A FUCKIN' G

Jayda exhaled slowly as she held the receiver to her ear, the cord coiled loosely between her fingers while the low murmur of the man’s voice poured through the line and settled somewhere beneath her skin.

The penthouse was dim around her, washed in the amber glow of lamps and the quiet shimmer of city lights bleeding through the windows, every glass surface catching little fragments of night like jewels spilt across black velvet. In one hand, she held a glass of red wine, the rim still marked faintly where her mouth had touched it, and when she lifted it again, she sipped with a kind of lazy patience that did not match the way her heart had begun to move beneath the silk of her nightwear.

The fabric brushed against her thighs each time she shifted, soft and cool, whispering over her skin like a secret meant only for the dark. Her hair was set in rollers for the night, practical and intimate in that way only privacy allowed, yet somehow it made her look even more untouchable, like a woman caught between softness and command, between winding down for bed and letting desire talk her into staying awake.

Jayda bit her lip as he spoke, her gaze drifting toward the wide windows, though she was not really seeing the skyline anymore. She was listening to the warmth in his voice, the careful confidence beneath it, the way he seemed to take his time with her even over the phone, as if he knew distance could still be touched if the right words were spoken slowly enough.

A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“You comin’ through tonight?” she asked, her voice low through the receiver, smooth with wine and something more dangerous than curiosity.

She leaned back slightly, crossing one leg over the other as the silk shifted again, her fingers tightening around the stem of the glass while she waited for his answer. Her tone was casual enough to deny, sultry enough to betray her, and in the quiet of the penthouse, with the city watching from beyond the glass, even her silence seemed to be inviting trouble by name.

Her man, her baby, her angelface had been on the road for six months.

Six whole months of distance stretched thin between them like a wire pulled too tight, six months of hotel-room phone calls, late-night whispers through receivers, half-slept conversations with time zones wedged between their breathing, six months of hearing his voice but not feeling the weight of him beside her, of knowing he was somewhere under stage lights, beneath expectation, beneath family, beneath the old machinery that had always demanded something from him before it ever asked whether he was tired.

Granted, he could have refused.

Jayda would have raised hell for him with both hands and a smile sharp enough to cut glass, would have told Joe Jackson to take his grand final-show idea and shove it somewhere the good Lord’s light had never touched, would have packed Michael’s things herself and finally had her man move fully into her penthouse where he belonged, safe behind her locked doors, wrapped in her sheets, eating from her kitchen, sleeping with his face tucked into the warm curve of her neck like the world had never earned the right to touch him again.

But she knew there were some things a man had to do for himself.

Not for his father.

Not for the family.

Not for the screaming crowds, not for the critics, not for the cameras, not for the name that had been placed on his back like a crown and a chain.

For himself.

And this, somehow, had been one of those things.

So she let him go, even when missing him turned her mean, even when his absence made her restless in her own home, even when she found herself standing in the doorway of rooms he had made his without ever asking, catching traces of him in places he had not been for months, his sweater folded over the chair, his preferred tea still stocked in her cabinet, his records still leaning beside hers as if they too were waiting for him to come back and reclaim the quiet.

Then she heard it on the radio.

She had been in the studio that day with another artist, one hand near the console, her mind half in the track and half in the ache she refused to name, when the announcer’s voice broke through the speakers with too much excitement for something that hit her like a hand closing around her throat.

The Jacksons announce their final show.

Jayda froze.

The room kept moving around her, musicians shifting, somebody laughing softly near the back, tape rolling, lights blinking red and gold against the board, but Jayda went still as marble, her fingers resting against the console while Michael’s voice followed in the clip, gentle, hesitant, unmistakable.

He stalled before he said it.

She heard that first.

Not the announcement, not the applause, not the grandness of the moment everyone else would replay and analyze and celebrate, but the pause.

That little pause where her Michael lived.

The breath he took before surrendering the words, the slight catch in his rhythm, the carefulness of a man stepping out from under one life while the whole world watched and nobody, nobody but Jayda, seemed to understand how much courage it took for him to say he was done.

Her chest tightened.

Pride came first, hot and golden.

Then longing.

Then something lower, warmer, more private, curling through her like smoke beneath silk, because six months without him had made every part of her remember him too vividly: his hands at her waist, his mouth near her shoulder, the way he said her name when he was tired, the way he could make himself sound innocent while wanting everything, the way he had left her home but never really left her body’s memory of him.

By the time she reached for the phone that night, wine glass in hand, silk brushing her thighs, hair set in rollers like she had every intention of pretending she was winding down, Jayda already knew what she wanted.

She wanted him off that road.

She wanted him back in her city, her home, her bed, her arms.

She wanted the final show to mean exactly what it sounded like: an ending, a closing door, a curtain falling on everything that had kept him from her for half a year.

And when his voice finally came through the receiver, warm and familiar and too far away, Jayda bit her lip around the ache of missing him and let herself sound like the woman she had become in his absence — patient only because she had to be, hungry because she loved him, and soft because he had always known how to make her that way.

“Mhm,” Michael hummed through the receiver, his voice low and warm enough to make the line feel less like distance and more like breath against her ear. “Just asked Bill to come through.”

There was a smile tucked inside his words, that sweet, sly little thing he did when he was pretending not to know exactly what he was doing, when innocence sat on his tongue but mischief lived beneath it, when he sounded like her angelface and her problem all at once.

Jayda’s fingers tightened around the stem of her wine glass.

Michael heard the silence she gave him and took his time with it, letting it stretch between them like silk pulled slow through closed fingers.

“You been missin’ me, mama?” he asked, softer now, the question dipped in velvet and trouble, as if six months on the road had not starved him just as badly, as if he had not spent every night imagining her voice in the dark, her perfume in his sheets, her hands fussing over him like he belonged to her because, Lord help him, he did.

Jayda took another slow sip of her wine, letting the rim of the glass rest against her mouth a little longer than necessary, partly to buy herself time and partly because she knew Michael could hear every quiet shift of her breathing through the receiver.

She was not about to give him the satisfaction of an easy answer, not when he was sitting somewhere miles away, voice all honey and nerve, asking if she missed him like he did not already know the truth had been living in her body for months.

Her eyes drifted toward the windows, toward the glittering city below, though all she could see was him in memory: his sleepy face pressed into her pillow, his hands reaching for her waist before he was fully awake, his soft little smile whenever she fussed over him like a wife and then had the nerve to call it responsibility.

So she swallowed the truth with the wine and gave him attitude instead.

“Jus’ askin’,” she said, voice low, casual, too smooth to be innocent. “In case I needa hide my spare key.”

The lie was pretty, but it was still a lie.

Because that spare key had been sitting in the same little dish by her front door since the day he left, untouched, waiting for him like everything else in her penthouse had been waiting for him: the empty side of her bed, the tea in her cabinet, the robe he liked, the place at her table he had claimed without asking, and Jayda herself, dressed in silk with wine on her tongue, pretending she would lock him out when every part of her had been aching to let him back in.

Michael tsked softly on the other end of the line, and even through the receiver, Jayda could hear the smile hiding in it, that little wounded-boy sound he liked to make when he was fishing for tenderness while already knowing good and damn well he had her.

“So mean to me,” he murmured, his voice dipping low, warm as velvet dragged over candlelight. “You sure you ain’t miss me, ma?”

Jayda’s mouth curved against the rim of her glass, but she did not answer right away, because if she gave him the truth too quickly, he would get beside himself, and Michael Jackson already had enough nerve when he was lonely, loved, and six months deprived of the woman who had taught him what home could feel like.

She took another sip of wine instead, slow and deliberate, letting the silence do some of the work for her.

“Jus’ a lil?” he pressed, softer now, teasing but not entirely playing, because beneath all that sweetness lived the ache of his own missing, the long road, the hotel rooms, the stage lights, the family noise, the nights where he had lain awake with her name sitting behind his teeth like a prayer he was too proud to say first.

Jayda lowered the glass from her mouth, her thumb brushing idly over the stem as she looked out over the city, the silk at her thighs shifting when she crossed one leg over the other. Her rollers were still pinned neatly in place, her skin warm from wine and lamplight, her whole penthouse quiet in that dangerous way a room got when it knew it was waiting for a man.

Her voice, when it came, was low enough to make the phone line feel intimate, sultry enough to make him stop smiling.

“Why don’t you come find out, angelface?”

The silence on his end changed.

Not empty.

Never empty.

It thickened, warmed, pulled tight like the string of Cupid’s bow, and Jayda knew, with a satisfaction that moved through her slowly as poured honey, that he had heard everything she had not said.

She had not said she missed him.

She had not said the bed had been too big without him, or that his side of the closet had stayed untouched, or that some nights she caught herself sleeping closer to the edge because her body still remembered making room for him.

She had not said she wanted him home.

But Michael heard it anyway.

He always did.

The silence on Michael’s end of the line changed so completely that Jayda felt it before he spoke, felt the shift travel through the receiver and settle against her ear like heat, like breath, like the first warm wind before a summer storm split the sky open.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then she heard him laugh softly, low and disbelieving, as if she had reached through all those miles, curled her finger beneath his chin, and tilted his face toward the truth he had been aching to hear from her mouth.

“You play too much,” he murmured, but his voice had gone quieter now, heavier, threaded with the kind of longing that did not know how to stay playful once it found an opening.

Jayda let her head tilt back against the chair, wine warm in her blood, silk cool against her skin, the city stretched glittering beneath her like Rome beneath a woman who had finally tired of pretending she did not own the emperor’s heart.

“You the one askin’ questions you already know the answer to.”

Michael exhaled through his nose, and she could almost see him, could almost picture the way his mouth had curved, the way his eyes would be lowered beneath those lashes, shy and bold at the same time, her sweet little contradiction, her angelface with too much nerve and too much tenderness for one body to carry.

“Say it then.”

Jayda smiled faintly.

“Say what?”

“That you missed me.”

Her fingers tightened around the receiver.

There it was.

No more playing in the doorway of it. No more hiding behind spare keys and attitude and little sideways invitations dressed up as jokes. Michael had pushed the door open with that soft voice of his, and now the truth sat between them, bare-legged and waiting, looking too much like the woman she had become after six months of sleeping alone in a bed that still remembered the shape of him.

Jayda swallowed, her gaze drifting toward the hallway that led to her bedroom, toward the room where his side of the bed had stayed empty but not abandoned, where one of his shirts still lived folded in her drawer because she had started sleeping in it after the first month and never had the courage to call that grief by its proper name.

“You on your way or not?” Jayda asked instead, her voice lowering now, softer in spite of herself, the attitude still sitting pretty on her tongue but melting at the edges like sugar held too close to flame.

