y/N covered her mouth immediately, shaking her head in disbelief while tears still clung embarrassingly to her lashes.

She breathed through laughter. "Look at us."

Michael laughed too, softer than hers but equally overwhelmed, one hand dragging through his curls while he tried recovering from the emotional whiplash of the last several minutes.

"We're a mess."

"Completely."

"We've known each other one night."

The laughter faded slowly afterward into something quieter.

Michael looked at her carefully again. Then, very softly, "What if I look for you?"

Y/N felt her heartbeat stumble painfully against her ribs.

For one dangerous second part of her wanted to say yes.

Please do.

Please ruin the ending.

Please find me anyway.

But instead Y/N smiled through the ache gathering thickly in her throat. "Well," she whispered gently, "then it wouldn't be fate anymore."

Michael looked at her like the answer simultaneously hurt and healed him. Then slowly, almost reverently, he lifted one bare hand toward her face. His fingertips brushed gently against her cheek, catching a tear she hadn't realized had fallen again. The touch was impossibly careful, like he feared she might disappear beneath it.

"Will you," he said quietly, thumb lingering briefly against her cheekbone, "at least write about me?"

Y/N looked at him for a long moment afterward then slowly shook her head. "No," she whispered. Michael's brows lifted slightly and Y/N looked at him like she was trying to memorize every detail at once. "The truth is," she admitted softly, "I think I'd rather remember you."

Michael's eyes flickered briefly toward the street where Bill still sat inside the idling car pretending very hard not to witness the ending of something fragile. Exhaust curled slowly upward into the pale morning air while sunlight spread steadily brighter across the snow-covered city.

The moment had finally run out of places to hide.

Michael exhaled slowly through his nose before his hand finally slipped away from her cheek.

For a second longer they simply stood there facing one another beneath the winter morning sky, both looking like people who had accidentally wandered too deeply into a story neither was ready to leave behind.

Then Y/N reached quietly into her coat pocket. Michael frowned slightly at the movement until she pulled out a pair of gloves.

"You'll freeze," she murmured softly.

Michael accepted them carefully from her hands, fingers brushing briefly against hers in the exchange. Something about the small domestic tenderness of it — the simplicity of giving someone their gloves back after surviving a night together — hurt infinitely more than dramatic goodbye speeches ever could.

He opened his mouth slightly like he wanted to say something else. But no words arrived. What could possibly follow a night like this? Nothing large enough.

So instead Michael just looked at her one last time. Then finally, reluctantly, he stepped backward.

The distance between them widened slowly, painfully, until cold morning air settled fully back into the space where they had stood together.

Michael turned finally toward the waiting car and just before climbing into the car, he looked back.

Y/N still stood exactly where he'd left her.

Small against the enormous winter city, and lifted one hand gently in goodbye.

Michael felt his chest tighten so sharply it almost physically hurt.

Inside the vehicle, warmth wrapped around him immediately while the world outside blurred faintly through fogged windows. Bill glanced once toward him from the driver's seat but wisely said nothing. The older man simply pulled quietly away from the curb, giving Michael the mercy of silence.

As the car moved through the streets, Michael kept his eyes fixed on the window.

Y/N remained standing there longer than necessary.

He watched her slowly disappear behind distance and snowfall and morning traffic until finally she vanished entirely into the waking city.

Only then did he look away.

Bill drove carefully through the slush-covered streets while radio static hummed quietly beneath the heater vents. Every so often Michael caught him glancing over briefly like he wanted to ask questions, but thankfully he never did.

Because Michael wouldn't have known how to explain any of it anyway. How do you explain one night becoming important enough to rearrange something permanently inside you?

Eventually, absentmindedly, Michael glanced down toward the gloves resting loosely in his lap.

Then paused. A small crease formed between his brows.

These weren't his.

Slowly, he turned them over in his hands again. The realization hit him instantly enough that he nearly spoke aloud without thinking. "Bill, turn around —"

But the words died halfway out of him because something white caught against the inside lining of one glove.

Carefully, almost reverently now, he reached inside and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

The note had clearly been tucked there intentionally. The paper itself was slightly wrinkled from warmth and movement, edges softened from being hidden inside the glove.

He unfolded it gently. And there, written in hurried elegant handwriting, were the words:

If this night was only borrowed from the universe for a little while, then I think we spent it beautifully.

You once asked me what happens when stories end. I think they don't.

I think they simply become part of the people who lived them.

So wherever life carries you after this — through music, through cities, through every beautiful impossible thing waiting for you — I hope the world is gentle when it holds your heart.

And if fate is kind enough to let our paths cross again someday, I promise I'll stay.

Until then, thank you for letting me be young beside you for one night.

Live beautifully, Michael.

For several seconds he simply stared at the note. Then slowly, painfully, his face folded inward around emotion again. And then finally the tear came.

It slipped silently down his cheek before falling onto the paper itself, staining the ink slightly near the edge of her handwriting.

Michael laughed softly beneath his breath at the sight of it, shaking his head once while pressing trembling fingers briefly against his mouth.

What an utterly, unforgettable goodbye from a beautiful stranger.