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Your father had never stopped going. Even in his last years, when his knees complained and the walk to the church had become a small daily negotiation with his own body, he still went every Sunday and some weekdays besides, because — he told you, more than once, in the tone he reserved for things he considered simple fact — a person owed God the courtesy of showing up.

Whatever capacity you had once had for faith, you had inherited from him, before you let it go the way you let most things go that required upkeep you didn't feel you had hours to spare for. He'd mentioned the new priest to you once, years back, over dinner: a Father Baelor, transferred in from another diocese, young yet by his account, and by all reports a fine homilist. You made a noise of polite interest and never once, in all the years your father had left, went to see for yourself.

Then your father died — quickly, in the way that manages to feel both sudden and, in hindsight, inevitable for months beforehand — and it was only you and your mother left in a house that had never before had to hold just two people's worth of grief and now had far too much room for it.

Your mother wept in the kitchen at strange hours over recipes she had made a thousand times before and now, apparently, understood she was making for one person fewer. You held her. You made the calls. You signed what needed signing and discovered you could go entire days without anyone asking how you, specifically, were managing — because it had not occurred to anyone, least of all to you, that you might need managing too. You had not known, until that year, that loneliness could exist inside a house that still held another person in it.

On a Wednesday in the flat middle of an otherwise unremarkable week, for reasons you could not have fully explained under interrogation, you put on real clothes instead of the ones you had been sleeping and grieving in, and walked to the parish you had not entered in the better part of a decade.

The building had not changed, which felt like its own small insult. The same water stain crossing the ceiling beam over the side aisle. The same brass rack of votive candles, most of them lit by hands you would never know, guttering low in their red glass cups. You dipped two fingers into the stone font at the door out of a muscle memory old enough to embarrass you — you hadn't decided to do it, your hand had simply done it — and the water was cold enough to register up to your wrist. You took a pew near the back, out of an instinct you didn't examine too closely, and sat with your hands loose in your lap, turning your father's old verdict over in your mind. A fine homilist. You supposed you would judge that for yourself, if you managed to stay through the whole of it.

You laced and unlaced your fingers, conscious of how conspicuous your own restlessness must have looked beside the handful of elderly women scattered through the front pews, each of them still in the settled way of people who had done this ten thousand times before and expected to do it ten thousand times again. A small bell sounded once from somewhere near the sacristy — a clean, single note, felt more in the sternum than heard — and the women rose as one, the movement automatic, requiring no more thought from them than breathing did. You stood a half-beat behind them and turned toward the side door as he came through it.

He was not what you had pictured, though you couldn't have said what you had pictured instead. He was tall enough to duck fractionally beneath the door frame, an old habit worn smooth by however many years of practice, and built with a breadth through the shoulders and chest that the green vestments of Ordinary Time did nothing to disguise, and seemed, if anything, cut to accommodate. He crossed to the centre of the sanctuary, made his reverence to the altar, and for a moment before the Mass properly began you simply looked at him the way you might look at any large, unfamiliar object set without warning into a room you thought you knew by heart.

This, you supposed, had to be the Father Baelor your father had mentioned all those years ago, at a dinner you otherwise barely remembered. He looked, on the strength of nothing more than how he carried himself at the altar, like precisely the sort of man your father would have approved of.

The opening rites passed you in fragments — the cross traced automatically over your own chest, the responses arriving on your tongue half a second before you'd consciously recalled them, evidence that some part of you had never actually released any of this, whatever you had spent the last decade telling yourself. It was the Gospel that undid whatever fragile composure you had managed to assemble since walking in.

Father Baelor stepped to the ambo, made the small triple sign of the cross — forehead, lips, heart — that you copied without deciding to, and read from the Gospel of John: Christ's promise to his disciples, the night before he died, that he would not abandon them. I will not leave you orphaned; I will come to you.

It was a passage your father had read aloud to you more than once, in years you would rather not audit too closely, on nights neither of you could sleep for reasons you never named to each other directly. You had not thought of those nights in years. You thought of nothing else for the length of the Gospel, sitting with your spine very straight and your face arranged into the specific blankness you had perfected these last months for use at funerals, hospital corridors, and now, it seemed, church pews.