She tried to make it sound impatient, tried to dress the question up like irritation, like she was only checking his timing because she had better things to do than sit in silk with wine warming her blood and his voice wrapped around her ear, but the truth betrayed her in the pause after it, in the breath she forgot to hide, in the way her fingers curled around the receiver as if the plastic could somehow become his hand if she held it tight enough.

On the other end of the line, Michael went quiet for half a second, and she knew him well enough to know he was smiling.

Not that public smile, not the polished one built for cameras and screaming girls and flashbulbs, but the private one, the one that came slow and pleased when Jayda gave him just enough room to know he was wanted, the one that made him look younger and more dangerous all at once, like a saint with mischief under his skin.

“’M comin’ down now, baby,” he murmured, and the words moved through the receiver so warmly they might as well have been spoken against her throat.

Jayda closed her eyes.

Baby.

After six months of stages, airports, hotel rooms, and family obligations stealing him from the place she had started to think of as theirs, that one word found every hollow place his absence had carved into her and filled it with heat.

“Get ready for me, yeah?”

The command was gentle, but it did not ask permission from the part of her still pretending she was in control.

It slid beneath her robe, beneath her pride, beneath the wine and silk and all the careful little walls she had rebuilt while he was gone, and Jayda had to press her thighs together, not from impatience alone, but from the ache of being remembered by a man who knew exactly how to make tenderness feel like a hand at the small of her back.

She let out a breath, slow and almost amused, though her pulse had already begun to answer him like a drumline in the dark.

“You always talk this much when you ain’t even at my door yet?”

Michael’s laugh was soft, low, full of road-weariness and hunger and that aching sweetness she had missed more than she wanted to admit.

“Only when I been missin’ my woman.”

Jayda’s mouth parted, but no quick comeback came.

For once, the words caught.

My woman.

He said it like it was not a question anymore, like the road had stripped the uncertainty from him, like every city he had passed through had only taught him that home was not applause, not music, not the family name, not any stage the world could build beneath his feet.

Home was her voice on the phone.

Her wine-dark mouth.

Her spare key waiting in the dish.

Her penthouse glowing above the city like a temple with one light left on for him.

Jayda swallowed, her attitude slipping further, the woman beneath it stepping closer to the surface.

“Then hurry up,” she said, quieter now, the command soft enough to sound almost like a plea.

Michael’s voice dropped too, wrapping around her with all the devotion he had been carrying across six long months.

“I am, mama.”

And when the line went dead a moment later, Jayda stayed there with the receiver still pressed to her ear, listening to the silence he left behind, her body warm with wine and wanting, her heart louder than the city beneath her windows, knowing that this time, when Michael walked through her door, he would not be coming back as a guest, or a patient, or a man she could keep pretending belonged elsewhere.

Jayda sighed as she tipped the rest of her wine back, swallowing it in one clean, reckless pull as if the warmth of it could chase the ache from her chest before Michael had the nerve to walk back into her home and remind her exactly where that ache had come from.

The glass lowered from her mouth slowly, her lipstick faint along the rim, her fingers loose around the stem as she stood there in the dim hush of the penthouse, silk brushing her thighs, rollers pinned neatly in her hair, the city stretched beyond her windows like a field of restless stars. For a moment, she simply listened to the silence the phone call had left behind, that strange, humming emptiness that always came after Michael hung up, as if his voice did not vanish so much as remain suspended in the room, caught in the lampshade, folded into the cushions, lingering against her skin like cologne.

Then she moved toward the record player.

Donny Hathaway’s voice filled the penthouse a few moments later, rich, aching, and full of that old-soul tenderness that made a woman remember too much when she was trying to feel nothing at all. The needle crackled softly before the music bloomed, warm and velvet-dark, spilling through the room with the kind of intimacy that did not ask permission before entering the blood.

Jayda poured herself another generous glass from her 1782 collection, heavier than she probably should have, but tonight was not a night for measuring anything carefully; not wine, not longing, not the dangerous little tremor in her hands when she thought about Michael stepping off that elevator and coming down her hallway after six months of being nothing but a voice, a promise, a hunger she had only been able to hear through a receiver.

She took a long sip and let Donny’s rhythms carry her for a moment, let the music wrap around her shoulders like a familiar hand, let the bass settle low in her stomach while the wine spread through her in slow, glowing circles.

She sighed again, softer this time.

It felt like any other night right after one of their calls, and that was the cruel part.

The same quiet penthouse.

The same half-empty glass.

The same record spinning through the dark.

The same ache sitting beneath her ribs like a letter she had written but never sent.

Only tonight, Michael was not a continent away, tucked somewhere between stage lights and family obligations, whispering to her from a hotel room with longing pressed into every pause. Tonight, he was close enough to come home. Close enough for her to hear his knock, close enough for the spare key in the little dish by the door to stop being a symbol and become a threat.

Still, Jayda tried to pretend.

She leaned back against the edge of the console, glass in hand, eyes half-lidded as Donny sang into the room, letting her body sway faintly with the music, slow and absent-minded, the silk at her thighs shifting each time she moved. She told herself she was calm. She told herself she was only waiting because he had said he was coming. She told herself she had not missed him so badly that the very air of her home felt fuller now that he was on his way.

But every sound made her look toward the door.

Every elevator hum beneath the music caught somewhere in her throat.

Every passing shadow in the hallway light made her pulse answer before her pride could scold it back down.

Jayda took another sip of wine, then laughed under her breath, low and disbelieving, because there she was, grown, successful, brilliant, standing in silk with Donny Hathaway playing and wine on her tongue, pretending she was not waiting for Michael Jackson like a woman whose heart had already walked barefoot to the door.

Jayda sighed as she pushed herself up from where she had been leaning, wine glass loose between her fingers, Donny still spilling velvet through the penthouse while the city glittered beyond the windows like a kingdom she had learned to rule alone.

She crossed the room and lowered herself onto the plush cotton of her couch, not white anymore, never white again, because she had learned that lesson the first time Michael had gotten too comfortable with a glass of wine in his hand and all that nervous sweetness in his smile, only to spill deep red across the cushions and ruin the thing forever.

He had apologized for nearly twenty minutes.

She had cussed him out for ten.

Then he had kissed the attitude right out of her mouth and somehow made the couch his fault and her problem at the same time.

Now the replacement sat beneath her, soft and forgiving and darker by necessity, another little piece of evidence that Michael Jackson had moved through her home and changed it, even before he had ever officially lived there.

Jayda took another slow sip from her glass, trying to settle herself into the familiar ache of another night after one of their calls, trying to pretend this was no different from the others, that he was still somewhere far away with his voice trapped in wires and hotel walls between them. But then she heard it.

The door.

Not a knock.

Not hesitation.

The door opening with the quiet certainty of a man who already had a key, who already knew where the light switches were, who already knew the way her home smelled at night when wine, silk, warm skin, and old records had softened the air into something private.

Heavy footsteps entered first, familiar and unhurried, followed by the dull thud of a box of belongings being dropped onto the floor, careless in the way only an exhausted man could be when he had finally reached the place his body had been craving long before his mouth admitted it.

Then silence.

Jayda held still.

She heard him inhale deeply.

Not subtle.

Not polite.

A long, almost helpless breath, as if he had stepped into the penthouse and found himself inside the very thing he had been missing for six months, her scent heady and welcoming in the air, wrapped around the furniture, woven into the curtains, clinging to the hallway like the whole apartment had been waiting to press itself against him the second he came home.

Jayda’s fingers tightened around her wine glass.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Donny sang low from the record player, the city hummed beneath them, and Michael stood somewhere near the entryway with his box on the floor and his heart probably in his throat, breathing in the world they had made together as if crossing her threshold had carried him out of the noise and back into the arms of something sacred.

Their little bubble.

That was what it had become.

Not just her penthouse anymore.

Not just his place to recover.

Not just a temporary shelter from fire, family, stages, and expectation.

It was theirs now, in all the ways neither of them had properly said out loud, in the spare key he used without asking, in the couch he had ruined, in the tea she still kept stocked for him, in the empty space beside her that had never stopped belonging to him while he was gone.

Then his voice came from the hall, soft, careful, and warm with disbelief, like he was afraid if he spoke too loudly the whole dream might scatter.

“Baby?”

Jayda rose to her feet, slow as if the moment itself had weight, and when she stepped into his sightline, the pale wash of moonlight spilling through the penthouse windows found her at once, laying silver along the deep brown of her skin until she seemed to glow from within, soft and warm and terribly real after six months of being little more than a voice carried through wires.

Michael turned toward her fully, and the sight of him struck her somewhere low and tender all over again, because there he was at last, clad in his plaid shirt and sweats, his cap pulled low, his shades still shielding his eyes as if he had not yet fully shed the road from his body, and yet nothing about him felt distant now, not when his breath left him in that quiet, helpless exhale of a man who had made it back to the only place that had felt like home in far too long.

His gaze moved over her slowly, hungrily, reverently, taking her in as though he needed to reassure himself she was not some mercy conjured by exhaustion and longing, and Jayda, suddenly softer than she had meant to be, took one step toward him, then another, watching the way his whole body answered her approach before he ever spoke.

Michael opened his arms without hesitation.

That was all it took.

Jayda went to him as if she had been doing it in her mind for months, and the second she was close enough, he folded her into himself with the kind of desperate tenderness that only belonged to people who had spent too long apart, one of his hands sliding around her waist, the other gathering her nearer as though he was afraid even now that distance might come back and steal her from him.

Then his mouth found hers.

The kiss landed with no shyness left in it, no polite restraint, only relief and want and the aching familiarity of two people who had missed each other down to the bone, and Jayda melted in his grasp almost at once, the tension leaving her body in a slow, helpless surrender as his lips moved over hers with increasing hunger. His mouth coaxed hers open further, deeper, more thoroughly, as if six months apart had left him starving for every taste, every breath, every softened sound she made against him.

He tasted the wine on her tongue, rich and dark and still warm from the glass, and the low sound that left him at the discovery seemed to vibrate straight through her, because it was not only the wine he was drinking in, but her, the whole of her, her mouth, her waiting, her loneliness, her welcome, the very fact that she was finally here in his arms instead of waiting at the other end of a telephone line.

Their tongues met, slow at first and then with the kind of intimate urgency that came from memory as much as desire, from knowing and being known, and Jayda clutched at him as the kiss deepened, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt while Michael held her as if he meant to make up for every night he had slept without her pressed against his side.

For a moment, nothing else in the world existed.

Not the box of belongings by the door, not the road that had kept him, not the family that had demanded him, not the records still spinning low in the background, not even the moonlight that bathed them both in silver.

Only this.

His mouth on hers.

Her body yielding into his.

The taste of wine, of longing, of homecoming.

And Michael kissing her like a man who had finally come back to the one thing he could never again pretend he knew how to live without.

Jayda gasped against his lips when his hands tightened on her, the sound soft and startled and full of all the longing she had been trying to hold together since the moment he stepped through her door, and before the breath had even finished leaving her, Michael had lifted her as though the act were instinct, as though his body had remembered what his heart had been craving for six long months. Her legs wrapped around his waist at once, silk and warmth and trust folding around him, and still he never once broke from the kiss, never once let the exploration of her mouth falter, his own moving with that hungry, reverent urgency that made the whole moment feel less like haste and more like worship finally given form. Jayda clung to him, one arm sliding around his shoulders, the other finding purchase against the back of his neck, while Michael held her securely as though she were something both sacred and desperately familiar, like a man returning to the temple of Venus after too long in exile and finding the altar still lit for him. The kiss only deepened there, richer now, her gasp dissolving into him, his mouth taking it, soothing it, answering it, as though every mile between them, every lonely night, every phone call heavy with half-spoken wanting had led him to this exact moment: Jayda in his arms, her body wrapped around his, and her mouth opening for him like a door he had been dreaming of crossing ever since he left.

Jayda gasped into his mouth as Michael moved blindly through the penthouse with her in his arms, trusting memory more than sight, his hands secure beneath her, her legs locked around his waist, their mouths still finding and refinding each other like they had been starved of the same prayer for six months and could not decide which breath was worth sacrificing first.

He knew the path without looking.

Of course he did.

This was their home now, whether Jayda had ever said it plainly or not, theirs in the way his box had landed by the door without permission, theirs in the way the spare key had waited for him like a small brass promise, theirs in the way the couch had been replaced because he had ruined the first one with wine and apologies and kisses, theirs in the way the very walls seemed to exhale when he stepped back inside.

His refuge.

His temple.

His Rome after war.

The place where the road could not reach him, where Joe could not command him, where stages and cameras and screaming crowds fell away at the threshold because here, beneath Jayda’s roof, he was not an empire, not a product, not the crowned son of a family dynasty built on sacrifice and discipline.

He was simply home.

Home with his woman.

His girl.

His Jayda.

With a low sigh that sounded almost like relief breaking apart inside him, Michael chased her lips once more, hungry but tender, desperate but careful, his mouth moving over hers as though he could drink the last six months straight from her tongue and finally be whole again. He did not mind the extra weight as he found the stairs, did not mind the pull in his body or the ache that came with carrying her, because Jayda in his arms did not feel like burden; she felt like reward, like Venus returned to him in silk and moonlight, like the gods had finally stopped being cruel long enough to give back what the road had taken.

The stairs creaked softly beneath them, Donny still singing somewhere below, his voice growing distant as Michael climbed toward their bedroom with Jayda wrapped around him, her fingers caught in the back of his shirt, her breath breaking against his mouth in little uneven pieces that made him hold her tighter.

“Michael…” Jayda whispered, finally pulling back for air, her forehead brushing his, her voice softer now, shaken out of all that attitude she had worn so beautifully downstairs.

Michael stopped for half a breath near the top of the stairs, his chest rising against hers, his shades still on, his cap still low, but the road was gone from him now; all that remained was the man beneath it, breathless and lovesick and looking at her like she was every lyric he had ever been too shy to explain.

“Jayda,” he whispered back.

Just her name.

Nothing more.

But the way he said it made it sound like a vow, like a confession, like a man standing before an altar and finally speaking the only truth that mattered.

He reached their bedroom door and nudged it open with his elbow, still refusing to put her down properly, still unwilling to loosen his hold any sooner than he had to. The room waited for them in soft shadow, familiar and intimate, the bed turned down, the sheets carrying faint traces of her perfume, the air holding the quiet of all the nights he had imagined returning to this exact place.

Then he tossed her onto the mattress with a tenderness disguised as impatience, Jayda landing with a breathless little sound, silk shifting, rollers and all, and Michael did not care one bit about the careful set of her hair.

He would redo them himself later.

He knew how.

He had watched.

He had learned.

And if she fussed, he would sit behind her with a comb and pins and that pleased little smile she hated because it always meant he had gotten exactly what he wanted.

But for now, he stood at the edge of their bed, looking down at her like the whole world had narrowed to this room, this woman, this homecoming, while Jayda stared back at him with wine-warmed lips and moonlight on her skin, her chest rising fast, her attitude finally quiet beneath the weight of missing him.

Michael took one slow step closer.

“Missed me, didn’t you?” he murmured.

Jayda swallowed, still trying to gather enough pride to lie.

But her body had already answered.

Jayda gasped as Michael lowered himself before her, not falling, not stumbling, but sinking with deliberate reverence, like a man kneeling before the altar of a goddess he had spent six months praying his way back to.

The sight of him there stole something from her chest.

Michael Jackson, road-worn and lovesick, still in his cap and shades, still carrying the last traces of airports and stages on his clothes, kneeling between her parted knees as though the whole empire of his name meant nothing compared to being allowed this close to her. His hands settled first at her hips, warm and sure through the silk, fingers flexing as if he needed to confirm she was real, that she was not another lonely hotel-room dream dressed up in moonlight and Donny Hathaway’s voice.

Then he bowed his head.

Jayda’s breath broke when his nose brushed along the length of her leg, slow and almost unbearably tender, tracing her as though he were learning her again by scent, by warmth, by memory, by the quiet tremble that moved through her when he took his time. He dragged that soft inhale over her skin like he was breathing in home, like the six months away had left him half-starved for every part of her, not only the obvious places desire had named, but the smaller, holier things too: the bend of her knee, the silk against her thigh, the perfume caught low on her skin, the way her body tried to stay composed even as it betrayed her beneath his hands.

“Michael…” she whispered, and this time his name sounded less like warning and more like surrender trying to keep its pride.

His hands inched lower from her hips, careful, patient, possessive in a way that made her pulse answer before she could stop it. He did not rush her. He did not take. He only moved like a man returning to a temple after exile, his touch devotional, his mouth hovering where his breath could warm her but not yet claim more than she gave him.

Jayda’s fingers twisted into the sheets beside her, her rollers forgotten, her wine-warmed attitude scattered somewhere between the door and the bed.

Michael lifted his face just enough for her to see him, just enough for the moonlight to catch the curve of his mouth beneath the shadow of his shades.

“Missed all of you,” he murmured, voice low, roughened by restraint and relief. “Every bit.”

Jayda swallowed, trying and failing to gather herself beneath the weight of his attention.

“You say that like you been deprived.”

His hands tightened gently at her thighs, and the smile that touched his lips was soft, dangerous, and terribly sincere.

“I have.”

And with that, he leaned back in, pressing his face to her skin with a tenderness that made her eyes flutter, breathing her in like she was incense rising through some ancient Roman chamber, like Venus herself had left her perfume there for him to follow, like all roads had only ever led him back to this room, this bed, this woman, and the quiet, trembling truth that he was finally home.

“Take those off for me, baby…” Jayda whispered, reaching for him with a softness that made the air between them change shape. “I wanna see you.”

Her fingers rose toward his face, slow and careful, as if she were approaching something precious rather than something fragile, and Michael stilled beneath her touch, his hands still warm against her legs, his breath caught somewhere between longing and obedience.

The cap, the shades, the road still clinging to him in little pieces — all of it had made him look untouchable when he first walked in, like the world’s Michael Jackson had stepped through her door before her Michael could fully return. But Jayda did not want the armor. She did not want the shadow over his eyes, did not want the barrier between her and the gaze she had missed through six months of phone calls and half-swallowed confessions.

She wanted his face bare beneath the moonlight.

His eyes.

The truth of him.

Michael’s mouth parted slightly, and for once, no teasing answer came. No coy little deflection, no soft laugh, no you miss me that bad, mama? to hide behind. He only looked up at her from his knees, quiet and undone, as Jayda’s fingertips brushed the edge of his shades.

“Lemme see my man,” she murmured, voice low, wine-warm, and tender enough to make his chest ache.

That did it.

His hands left her only long enough to reach for the frames, and he slid the shades away slowly, revealing eyes dark with longing, tired from the road, bright with the kind of love that had survived distance only to come home hungrier. Jayda’s breath caught when she saw him fully, when the last piece of the world fell from his face and left only Michael there, kneeling before her like devotion had finally learned how to breathe.

He took off the cap next, setting it aside without looking, curls slightly pressed, face softened by shadow and moonlight, and Jayda’s hand moved instinctively to his cheek.

Her thumb swept beneath his eye.

“There you are,” she whispered.

Michael leaned into her palm, eyes closing for half a second like her touch had found the tiredest part of him and kissed it awake.

“Been here,” he murmured.

Jayda shook her head faintly, her fingers tracing the side of his face as if relearning him by touch.

“Nah,” she said softly. “Now you’re here.”

And Michael, still on his knees before her, still wrapped in the heavy sweetness of coming home, looked up at Jayda like she had just stripped away more than a cap and a pair of shades — like she had called him out from beneath every stage light, every expectation, every mile of road, and brought him back to the only place he had ever wanted to be seen.

Jayda raked her hands through his curls with a soft, broken sigh, the sound slipping out of her before she could dress it in pride, before she could turn it sharp or casual or clever enough to hide behind.

Her fingers moved through his hair slowly, almost reverently, combing through the places the cap had pressed down, loosening him from the last little evidence of the road as if she were smoothing six months of distance out of him by hand. Michael’s eyes fluttered at the touch, his mouth parting on a breath he did not seem to know what to do with, because Jayda’s hands in his hair had always been dangerous, always too close to worship, always capable of making him feel less like a man chased by the world and more like somebody’s beloved thing.

She pulled him up her body with both hands buried in his curls, guiding him toward her not roughly, but with a need that had finally stopped pretending it was anything else.

Michael followed her like he had been waiting all night for that command, rising from his knees with a slow obedience that made the room feel warmer, his hands bracing near her as he came over her, close enough for her to see the tiredness beneath his eyes, the longing in them, the soft astonishment that still moved through him every time she reached for him first.

Jayda’s palms slid from his hair to his face.

That was what undid him most.

Not the silk.

Not the wine.

Not the months of wanting stored up between them like thunder behind temple doors.

Her hands on his face.

The gentle way she held him there, thumbs grazing over his cheeks, fingers resting along his jaw, her touch slow and careful as though she had found some sacred statue of Apollo brought down from its pedestal and made human in her bed.

She traced him like she had missed him in pieces.

The curve of his cheekbone.

The softness beneath his eye.

The line of his mouth.