The homily was not what the voice had led you to expect. You weren't sure what you had exactly expected, to be honest, but it certainly fell somewhere more instructive, maybe, closer to a lecture. Instead, he spoke low and unforced, pitched to carry to the back pews without ever seeming to labour at it, and what he spoke of was loneliness: not as a sin requiring confession or a weakness requiring correction, but as a country nearly everyone in the room had crossed at some point, a good number of them more than once.

He told the story of the prophet Elijah, fled into the wilderness and certain he was the last faithful man left alive, so worn through by his own isolation that he begged God to let him die under a solitary broom tree — and how God had answered him finally not in the earthquake, nor the fire, nor the great wind tearing the mountain apart, but in what the old translations called a still, small voice, so quiet the prophet had to go silent himself and strain to catch it.

Presence, Father Baelor said, was rarely loud. It came, more often than not, in the smallest and least dramatic of forms — a hand set on a shoulder, a voice through a doorway, someone choosing, again and again, simply to remain. You are not abandoned, he said, near the close, his voice dropping lower still, and for one unreasonable, indefensible moment it felt aimed directly at the back pew where you sat with your hands gone white-knuckled in your lap. You are not orphaned. Even when it feels that way. Even now.

You heard little of what followed. You were aware, distantly, of standing and sitting in their correct places, of the practiced choreography of the Eucharist proceeding at the front of the church, but your attention had narrowed to the low cadence of his voice and stayed there, snagged, useless for much else, for the remainder of the hour. You did not go up for Communion. It did not feel earned yet — whatever grace required of a person who had spent ten years deciding this building had nothing left to offer her, you weren't ready to test in front of witnesses whether you'd been wrong.

When Mass ended and the small congregation filtered out into the ordinary Wednesday afternoon waiting for them, you stayed behind. You told yourself it was to pray, though when you tried to assemble the actual shape of a prayer in your head, you found you had lost the grammar of it somewhere in the years between. You could recall the posture without the words, kneeling with your forehead nearly against your folded hands, the old formulas half-remembered and abandoned partway through.

You were still sitting there, in the hush a church holds once everyone else has gone, when you became aware of a presence behind you, waiting with the patience of someone who had nowhere else in particular to be.

You turned. He had shed the outer vestments somewhere between the sanctuary and here, down now to the plain black cassock, and without the ceremonial weight of the chasuble he looked, if anything, larger rather than smaller — less an office now and more simply a man, broad through the shoulders and faintly stooped in the way tall men sometimes learn to stand, in rooms built at a scale for other people. He was smiling at you, and it was not the composed, public smile he had worn at the altar. This one sat a little crooked, tucked at one corner, like something he had not entirely decided to let you see. In the low light through the side windows his eyes read as two different shades entirely, and you couldn't have said with any confidence which one was closer to true.

You got to your feet too fast, some old reflex about remaining seated in front of a priest reasserting itself before you thought to question it.

"I'm afraid I haven't seen you before today." He offered his hand, and you registered, absurdly, how much larger it looked before you'd even taken it. "Are you new to the parish?"

"Not new." His palm was warm and dry, the handshake brief but not perfunctory. "Estranged is probably closer to it. I used to come here with my father, when Father Arlan had the parish."

Something shifted across his face — recognition, maybe, or just the private realization of years passing. "That was quite a while ago, then. I've had this parish almost ten years now."

"I stopped coming altogether, somewhere in there." You gave him a lopsided smile you didn't entirely feel behind.

He tilted his head slightly, looking at you from his considerable height in a way that felt like being properly seen rather than assessed, and when he spoke again there was no trace of the judgment you had braced yourself for out of old habit.

"It's a wonderful thing, coming back to Him."

"I'm not sure I'd say I've come back. Not yet." The admission left you before you'd quite decided to make it. You hadn't planned on honesty with a stranger, least of all one in a collar.

If the words troubled him at all, he didn't show it. "That's no trouble whatsoever." The corner of his mouth deepened. "Would you like me to hear your confession? I promise I won't make you feel judged. Friendly priest's oath."

You laughed, a small, surprised sound you hadn't produced in longer than you could easily place. "Maybe another time. I don't think I'm up for it today."

He nodded, unbothered, and the quiet that followed felt like permission rather than dismissal, so you turned and started toward the door, your footsteps loud against the stone in the emptied church.

You were nearly at the threshold when you heard him behind you again, his stride longer than yours, closing the distance without seeming to hurry at all.

"I'm Father Baelor, by the way." He held out his hand a second time, as though the first exchange hadn't quite counted, or this one meant something slightly different. "Though most everyone here just calls me Baelor."

You took his hand again and gave him your name. His closed fully around yours — warm, a little rough at the knuckles, engulfing rather than simply holding.

"It's been a pleasure, having you back."

You managed something close to a smile before you turned and let yourself out into the ordinary daylight, the door falling shut behind you with a weight that, for the first time in longer than you could say, did not feel entirely like an ending.

You had told yourself you wouldn't come back so soon — one visit had been forgivable, permitted on the strength of grief alone, and you had meant to leave it there. And yet here you were again, five days later, on your knees at the same back pew, arguing with a God you'd spent the better part of a decade insisting you didn't especially believe in.

"I really don't know why I'm back here," you said, low, to the wooden cross above the altar, the words barely clearing a whisper.

You'd meant it as prayer when you'd knelt. What came out instead was closer to an indictment: anger at your father for dying, resentment at your mother for being so thoroughly undone by it that there'd been no room left over for you to be undone too, something smaller and uglier aimed at yourself, for how little of what you were meant to feel you actually managed to feel most days. And underneath all of it, aimed at the cross itself like it might actually answer back — fury at God, plain and entirely unmanaged, for allowing any of it to happen in the first place. You knew exactly how this looked from the outside: a grown woman muttering to an empty chancel. You wouldn't have blamed anyone for thinking you mad. Fuck, you thought yourself mad half the time.

"I don't even know why I'm trying to talk to you," you went on anyway, some perverse momentum carrying you now that you'd started. "You've only proved yourself real by fucking up my entire family." You let out something between a laugh and a scoff, some small vicious part of you almost proud of the defiance. Your father would have killed you for saying it aloud. Father Arlan would have lectured you into an early grave, out of sheer patient disappointment.

You were still smiling faintly at your own blasphemy when a low chuckle sounded from somewhere behind you, and it startled a small, undignified sound out of you — something between a gasp and a curse.

"You really shouldn’t say things like that." Father Baelor's voice reached you before he did, warm and unbothered, that same lulling register from the pulpit put to entirely domestic use. "I hear there's a priest about."

You twisted around on the kneeler to find him a few pews back, tall even sitting, dressed only in the black of the cassock rather than anything more ceremonial. You recovered enough to manage a lopsided smile of your own. "I think the old ladies who come every single day are the ones I should actually be afraid of."

"There's one in particular who's appointed herself unofficial sacristan." He came forward and lowered himself into the pew beside you, his knees drawn up higher than the pew in front of him had been built to accommodate. "I'd be careful there, if I were you."

"Are you mocking your own flock, Father Baelor?" You'd turned fully around by now, still on your knees, to look at him properly.

He laced his hands over the back of the pew ahead and looked toward the altar rather than at you. "Merely observing." A trace of mirth touched the words. "Purely so I know what to brace for, come Sunday confessions."

You studied his profile while his attention stayed elsewhere, something you allowed yourself only because he wasn't looking. He was, you decided with a clinical honesty you rarely extended to strangers, a good-looking man. The beard did something generous for his jaw, and the collar, stark white against the black, framed the whole arrangement in a way that felt almost unfair — engineered for maximum effect on a face that presumably hadn't needed the help to begin with. You found yourself wondering, in a thought you filed away immediately as unhelpful, whether he'd have been just as striking without either — beard gone, collar gone, nothing left to signal what he was and wasn't allowed to be to you.