Then her thumb drifted along the bridge of his nose, and Michael went still beneath her, breath caught, gaze fixed on her as if she had reached into his chest and quieted every restless thing inside him.

Jayda leaned up and pressed a kiss there, right where her thumb had been, small and tender and devastating in its simplicity.

“You’re so pretty, baby,” she whispered, her lips brushing the words against his skin before she pulled back enough to look at him fully.

Michael’s lashes lowered, shy despite all his nerve, despite the way he had carried her through their home and kissed her like he had been starving.

Jayda smiled faintly, almost sadly, because the road had given him back to her tired, and the world had always demanded he be dazzling before it allowed him to be soft.

Her thumb swept over his nose again, then down toward his mouth.

“So beautiful.”

The words settled over him like laurel and balm, like Venus herself had laid a hand over the old wounds the world kept mistaking for glamour. Michael swallowed hard, his eyes shining with something too tender to name, and for a moment all that hunger between them quieted into a deeper ache, one that had nothing to do with distance anymore and everything to do with being seen.

Not praised.

Not adored by strangers.

Seen.

Michael leaned into her hands, his voice barely above a whisper.

“You make me feel that way.”

Jayda’s face softened at once, helplessly, the attitude melting clean off her mouth as she held him closer.

“Good,” she murmured, kissing the bridge of his nose again, then the corner of his mouth. “’Cause you are.”

And Michael, hovering over her with her hands still cradling his face, looked at Jayda like every stage in the world had gone dark behind him and only this remained: her beneath him, moonlight on her skin, her fingers in his hair, her voice calling him beautiful like it was not a compliment but a truth she had been waiting six months to place back into his body.

“I love you, you know that right, Bambi?” Jayda whispered, the confession leaving her mouth so softly it almost disappeared into the moonlit room, but Michael caught it, caught every trembling piece of it, caught the love beneath the wine and silk and aching want, caught the six months of missing him tucked behind the nickname like she had been carrying it against her chest the whole time.

For a moment, he only stared at her.

The whole world seemed to narrow to the warmth of her hands on his face, to the tender drag of her thumb over the bridge of his nose, to the quiet shine in her eyes as she looked at him not like a stage, not like a miracle, not like some boy-god Apollo dragged before the masses to sing until he bled light, but like her man, her sweet thing, her beautiful, impossible Michael.

His throat worked around the feeling.

Love had been said to him before, shouted at him by crowds, printed on signs, screamed through barricades, handed to him in flowers and letters and trembling hands, but from Jayda it landed differently, heavy and holy, like Venus herself had stepped down from her altar and placed a crown over the softest part of him.

“Yeah?” he whispered, his voice low and roughened by everything he was trying not to let spill out too quickly.

Jayda’s gaze flickered to his mouth.

Michael leaned closer, not enough to kiss her yet, only enough for his breath to warm the space between them, his curls brushing faintly against her forehead as his eyes searched hers with that sweet, dangerous patience of his.

“You gon’ show me, mama?”

The question was gentle, but it carried weight.

It was not just desire speaking, not only the hunger that had built itself inside him across six months of lonely beds and late-night calls, not only the ache of her beneath him with her fingers still tangled in his hair. It was need, deeper and older than the body, the need to be chosen without hesitation, to be loved without distance, to have Jayda stop hiding behind attitude and cleverness and finally let him feel the truth she had just placed between them.

Jayda’s breath caught.

Michael saw it and softened, his mouth brushing the corner of hers as though he were not asking for proof so much as permission to believe her.

“Show me you missed me,” he murmured. “Show me I’m home.”

Her hands tightened at his face, holding him there, keeping him close, and for once she did not roll her eyes, did not kiss her teeth, did not make some slick little comment to rescue herself from the tenderness.

She only looked at him, her beautiful Bambi, her angelface, the man kneeling and rising and returning to her like every road in the world had finally admitted it led back to this bed.

“Come here,” she whispered.

And Michael went to her like worship answering its own prayer.

She watched as Michael lowered himself onto their bedding, the silk sheets receiving him like they remembered the shape of him, cool and smooth beneath his road-worn body, welcoming him back with the same quiet devotion she had tried and failed to disguise behind attitude, wine, and low-lit teasing.

For a moment, Jayda simply looked at him.

Her Michael.

Her Bambi.

Her angelface stretched across their bed beneath the moonlight, curls loosened from beneath his cap, eyes dark and open on her, beautiful in a way that made her chest ache because the world had spent years worshipping him loudly while somehow missing how tender he was when he felt safe.

She leaned over him and pressed her lips to the side of his neck, one kiss first, then another, then another, each one slow and deliberate, trailing warmth along the place where his pulse jumped beneath her mouth. Michael’s breath caught immediately, his body betraying him with the smallest shudder, and Jayda felt it against her lips, felt the way he softened under the attention like a man who had been touched by crowds all his life but only ever handled with care by her.

“There you go,” she whispered against his skin, voice low, affectionate, almost teasing. “Let me love on you.”

His eyes fluttered shut.

Jayda’s manicured hand ghosted down his body, not rushing, not taking, only learning him again with the slow reverence of a woman returning to a sacred place after too long away. Her touch moved over him like warm incense through a Roman temple, like Venus herself laying blessing after blessing upon a soldier returned from war, and Michael trembled beneath every pass of her fingers as if his body had been waiting six months to remember what her hands felt like.

She watched him carefully, watched the way his mouth parted, the way his chest rose, the way his brows pulled together as though tenderness overwhelmed him more than hunger ever could.

“You missed this?” she murmured.

Michael opened his eyes, and the look he gave her was almost too honest to bear.

“Missed you,” he whispered.

Jayda’s hand stilled for half a second, her heart folding around the answer before she could stop it. Then she bent and kissed him again, softer this time, right beneath his jaw, letting her lips linger there as her thumb traced a slow, absent path over him.

“I’m here now,” she promised.

Michael shuddered again, not only from her touch, but from the weight of those words, from the sweetness of being wanted without performance, welcomed without demand, loved in the private dark by the woman whose bed had become the only stage he never had to earn.

Jayda’s hand drifted lower with aching patience, her touch moving beneath the loose cotton at his waist just enough to make Michael’s breath fracture beneath her, the sudden inhale catching sharp in his throat before it broke apart into a few short, uneven exhales.

His eyes screwed shut at once, not because he wanted her to stop, but because the feeling of being wanted by her so directly, so deliberately, made something shy and overwhelmed rise up inside him before desire could steady it.

For all the nerve he had walked into her home with, for all the teasing over the phone, for all the confidence in the way he had carried her upstairs and kissed her like six months of distance had made him half-wild with missing her, there was still that tender, untouched place in him that trembled when Jayda loved him too carefully.

She saw it.

Of course she saw it.

The way his lashes pressed tight against his cheeks.

The way his chest lifted beneath her.

The way his hands gripped the silk sheets as if her touch had become too much and not enough in the same breath.

Jayda softened over him, her mouth brushing the side of his neck again, her voice low and warm against his skin.

“Look at me, baby.”

Michael swallowed hard, his body still tense beneath the storm of nerves and wanting, but he opened his eyes for her anyway, because the desire for his woman, for her hands, for her nearness, for the proof that he was home and loved and chosen, was stronger than the embarrassment trying to pull him back into himself.

When his gaze found hers, Jayda’s heart clenched.

There he was.

Not the man the world screamed for.

Not the legend.

Not the polished miracle in sequins and stage lights.

Just Michael, beautiful and breathless beneath her, trusting her with the softest parts of himself even while his body betrayed every ounce of longing he had carried back to her.

Jayda kissed the bridge of his nose, then the corner of his mouth, her hand still gentle, still careful, still speaking the language her pride so often refused.

“I got you,” she whispered. “Ain’t no rush.”

Michael let out a shaky breath, his eyes dark and shining as he looked up at her.

“I want you,” he whispered back, the words barely there, but heavy with six months of missing, six months of restraint, six months of coming home to her in every dream before his body finally followed.

Jayda’s expression softened until all the attitude disappeared from her face, until there was no sharp mouth, no teasing defense, no wine-warmed mask of control left between them, only the woman beneath it all looking down at the man she loved with a tenderness that felt almost too sacred for the room.

Her hand stilled.

Not because she doubted him, not because she did not feel the heat of his wanting beneath her palm, but because desire, to Jayda, could not outrun care; because Michael was not some man she intended to devour and forget, he was her Bambi, her angelface, her sweet, beautiful love stretched beneath her on silk sheets, trembling not from fear alone, but from the dangerous weight of being wanted in a place where he did not have to perform for it.

She lowered herself closer, her hair rollers brushing faintly as she leaned in, her breath warm against his mouth, her gaze searching his as though she were reading the truth written somewhere deeper than words.

“Are you sure, my love?” she whispered back, her voice soft enough to soothe and serious enough to hold him still.

Michael’s eyes opened fully at that, dark and tender, still carrying the nerves that had made his breath stutter, but beneath them lived something steadier now, something certain, something that looked at Jayda not like temptation, but like home.

For a moment, he did not answer with his mouth.

He lifted one hand instead, careful and reverent, and touched her face, his thumb brushing along her cheek as though he needed to feel her there, warm and real above him, the woman who had waited, fussed, loved, protected, and still asked before taking what he had already offered.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

Jayda’s eyes searched his again.

Michael swallowed, then nodded, firmer this time, his voice low and rough with wanting and trust.

“I’m sure, mama.”

Something in her chest broke open quietly.

She bent and kissed him, not with the hunger first, but with the love, pressing it into his mouth slowly, letting him feel that he had been heard, that he had been asked, that nothing in this room would happen to him without him being met there fully. Michael melted beneath her, his body loosening by degrees, the tension in his shoulders easing as his hands found her waist and held on like she had anchored him back into himself.

“You tell me if you need me to slow down,” she murmured against his lips.

His fingers tightened gently at her sides.

“Don’t go nowhere,” he whispered.

Jayda kissed him again, softer, deeper, her forehead resting against his as Donny sang low from somewhere below and the moonlight poured over them like silver blessing.

“I’m right here,” she promised. “I got you.”

And Michael believed her.

Not because she said it pretty, not because the room was warm and the sheets smelled like her, not because his body was humming beneath her touch, but because Jayda had always loved him most honestly in the pauses, in the places where wanting waited for permission, where softness held the door open and let him walk through on his own.

He watched through a half-lidded gaze as Jayda sank to her knees before him, a gentle smile on her face as she reached for his sweatpants and tugged them down his legs, letting his dick spring free, gently smacking his lower abdomen before curving toward him. With a sigh of pure bliss, she wrapped her hands around his base, a swarm of butterflies ruptured in her stomach as she wrapped her lips around him and welcomed him down her throat, nearly purring with him in her mouth at the sound of his whines and whimpers. She didn’t waste any time as she bobbed her head up and down his dick, moaning at the taste of the salty precum invading her senses, spurring her on, making her even more determined to show her man how much she loved him, how much she missed him. 

“Wrapping her hands around his base,e she stroked what she couldn’t fit in her mouth, his groans acting as an incentive to gradually increase her pace, not too fast, not too slow; she’d learnt not to startle Michael when it came down to these things. She learned him the way a sinner learns scripture in search of absolution: with reverence, with obsession, with the desperate hunger to know exactly where to place her hands, her mouth, her love, until she could draw from him a response no one else in the world would ever be holy enough to receive.

“Oh…oh baby,” Michael whined as the blood rished to his dick, his chest rising with heavy breaths as the love in his heart swelled tenfold, a feat he had not known was possible when Jayda already possessed so much of him: his thoughts, his desire, his songs, his softness, every private piece of him the world had never been gentle enough to hold. Jayda owned him in a way that should have terrified a man who had spent his whole life being claimed, managed, and consumed by other people, yet with her, ownership did not feel like captivity; it felt like surrender, like safety, like finally belonging to someone who would never use his devotion as a leash.

“Baby… you drive me crazy, y-you’re everything, you’re everythin’ and more mama.” He whispered as he furrowed his brows and closed his eyes, his hand settling on the nape other's neck, while the other settled on the rollers that contained the dark locks he couldn't wait to entangle in his fingers later on. He gently lowered her onto him further so she could deepthroat him, a move he’d learnt one time after their studio time together that he found himself thinking about in his tour bus with nothing but his hand and whatever lotion he’d carried to keep him sane. 

Michael was a moaning mess as he felt his crown brush her uvula as her nose brushed the soft curly pubes at his crotch as he gently thrust inside her mouth, his confidence increasing with his pace as his body buzzed with electricity. As she deep-throated him she darted her tongue out to lick at his balls, leaving nothing untouched, she came up for a breath, her hands jerking him when she met his eyes, she found him looking at her with such reverence, such unguarded devotion, such aching, impossible love, that it made something inside her soften past pride and reason, until she felt she might give him anything he asked for simply because he had looked at her as though she were the only altar he had ever knelt before.

She could feel her juices drench her thighs as she thankfully decided not not to wear any tonight as she dripped down her thighs as Michael watched her hand trail down her body as she began to touch herself. The sight was too erotic, too close to sacrilege, but at the moment, any thoughts of divinity were mush, pure and utter mush as he thrusted into her mouth the coil in his belly growing tighter and tiger, and he finally succumbed to his orgasm. 

Jayda brought her hand, already slick with her own essence and rubbed it along his shaft as she jerked him, the trail of her spit combining with Michael’s cum that licked from the corners of her mouth and dripped down his balls onto the sheets as Jayda swallowed six months' worth of love. 

Jayda pulled off him with a pop, following the trail of him that leaked down onto the sheets with her tongue, watching as Michael jerked when her tongue met his balls once more, his hand shot out to pull her back as he caught his breath. 

“Hold on, baby,” he croaked as he pulled her onto the bed with him, a sigh leaving his lips as he turned his gaze to meet hers. Jayda let out a breathless giggle as he stood up and moved her to the centre of their bed and lay on his stomach between her legs, licking up the wanted essence on her thighs as he held onto her, making it impossible for her to wriggle away from him.

Immediately after he was done lathering her thighs with his spit, his tongue darted out and started licking her juices. Jayda nearly shot up and wriggled away, her eyes widening as she whined. “Oh, Michael.”

She was so wet, her juices coating his cheeks as he dove in for more, eager to have her running through his body, ever so eager to be one with her in all the ways he could. 

“F-fuck,” she whined, the word slipping out of her before she could catch it, raw and breathless and entirely unlike the composed woman who usually kept every sound, every feeling, every surrender under lock and key.

Then, almost immediately, even with her pulse still scattered and her pride nowhere to be found, Jayda blinked as if she had offended the Lord himself and whispered, “Sorry.”

Because apparently, after all the wine, all the silk, all the longing, all the ways he had looked at her like worship had learned her name, after all the sex they’d had, profanity was where Michael Joseph Jackson decided to draw the line.

He hummed against her as he continued on with his meal, as she shuddered and arched her back with a whine as he reached under her and cupped her ass, lifting her up slightly to have a deeper taste of her as he squeezed harshly. To him, Jayda tasted like heaven, that was the only explanation to why he always, always throught about this. Thought about his head between her thighs even when it was the last thing he should’ve been thinking about at that moment. 

“W-Wait, i’m gonna- f–fuck – s-sorry, don’t stop baby,” she whined despite her pleas and the slight ache in his jaw he continued working her to her high. He knew her body the way he knew music: by instinct, by devotion, by the smallest shift in rhythm, every breath and tremble becoming a note he had learned to hear before it ever became sound.

 He wanted every bit of her, every bit of her release to coat his face and fill his senses. He wanted to be bathed in her in every way that mattered, to carry her scent on his skin, her softness in his bones, her touch lingering over him like a private blessing, so that even when she was only in the next room, he could still feel her wrapped around him as though she had never truly let go.

Her moans grew louder as she felt a pit form in her stomach, her body shook as she broke her gaze from Michael, accepting the fact that the man wasn’t going to let her go till she gave him what he wanted. Instead, she screwed her eyes shut and raked her hand through his hair, careful of his sensitive scalp and let out an exhale of relief as she felt his fingers curl into her. Looking down, Jayda found the hand resting against the side of her body, the one still marked by his vitiligo, pale constellations scattered over brown skin like the gods had pressed moonlight into him and left it there.

A soft whine slipped from her mouth, half protest, half plea, her lashes fluttering as she fought to gather a coherent sentence through the overwhelming rush of feeling moving through her. She reached for that hand before he could pull it away, before shyness or old hurt or the cruel memory of other people’s eyes could make him think, even for a second, that she wanted any part of him hidden from her.

“Love on me with that hand,” she whispered, voice trembling but certain, her fingers closing over his wrist with aching tenderness to slow him down. “Ion want the other one.”

Michael went still.

For a moment, his breath caught so sharply it seemed to quiet the whole room, and Jayda’s pleasure filled gaze cleared for a moment to his, softened and insistent, letting him see that she meant it, that she wanted the hand he might have been taught to be careful with, the hand the world had made into a question, the hand she looked at and saw only him.

“This one,” she murmured, guiding it closer, pressing her lips to the uneven beauty of his skin. “I want all of you, my love.”

He nodded, his words lost in his throat as tears pooled in his eyes but he blinked them away, pulling away from her slick folds for a moment he licked the hand clean, his tongue darting between the digits to gather all of her before he used the spit lick hand to clasp onto her thigh as he thrust his fingers into her curling them just right into her spot, watching the way her body unclenched and a fresh wave of her slick coated his fingers as he wrapped his lips around her clit. It wasn’t long before she released herself in his mouth and Michael sucked eagerly, holding her steady. Jayda’s breath came in short, broken pants, her chest rising beneath him as she tried and failed to keep herself together, whispering little curses under her breath that she prayed he did not hear, because Michael would absolutely have the nerve to stop everything and look at her like she had personally disappointed the angels.

But of course he heard.

Michael always heard her.

He heard the words she said and the ones she tried to swallow, heard the tremble beneath her attitude, heard the way her breath caught around his name, heard the prayer hiding inside every sound she made for him, and with his forehead hovering near hers, his eyes dark and heavy with love, he let out a soft, breathless laugh that barely made it past his throat.

“You gon’ be the death of me, mama,” he whispered, the words tender, ruined, full of awe, as if loving her had turned him into a man willing to be undone by the very woman holding him together.

Jayda’s face changed immediately.

The haze in her eyes sharpened, the softness still there but suddenly pierced through with fear, and she frowned as she lifted her hand and gently smacked his chest, not hard enough to hurt him, only enough to make the point land where her voice nearly failed.

“Don’t say that.”

Michael’s brows furrowed, confusion moving over his face as he stilled above her, because he had meant it like romance, like surrender, like some sweet little dramatic thing lovers said in the dark when the heart got too full for plain language.

But Jayda was not smiling.

Her hand stayed over his chest, palm pressed against the beat beneath his skin, and for a moment she looked almost angry with him for reminding her that bodies could fail, that fire could happen, that hospitals existed, that the man she loved could be touched by pain in ways her hands could not always fix.

“Don’t talk about death,” she whispered, voice trembling now despite how fiercely she tried to steady it.

Michael’s expression softened at once.

Jayda swallowed, her thumb moving over his chest like she could soothe the very idea away, like if she touched him firmly enough, loved him deeply enough, claimed him completely enough, then death itself would know better than to come anywhere near her door.

“You gon’ live a long life with me,” she said, her eyes locked on his, serious as a vow made before God and every ancient thing still listening in the dark. “You hear me, Bambi? A long one.”

Michael stared down at her, and the teasing left him completely.

In its place came something softer, heavier, something that looked too much like a man realizing he was not only wanted, not only desired, but expected to stay.

Jayda’s hand slid up from his chest to cradle his face, her nails grazing his jaw with careful tenderness as she pulled him closer, her mouth brushing the corner of his before she spoke again.

“No more talkin’ like that,” she murmured. “Not with me. Not in this bed. Not when I just got you back.”

Michael closed his eyes for a second, leaning into her palm as though her fear had become another form of love he did not know how to hold without trembling.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Jayda searched his face.

“Say it.”

His eyes opened again, dark and shining beneath the moonlight.

“I’m gon’ live a long life with you,” he said softly.

Her breath shook on the exhale.

“Good.”

Then she kissed him, slow and deep and aching, not to silence him exactly, but to seal the promise somewhere warmer than words, to press it into his mouth, his skin, his heart, until he understood that Jayda Noel Carmichael did not love lightly, did not claim halfway, and did not let the man she had chosen speak of leaving this earth when she had already made room for him in every year she planned to survive.

Michael’s fingers moved to the buttons of his plaid shirt, slow and almost uncertain now that Jayda was watching him so closely, her gaze fixed on him with a heat that made his hands feel clumsier than they had a moment ago.

One button slipped free, then another, the fabric parting gradually to reveal the lean, lanky frame beneath, all long lines, narrow waist, soft brown skin, and the quiet beauty he never seemed to understand belonged to him just as much offstage as it did beneath lights.

Jayda’s breath softened as she looked at him.

Not at the myth.

Not at the man the world screamed for.

Him.