"I believe I heard you telling Him off, a few minutes ago." He turned his head and caught you looking, though he didn't seem to register it as anything worth remarking on. "Would you like to talk about it?"

"What is it with priests and confession?" You shook your head, grateful for the change of subject. "You're all just gossips with better outfits."

He laughed low in his chest. "This needn't be a confession. Mondays run quiet, around here. We could simply talk, if you'd rather."

"Free information, and you won't even absolve me for it?" You aimed a teasing frown his way. "Now I really know you're a gossip."

His smile deepened enough to finally reach his eyes, and you were certain, seeing it properly this close, that they weren't quite the same colour, though you couldn't have said in what way exactly they differed. Maybe one bluer than the other. "It would do you good. I promise."

You considered that for a few seconds, weighing something you couldn't entirely name. "If I'm doing this," you said finally, "I think I'd rather do it properly. In the confessional, I mean."

He only nodded and rose, offering a hand down that you took before you'd quite decided to, and led you toward the confessional set into the side wall — dark wood, a heavy curtain standing in for a door.

The interior smelled of old varnish and years of incense worked into the grain, close and dim enough that the mesh screen resolved him into little more than a suggestion: a dark shape, the pale smudge of his collar, one hand loose at rest against his knee. You settled onto the narrow kneeler, your knees complaining faintly at the thinness of the cushion.

"I don't actually remember how this starts," you admitted into the dark, feeling foolish for it. "It's been a while."

"Then we'll do it simply." His voice came low through the screen, closer somehow than it had been out in the pew, stripped of whatever distance the space was meant to enforce. "You needn't recite anything. Just tell me what's sitting on you. That's the whole of it."

You gathered what you could of your thoughts, which had scattered the moment you knelt, and started with the easiest one, because you didn't trust yourself yet to start with anything harder.

You told him about the anger — at God first, for allowing any of it, and then at your father, for the particular unfairness of an ordinary Tuesday becoming the day everything else stopped making sense. You told him about your mother, and the resentment you were ashamed even to name, at how completely her grief had swallowed the whole house, leaving you to manage the funeral home and the paperwork and her, on top of whatever you were supposedly still allowed to feel yourself. You told him, last and quietest, about the funeral itself — how you had stood dry-eyed at the graveside while cousins who'd seen your father twice a year wept without restraint, how at the reception after you'd caught yourself counting the sandwiches left on a tray instead of thinking about him at all, and had hated yourself for it in almost the same breath you'd been grateful for the distraction.

He was quiet for a moment once you'd finished, long enough that you nearly asked if he was still there. When he spoke, something in his voice had changed — pulled tighter, quieter, though no less warm.

"None of that needs absolving." A pause, brief, before he went on. "Grief isn't a sin. Neither is anger, however much it frightens you to feel it. God can bear a great deal more fury than you're capable of giving Him, I promise you that." Another pause, and when he continued, the words seemed to be reaching somewhere past the space between you, as though he were, in some way you had no means yet of naming, telling himself the same thing. "Loneliness convinces you that you're the only one who's ever stood where you're standing. You're not. You won't be, either, if you let anyone stand there with you."

You closed your eyes without deciding to, letting the voice move through you unbroken by the sight of him, and found you could feel each word land somewhere just beneath your sternum, distinct as a hand pressed flat there.

When you had said what there was to say, he walked you through a short Act of Contrition, feeding you the words a line at a time since you had lost the shape of them years ago, and then his voice dropped into the older cadence of formula — mercy and reconciliation folded into a rhythm that didn't belong to him alone, ending the way it always ended, your sins spoken loose from you and a cross traced in the air with steady hands somewhere on the other side of the screen. You said Amen because you remembered, at least, that much.

You heard him rise and draw back the curtain on his side before you trusted your own legs enough to do the same. It took you a few extra seconds — you told yourself it was your knees, stiff from the kneeler, and mostly believed it — to gather up whatever had come loose in you, listening to that voice low and unbroken by any obstruction, aimed entirely and only at you in the dark. You were fairly sure that wasn't the reaction the sacrament was designed to produce. You filed it away regardless, somewhere you didn't intend to examine too closely, and finally pushed back your own curtain.