Her Bambi, her baby, her beautiful man standing in the moonlit room with his shirt falling open and his shyness trying to hide behind desire.

The look in her eyes changed as she took him in, desire swirling there, yes, warm and unmistakable, but beneath it was something gentler, something reverent, something that made Michael’s chest tighten because Jayda did not look at him like she wanted to consume him; she looked at him like she wanted to keep him safe while loving him thoroughly.

Her voice came low, wine-warm and full of wonder.

“You so beautiful, baby.”

Michael’s hands paused on the next button.

The praise hit him harder than he expected, slipping beneath all the teasing, beneath all the confidence he had brought upstairs, beneath the road and the stage and the practiced glitter of being adored by strangers.

Jayda’s mouth softened when she saw his lashes lower.

“Look at me,” she whispered.

He did, slowly.

And when their eyes met, Jayda let him see every bit of it: the hunger, the love, the relief, the quiet worship of a woman who had missed his body because she had missed him, who wanted him close not because the world had made him desirable, but because he was Michael, because he was hers, because he had come home.

“I mean it,” she murmured, reaching for the open edges of his shirt. “So beautiful.”

Jayda reached for him then, her hands coming to the open edges of his plaid shirt with the kind of tenderness that made Michael go still, as though every movement of hers required his full attention.

The fabric was warm from his body, faintly carrying the scent of travel, stage lights, hotel soap, and the cold air outside, all those little traces of the road still clinging to him even though he was standing in their bedroom now, beneath her moonlight, close enough for her to touch.

Her fingers found the next button.

Michael watched her lower her gaze, watched the concentration settle over her features as she worked it free, one slow pass of her thumb, one careful pull, the button slipping loose as if she were undoing more than clothing.

She was taking the world off him piece by piece.

The road.

The family noise.

The final show.

The months of being wanted by everyone except the woman he actually needed.

Jayda unbuttoned him like she was bringing him home by hand, like every small release of fabric was another gate opening, another wall giving way, another inch of him returned to the quiet temple of their room.

Michael’s breath shifted when her knuckles brushed his chest.

She noticed.

Of course she noticed.

Jayda’s mouth curved faintly, but she did not tease him yet, did not ruin the softness with too much mouth, only let her fingertips graze the newly exposed skin with aching patience.

“You nervous?” she asked, voice low, not mocking, not even playful, just intimate enough to make his lashes lower.

Michael swallowed, his hands hovering uselessly at his sides as if he did not know whether to touch her, hold still, or surrender outright.

“A little,” he admitted.

Jayda looked up at him then.

The confession softened her in a way that nearly undid him.

Her hands stilled against his shirt, her thumbs resting close to the center of his chest, and for a moment she only looked at him, her beautiful man, her shy little storm, her Bambi who could command a stage in front of thousands but still tremble when she loved him too directly.

“That’s alright,” she whispered. “You can be nervous with me.”

Michael’s eyes met hers.

There was something in them that almost broke her heart, not fear exactly, but trust learning how to stand without flinching.

Jayda leaned closer and pressed a kiss to the patch of skin she had just uncovered, right beneath his collarbone, soft and lingering.

Michael exhaled shakily.

She felt it move through him.

“There you go,” she murmured against him. “Just breathe, baby.”

Her fingers moved again, finding another button, then another, each one surrendering under her touch until the shirt hung looser around him, sliding open to reveal more of his lean frame, the long, delicate lines of him, the narrow strength, the softness, the beauty he carried like something he had never fully been taught to claim for himself.

Jayda’s gaze travelled over him slowly, not greedy in a careless way, but reverent, almost solemn, as though she were standing before some marble statue of Apollo brought down from its pedestal and made warm, human, vulnerable beneath her hands.

“You don’t even know,” she said softly.

Michael’s brows drew together.

“Know what?”

Jayda pushed the shirt farther from his shoulders, her palms following the fabric, guiding it down his arms with unhurried care.

“How pretty you are when you let somebody see you.”

His mouth parted, but whatever answer he had dissolved when she leaned in again, pressing kisses along his chest, one slow offering after another, her lips warm against the parts of him the shirt had hidden only moments before.

Michael’s head tilted back slightly, his throat working around a breath that wanted to become her name.

Jayda smiled against his skin.

“Don’t hide from me,” she whispered.

“I’m not.”

“You try.”

His hands finally found her waist, tentative at first, then firmer when she did not move away.

“You make it hard,” he murmured.

Jayda lifted her head, eyes narrowing softly.

“For you to hide?”

Michael looked at her, dark-eyed and open, the last of the shirt slipping from one shoulder.

“For me to think straight.”

That pulled a quiet laugh from her, low and warm, and the sound loosened something in him.

Jayda drew the shirt the rest of the way off, letting it fall somewhere near the foot of the bed without caring where it landed, because she had him now, bare to the waist and breathing unevenly beneath her attention, the road stripped from his skin, the night closing around them, the silk sheets waiting behind her like they had known he would return.

She placed both hands on his chest, feeling the quick, living beat beneath her palms.

“There he is,” she whispered.

Michael’s hands tightened at her waist.

“You keep sayin’ that.”

“Because I keep finding you.”

The words landed between them with more weight than either expected.

Michael’s expression softened, the desire in his face briefly overtaken by something deeper, something almost boyish in its need to be understood.

Jayda touched his cheek again, thumb moving gently along the side of his face.

“Every time the world put something on you,” she said, voice quiet but certain, “I’m gon’ take it off when you come home.”

Michael closed his eyes at that.

For one moment, he simply leaned into her, forehead lowering toward hers, his body drawn to her warmth like a man returning from battle to the only place that still knew his real name.

“Promise?” he whispered.

Jayda kissed him once, slow and tender, sealing the answer against his mouth before giving it sound.

“Promise.”

Jayda gently pushed him back onto the bed, her palms pressed against the warm plane of his chest, and Michael went willingly, falling into the silk sheets with a soft bounce that startled a laugh out of him before he could swallow it.

The sound was light, sweet, almost boyish, spilling into the moonlit room like something precious and unguarded, and for a moment all the heat between them softened into joy.

Jayda paused above him, watching as he giggled beneath her, his curls spread against her pillows, his bare chest rising with laughter, his eyes bright in a way she had not seen enough during those six long months on the road.

“What you gigglin’ for?” she asked, though her own mouth had already started to curve.

Michael shook his head, still smiling, one hand reaching for her waist as if even laughter could not be allowed to put too much distance between them.

“Nothin’,” he murmured, breathless and beautiful, the silk shifting beneath him as he settled deeper into the bed. “Jus’ missed bein’ here.”

Jayda’s expression softened at once.

Not here, as in the room.

Not here, as in the penthouse.

Here, as in beneath her hands, in her sheets, under her eyes, safe inside the private little world they had built together one recovery day, one phone call, one stolen confession at a time.

She climbed onto the bed after him slowly, her knees sinking into the silk on either side of him, and Michael looked up at her with that same helpless reverence, laughter still lingering at the corners of his mouth while love sat heavy in his gaze.

“You happy to be home, Bambi?” she whispered.

His hands slid to her hips, gentle but sure, anchoring her there as if the question had an answer too large for words.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Real happy.”

Jayda leaned down, brushing her lips over his smile, kissing the last of his laughter away with a tenderness that made him sigh beneath her.

“Good,” she murmured against his mouth. “Imma make you even happier.”

She let him tug her silk nightdress over her head, tossing it somewhere into the room as he let his hands roam the supple flesh of her body, squeezing and fondling whatever he pleased as Jayda trailed a hand down her body to grab his hard, throbbing dick. And without any second wasted, she rubbed him through her folds, once, twice, thrice before she sank into it, using little to no effort to slide him inside her warmth as his toes curled. He mumbled praises and whines under his breath before letting out a loud “Fuck baby.” He kept his eyes on Jayda, who leaned her head back and whimpered softly as she adjusted to him; six months without him here to stretch her out had her body readjusting to him, almost like it was their first time all over again. She could feel him in the deepest parts of her stomach, so deep she didn’t know who started and ended where; not that she cared to know. Her whines never stopped, not even as she planted her hands on his chest and began to bounce on him. 

Michael watched her with wonder. He missed this; he missed seeing her like this. Her lips parted as her eyes fought to stay open, while her eyes met his and held his gaze. He filled her up so completely, and there wasn’t an inch she wasn’t taking. 

She was made for him, and he was made for her. 

He moved his hands down to her ass, spreading her cheeks and digging his nails into her skin as she maintained her pace on him, squeezing her walls and trying to give him everything she had in her. 

“You like that, baby?  You like feeling how much I love you?”

“Mhm, I love feelin’ it baby, you’re doing so well.” He whimpers, the sounds moving through their room, soft and private, all hers, and that only made her go faster, her breasts bouncing up and down without any rhythm as she showed no signs of stopping until he pulled her off. Perhaps Jayda was addicted to him, addicted to the way their bodies fit together, the way they sounded together; it sounded better than any music Jayda had ever made in her life. 

As she moved quickly, her ass cheeks moved in a circular motion, smacking down on his thighs every time she let herself move down on him. Michael ran his tongue over his lips as he watched her work him, his limbs bone tired and jelly-like from all the months on the road. Jayda knew he needed this: to be cared for without having to earn it, to have the weight of the road, the ache of expectation, and every restless thought drawn gently from his body, then replaced with something warmer, something tender enough to soothe him and powerful enough to light him from the inside out.

He watched her for a moment, watched the way his member disappeared between her slippery folds and revealed itself again coated with more and more of her. The thick creamy ring at his base grew thicker and thicker as it melded with his pubic hair and the back of her thighs. He lifted himself up, bringing a brown nipple to his mouth and swirled her tongue around it. The sounds of their skin slapping and their pleasure could be heard around their penthouse. He watched as Jayda planted a foot against the bed, using it to get a better angle, her nails dug crimson and scratched against her skin while her hips rolled, stuttering with the shocks of pleasure coursing through her veins like a tide. 

“’M gon’ put a pretty ring on that finger,” Michael grunted, the promise slipping out rough and breathless as the coil low in his belly wound tighter and tighter, pulling every thought toward her until desire and devotion became the same unbearable thing.

Jayda stilled for half a second above him.

Not enough to stop the rhythm of the room, not enough to break the heat between them, but enough for the words to land, enough for them to sink through the silk sheets, through the moonlight, through the sound of Donny still playing faintly somewhere beneath them, until they settled somewhere deep in her chest where all her pretending went to die.

A ring.

Not some teasing little promise made because the night was warm and his body was overwhelmed.

Not from Michael.

He said things like that as if heaven itself had handed him the words and told him to make law of them, as if love, once spoken, became something carved into marble, something the gods were required to witness and the earth was required to keep.

Jayda’s breath caught as she looked down at him, at her beautiful man stretched beneath her, curls mussed against her pillows, skin glowing in the low light, eyes dark and shining with such naked adoration that it made her feel powerful and ruined all at once.

“Michael…” she whispered, and his name came out soft, almost broken, because there was too much in it now, too much road, too much waiting, too many nights with his voice in her ear and his side of the bed empty, too many prayers she had refused to call prayers because she was too proud to admit she had begged God to bring him back to her whole.

His hands tightened at her waist, not to control her, never that, but to hold onto the only thing in the world that felt real enough to keep him from floating apart.

“I mean it,” he breathed, his voice strained with feeling, with want, with the impossible tenderness of a man whose body was caught in the storm but whose heart still insisted on making vows in the middle of it. “Ain’t playin’ with you, Jayda.”

Her eyes burned.

She hated that.

She hated how easily he could do it, how he could look up at her like she was Venus and home and mercy and trouble all at once, then say something so earnest it cracked every clever defense she had spent years perfecting.

Jayda leaned down, pressing her forehead to his, letting her hands frame his face as the room moved around them in heat and shadow, as their breathing tangled, as the whole world narrowed to the place where their bodies met without needing the story told in anything but feeling.

“You always talkin’ marriage when you get overwhelmed,” she murmured, trying for attitude, but it came out too tender to wound.

Michael’s mouth curved, faint and breathless.

“You always act like you don’t like hearin’ it.”

Her thumb swept along his cheek, catching the damp warmth there, and her gaze softened with a love so full it almost frightened her.

“I like hearin’ anything that means you plan on staying.”

That undid him.

Jayda felt it in the way his chest lifted beneath her, in the way his eyes closed for just a second, in the way his hands moved from her waist to her back, drawing her closer until there was no space left for pride, no room left for the road, no room left for all the people who had wanted pieces of him without ever learning how to hold the whole.

“I’m stayin’,” he whispered. “You hear me, mama? I’m stayin’.”

Jayda kissed him then, deep and slow and aching, swallowing the promise before it could turn into anything too fragile to survive the air.

The kiss became the answer.

The room softened around them, shadows trembling over the walls, silk whispering beneath them, Donny’s voice turning distant and holy as if the record itself had lowered its eyes. Michael held onto her like a man at prayer, and Jayda loved him like she had spent six months gathering every lonely night, every missed touch, every unsaid confession, and was now pouring all of it back into his body until he had no choice but to glow with it.

She learned him again by breath and tremble, by the way his mouth parted around her name, by the way his lashes fluttered when tenderness struck deeper than pleasure, by the way his voice broke whenever she called him beautiful.

She learned him the way a sinner learns scripture in search of absolution: with reverence, with obsession, with the desperate hunger to know exactly where to place her hands, her mouth, her love, until she could draw from him a response no one else in the world would ever be holy enough to receive.

And Michael gave himself to her with the kind of surrender that would have terrified him from anyone else.

Jayda owned him in that moment, and somehow ownership from her did not feel like captivity; it felt like shelter, like a locked door keeping the world out, like being claimed by someone who would never confuse his devotion for weakness.

“I love you,” he breathed, the words spilling out against her mouth, over and over, no performance in them, no polish, no stage-bright perfection, only the raw, trembling truth of a man who had come home and found his woman waiting.

Jayda held his face between her hands, her own breath uneven, her heart too full for anything clever.

“I love you too, Bambi,” she whispered back. “I got you.”

He made a sound then, soft and ruined, and she kissed it from him before it could become too much.

The love in his heart swelled tenfold, a feat he had not known was possible when Jayda already possessed so much of him: his thoughts, his desire, his songs, his softness, every private piece of him the world had never been gentle enough to hold.

When she met his eyes, she found him looking at her with such reverence, such unguarded devotion, such aching, impossible love, that it made something inside her soften past pride and reason, until she felt she might give him anything he asked for simply because he had looked at her as though she were the only altar he had ever knelt before.

“You gon’ let me?” he whispered suddenly, voice barely there.

Jayda brushed her thumb along the bridge of his nose, the gesture so tender it made his eyes flutter.

“Let you what?”

His gaze dropped briefly to her hand, then rose back to her face, solemn and lovesick.

“Put that ring on you.”

Jayda’s mouth parted.

For once, no smart reply came.

No deflection.

No joke.

No little kiss of the teeth to save herself from being seen.

Only her breathing, his hands on her, the moonlight, the music, and the terrible sweetness of realizing that he was asking her forever while still holding her like she was his tonight.

She leaned down and kissed him once, slow enough to make the answer holy.

“Ask me proper when you ain’t half out your mind,” she whispered against his lips.

Michael gave a breathless little laugh, the sound catching somewhere between joy and surrender.

“That mean yes?”

Jayda kissed him again.

“That mean ask me proper.”

His smile broke open beneath hers, bright and boyish and beautiful, and she felt him light up from the inside exactly the way she had wanted him to, all the road-weariness, all the old wounds, all the lonely distance replaced by something warm enough to live on.

He watched as Jayda picked up the pace, finding purchase on his shoulders as she fucked him harder. Michael’s hands wrapped firmly around her waist as he thrust up into her, knocking the wind out of her body as he found the strength to give it to her just as good as she was giving it to him.  Her eyes filled with tears as she reached for the bedframe, holding onto the top for balance as she cried out his name, over and over. 

“You feel so good, so so good baby. ‘S where I should’ve been all along,” he breathed as she collapsed against his chest, his hops still snapping up into hers, eager to take them to their highs. She was made for him, his girl, his beautiful girl, the woman he would have abandoned doctrine for, the woman he would have walked straight into fire for if it meant coming out on the other side with her hand in his. People would assume Jayda had been the one to lead him there, that she had coaxed him into himself, drawn sensuality out of him with knowing hands and a wicked mouth, but the truth was far less simple and far more dangerous. It had been Michael who kissed away her doubts before she could give them language, Michael who told her what he wanted in that soft, stubborn voice of his and refused to retreat until she understood he meant every word, Michael who sought her out, chased her, yearned for her, wrote her into melodies until history itself would have no choice but to remember the shape of her.

He did not want to merely love Jayda from a distance or worship her quietly at some altar she pretended not to see; he wanted to consume and be consumed by her, to dissolve into the heat of her love until there was no separation left between muse and man, prayer and answer, hunger and home — and once Michael Jackson decided he wanted something with his whole heart, heaven help anyone who thought he would stop before he had it.

There came a moment where the room seemed to lose its edges, where the moonlight, the silk, the music drifting faintly from below, and the whole glittering city beyond the glass folded inward until there was nothing left but Michael and Jayda, breath to breath, heart to heart, caught in the same rising tide.

Michael held onto her as though separation itself had become unbearable, as though six months of distance had gathered inside him only to break open now, not violently, not carelessly, but with the terrifying beauty of a man finally being given the one thing he had prayed for too long to name without trembling.

He did not want to be near her anymore.

Near was not enough.

He wanted to be carried into the same current, swallowed by the same sea, burned in the same sacred fire until neither of them could tell where his longing ended and her love began. He wanted to become part of Jayda in the old mythic way, like two stars collapsing into the same light, like river meeting ocean and forgetting it had ever known another shape, like Mars laying down his weapons at Venus’s feet and finding, in surrender, not defeat but home.

Jayda felt it in him before he said anything.

She felt the way he clung to her, the way his whole body seemed to ask not for more, but for permanence, for proof, for some divine assurance that this was not another dream he would wake from alone in a hotel room with her voice still warm in his ear.

Her hands found his face, grounding him, bringing him back to her eyes.

“I’m here,” she whispered, the words soft but certain, a vow pressed into the dark. “I’m right here, Bambi.”

Michael’s breath caught, and something in him answered her like a struck chord.

For one suspended second, they looked at each other, stripped of every defense they had ever worn, no stage, no studio, no road, no pride, no teasing sharp enough to hide behind. Only love, vast and trembling, opening its mouth beneath them like the sea.

Then the wave rose.

It rose through them together, slow and golden at first, then all at once too bright to bear, a tide pulling both their names from their throats and turning them into one sound. Jayda bowed into him, Michael pulled her close, and the whole night seemed to shudder around them as if the gods had reached down and touched the bed with fire.

It was not hunger anymore.

It was communion.

A prayer answered in the same breath it was spoken.

A song finding its final note.

Two bodies becoming less like separate instruments and more like one orchestra, trembling beneath the hand of something older than desire, something tender enough to heal and powerful enough to ruin.

Michael buried his face against her, holding her as if she were the only thing keeping him tethered to earth, and Jayda held him back just as fiercely, her fingers in his hair, her mouth near his temple, her heart breaking open beneath the force of how completely he needed her.

He had wanted to consume and be consumed by her.

In that moment, he was.

Not in the way of destruction, but in the way dawn consumes darkness, in the way incense consumes air, in the way a hymn consumes silence until the whole chapel is full of sound.

Jayda became the altar and the flame.

Michael became the offering and the prayer.

And when the world finally returned in fragments — the cool sheets, the distant record, the city lights, the uneven rhythm of their breathing — he clung to her still, trembling softly in the aftermath of being known too deeply to ever pretend he belonged anywhere else.

Jayda pressed a kiss into his curls, her own breath unsteady, her hand moving over him with slow, soothing devotion.

“I got you,” she whispered again.

Michael turned his face into her, eyes closed, his voice barely more than a broken breath.

“Don’t let me go.”

Jayda’s arms tightened around him.

“Never.”

And there, beneath moonlight and music, with the road finally behind him and her love all around him, Michael believed her.

…

Afterward, the room went quiet in that soft, holy way rooms did when they had witnessed something too tender to speak of plainly, the moonlight spilling across the silk sheets in pale ribbons while Donny Hathaway still murmured from somewhere downstairs, his voice thinned by distance and walls until it sounded less like a record and more like memory itself humming beneath the floorboards.

Michael lay against Jayda with his head tucked beneath her chin, one arm thrown around her waist, his body long and warm beside hers, his breathing still uneven in small, fading waves as if some great tide had carried him far from himself and only now returned him to shore.

Jayda held him close, her fingers moving lazily through his curls, careful where they had mussed beneath her hands, tender where she knew he liked it, her nails grazing his scalp with the slow devotion of a woman soothing a man who had come home carrying too much road in his bones.

He was quiet now.

Not asleep, not entirely.

Just quiet in the way he became when his heart was full enough to frighten him, when the world had finally stopped reaching for him and he did not know what to do with the silence except press himself closer to her and trust that she would know how to keep him there.

Jayda knew.

Of course she knew.

She knew him by then the way she knew music, by instinct and breath, by the smallest change in rhythm, by the way his hand tightened at her side when his mind wandered too far from the bed and back toward stages, fathers, brothers, crowds, and all the ancient machinery that had been built around him before he was old enough to name it a cage.

“You sleepy?” she asked softly.

Michael shifted, his cheek brushing against her chest, his voice low and drowsy but not gone.

“Nah.”

Jayda smiled faintly into the dark.

“You lyin’.”

“A little.”

The admission made her huff a quiet laugh, and Michael’s mouth curved against her skin, pleased with himself, pleased with her, pleased with being held like this in a room that smelled of wine, silk, warm bodies, and the faint trace of his cologne tangled with her perfume.

For a little while, they said nothing.

Jayda let the silence stretch, let him settle, let the beat of his heart slow beneath her palm, because she understood that some questions needed to be asked after the body remembered safety, after the nerves unclenched, after love had done its softer work and left a man open enough to answer honestly.

Then her fingers stilled gently in his hair.

“Michael.”

He hummed, eyes closed.

“Mhm?”

“You thinkin’ ’bout coming home proper?”

His lashes lifted slowly.

The room shifted around the question.

Not dramatically, not with thunder, but in that quiet, serious way fate sometimes entered through the side door wearing a house robe and carrying the smell of wine on its breath.

Michael lifted his head just enough to look at her, his eyes dark and tired and too soft beneath the moonlight, his curls falling loose over his forehead.

“I’m here now.”

Jayda gave him a look.

“Don’t get cute with me.”

His mouth twitched.

“I ain’t.”

“You are,” she said, dragging her thumb along the bridge of his nose because she could not help herself. “You know what I mean.”

Michael watched her face, searching for the edge of the question beneath the tenderness.

Jayda did not look away.

“I mean moving in,” she said quietly. “For real. Not a box by the door, not three shirts in my closet, not you leaving your tea here and acting like you ain’t claiming cabinet space.”

Michael blinked, then smiled a little, shy and triumphant all at once.

“I do got cabinet space.”

“You got one shelf.”

“That’s space.”

“Michael.”

His smile softened.

There it was.

The seriousness returning, settling over his pretty face like moonlight over marble.

He lowered his head again, but not to hide this time, only to rest his cheek against her while his hand moved slowly over her side, grounding himself in the shape of her beneath his palm.

“You want me here?” he asked, though his voice was too careful for a man who did not already know the answer.

Jayda’s heart clenched.

She hated that he still asked like that sometimes, like wanting him had to be confirmed in writing, like home was something that might be revoked if he misunderstood the terms.

She cupped his jaw and tilted his face back up.

“I been wanting you here.”

Michael’s throat moved.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “But not if you gon’ bring all that road mess into my house and act like rest is optional.”

A soft laugh escaped him, but Jayda did not laugh with him, and when he saw the seriousness in her eyes, the amusement faded from his mouth.

“I’m serious, Bambi.”

He nodded once, small and almost boyish.

“I know.”

Jayda’s thumb traced his cheek, her voice lowering with care.

“And if you move in with me, or if we get a place that’s ours from the start, I need you to keep doing the work.”

Michael’s gaze flickered.

There.

That little guarded place.

She saw it immediately, the way his eyes shifted toward the window, toward the city, toward anywhere that was not her face. The 1980s were not kind to conversations like this, not to men, not to Black men raised to survive first and feel later, not to famous men whose pain got turned into rumor if the wrong receptionist saw their name written in the wrong appointment book. Therapy was whispered about then, disguised as “talking to somebody,” hidden behind private entrances, coded phone calls, paid in cash when privacy demanded it, protected by drivers who knew when not to ask questions.

Jayda knew all of that.

She also knew Michael.

“Look at me,” she said softly.

He did.

Slowly.

“Did you keep up with your sessions while you were on tour?”

Michael was quiet long enough for her stomach to tighten.

Outside, a car passed far below, headlights sliding briefly across the ceiling like a pale chariot crossing the underworld.

“Some,” he admitted.

Jayda’s brows drew together.

“Some?”

“Jayda…”

“Don’t Jayda me.”

He sighed and turned his face into her palm, kissing it once, soft and evasive.

She did not let him off.

“Michael.”

He closed his eyes.

“I called when I could.”

“That ain’t what I asked you.”

His jaw tightened faintly, not in anger, but in the old discomfort of being seen too clearly.

“It wasn’t easy.”

Jayda softened at once, though her voice stayed firm.

“I know it wasn’t.”

“No, you don’t,” he said quietly, then seemed to regret it the moment the words left his mouth.

Jayda did not flinch.

She only waited.

Michael swallowed, his fingers curling lightly into the silk at her waist.

“I had brothers knockin’ on doors, folks in and out all day, people listenin’, people always askin’ where I’m goin’, who I’m callin’, what I’m doin’.” His voice went lower, rougher. “Sometimes I’d call from the hotel room and hang up before the secretary picked up ’cause I didn’t want nobody hearin’ me say I needed to talk to him.”

Jayda’s expression softened into something so loving it almost broke him.

He kept going, quieter now.

“Sometimes Bill would take me out in the car and let me use the phone from there, but even that felt…” He exhaled. “Felt like somebody was gon’ find out and make it ugly.”

Jayda’s hand returned to his hair, smoothing through it slowly.

“Baby.”

Michael’s eyes shone in the dimness.

“I ain’t stop.”

The words came quickly then, almost urgent, like he needed her to know before disappointment could settle where love had been.

“I didn’t stop, Jayda. I missed some, yeah, but I ain’t quit. I wrote when I couldn’t call. He told me to write stuff down, so I did.”

Jayda’s eyes searched his.

“You journaled?”

His mouth twisted shyly.

“A little.”

“Where is it?”

He gave her a look.

“You not readin’ my journal.”

Jayda lifted a brow.

“I ain’t ask to read it, nosy.”

“You sounded like you did.”

“I asked where it was because if your little skinny behind left six months’ worth of emotional progress on a tour bus, I was gon’ have to hurt somebody.”

That pulled a laugh from him, soft and sudden, the sound loosening the heaviness in his chest.

“It’s in my bag.”

“Good.”

She kissed his forehead, then the bridge of his nose, lingering there because she knew it made him shy.

“I’m proud of you.”

Michael went still.

Jayda felt it, the way those words entered him deeper than praise, deeper than applause, deeper than any gold plaque ever could.

“You are?”

“Yes,” she said, serious as a vow. “I know what it cost you to do that on the road. I know you ain’t grow up with folks making room for you to be fragile.”

His eyes lowered.

Jayda tipped his face back up again.

“But I need you to keep at it, especially if we gon’ build something.”

Michael looked at her then, really looked, and the love in his face carried a nervous edge now, a future pressing itself into the room.

“Build something?”

Jayda rolled her eyes softly, but her hand stayed tender against his cheek.

“Don’t act slow.”

His smile came slowly.

“Say it.”

“You so aggravating.”

“Say it, mama.”

She sighed, but the smile betrayed her.

“A home, Michael.”

His eyes softened completely.

Jayda’s voice dropped.

“A real one. Not just you sleeping here when you’re hurt or hiding from your people. Not just me waiting by the phone while you out somewhere being everybody else’s miracle. I mean a home where you come back because you belong there, where your clothes are in the closet on purpose, where I know what time your sessions are, where you don’t pretend you fine when you ain’t, where you can be quiet and nobody takes that as permission to use you up.”

Michael’s breath trembled.

She brushed his curls back from his forehead.

“If that scares you, tell me.”

He shook his head.

“It don’t scare me.”

Jayda studied him.

“Don’t lie.”

He smiled faintly, sad and sweet.

“It scares me a little.”

Her thumb stilled.

Michael continued before she could soothe him out of the truth.

“But not ’cause of you.”

His hand found hers and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles with the kind of reverence that made her chest ache.

“It scares me ’cause I want it too bad.”

Jayda went quiet.

Michael’s voice grew softer.

“I want my toothbrush by yours. I want my clothes in your closet. I want you fussin’ at me ’bout appointments and sleep and eatin’ breakfast. I want to come home and hear your records playin’. I want to know I ain’t gotta ask if I can stay.”

Jayda swallowed hard.

He looked up at her, open and raw.

“I want it so bad, I don’t know what I’d do if I got it and lost it.”

Her face crumpled only a little, but enough.

Enough for Michael to see that the words had reached her.

Jayda gathered him closer, pulling his head back down to her chest, wrapping both arms around him as if she could hold the fear still until it stopped shaking.

“You ain’t gon’ lose it just ’cause you want it,” she whispered into his hair. “You hear me?”

Michael’s arms tightened around her waist.

“Mhm.”

“And you ain’t gotta earn a home with me by being perfect.”

His breathing caught.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

A pause.

Then, quieter: “I’m learnin’.”

Jayda kissed his curls.

“Then keep learning.”

He nodded against her.

For a while, they lay tangled together in the hush, not speaking, only breathing, the silk sheets cool around them, the city flickering beyond the glass, their future sitting at the edge of the bed like some golden, dangerous thing neither of them could ignore anymore.

Then Michael’s voice came, muffled against her skin.

“I can call him tomorrow.”

Jayda’s fingers resumed their slow path through his hair.

“Your therapist?”

“Mhm.”

“Good.”

He lifted his head slightly.

“You gon’ make me?”

Jayda looked down at him, one brow arched.

“Do I look like I play about you?”

Michael’s smile was small and helpless.

“No.”

“Then there you go.”

He laughed under his breath and tucked himself closer, his leg sliding over hers like even his body had voted against distance.

“Bossy.”

“Alive, loved, and emotionally literate,” she said, counting each one off with lazy authority. “That’s the plan.”

Michael laughed again, but then his face softened, and he pressed a kiss to the center of her chest, right over her heart.

“I’ll keep goin’,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Jayda closed her eyes for a moment, letting the promise settle into her like warmth.

“That’s all I’m asking.”

He looked up at her through his lashes.

“And moving in?”

Jayda opened one eye.

“We gon’ talk about that when you ain’t naked in my bed trying to look pitiful.”

Michael grinned, shameless and beautiful.

“Our bed.”

Jayda stared at him.

He stared back.

Then, slowly, she smiled.

“Yeah,” she said softly, pulling him closer as the record below crackled into its final minutes. “Our bed.”

Michael settled against her with a sigh so deep it sounded like something in him had finally unclenched, and Jayda held him there beneath the moonlight, already knowing that by morning she would clear out more closet space, call the building about adding his name downstairs, and pretend, with absolutely no conviction, that she had not been planning for him to come home since the day he left.