He was waiting near the confessional, hands loose at his sides, and the smile he gave you this time didn't climb all the way to his eyes the way it had out in the pew. You couldn't have said what the difference was, exactly — something in the set of it, something you didn't yet have the information to name.

"Do you feel better?" he asked.

"I feel different." You wrapped your arms around yourself, an old habit you hadn't consciously chosen.

"Different bad, or different good?" Something in the way he held himself shifted, almost imperceptibly, closer — as though some string you couldn't see had drawn taut between you.

"Just different." You breathed the word more than said it. "Which is better than nothing. It's a start."

You started toward the main doors, and he fell into step half a pace behind you, quiet in a way that didn't feel like absence so much as consideration. Near the threshold, you turned back to him.

"Thank you. For listening."

He shook his head, easy, deflecting the weight of it. "It's nothing. It's the job."

He hesitated, though — long enough that you noticed, long enough that whatever came next had clearly needed the extra half-second to arrive at. "You know these doors are open to you. Whenever you need them. Not only on Sundays or odd Mondays."

You looked up at him, at the mismatched eyes, and something in how he'd phrased it — whenever you need them, not whenever you need Him — struck you as slightly too warm for something owed to any parishioner off the street. Or maybe that was only your own starved and unreliable judgment, filling gaps that weren't there with whatever it currently wanted to find.

"I know," you said simply.

"Good." He nodded, more to himself than to you, it seemed, some private thought being settled. "Good. Sunday, then? I'll see you at Mass?"

You let a smile pull at one corner of your mouth as you turned on your heel toward the door, already walking backward into the beginning of an answer he wasn't going to get easily. "Don't push it, Father."

Hypocrite.

The word arrived most mornings before his feet had properly found the floor, uninvited and precise, phrased the same way it had been phrased for longer than he cared to count. 

Bloody hypocrite. How dare you counsel anyone toward righteousness when you cannot walk two steps down that road yourself? How dare you comfort a soul in despair when despair is the country you've been living in for years?

It was not so much a thought as a visitor who had long since stopped waiting to be let in. It simply arrived, sat on his chest, and stayed there until he had wrestled himself upright and into the black. He had come to think of it, with the only kind of humour he still had reliable access to, as his cross. Not poverty. Not chastity, not obedience, though God knew those extracted their own toll daily. Hypocrisy. A priest who no longer entirely believed the thing he had given his whole life to proclaiming.

He told himself, most days, that this was temporary, a crisis of faith, the kind nearly every priest he'd trained alongside admitted to somewhere in the confidence of a rectory kitchen, late, after the wine had loosened something. Faith was a theological virtue, after all. A gift, not an achievement. He'd had it once, freely given, and a gift once given could presumably be asked for again.

The problem, as Baelor saw it, was that he had been asking for four years.

His faith had gone dry as a wadi in August, and no amount of kneeling had managed to run water through it since. He kept the form of the thing scrupulously — the Office, the daily Mass, the rosary some nights when sleep wouldn't come and there was nothing else worth doing with his hands — because he had learned, early in seminary, that discipline outlasted feeling, that a man didn't stop rowing simply because he could no longer see the shore.

He had read enough John of the Cross in seminary to recognize the shape of what he was in — a dark night, technically, textbook enough that he could have lectured on it — which didn't make the nights any shorter, or any less dark. Recognizing the disease in a book had never once, in his experience, cured a man of it. He knew, with the specific and humiliating clarity of a man who had studied theology long enough to diagnose his own condition and still be unable to treat it, that there was a difference between fidelity and faith, and that he had been running almost entirely on the former.

Loneliness was the part he told no one, not even in his own confession, which he supposed was its own failure of the sacrament if nothing else.

It wasn't for lack of company. There were the parishioners — the same handful of devoted, elderly women who left casseroles at the rectory door like offerings and asked after his health with more attention than his own mother sometimes managed. There were the other priests, the ones he saw at diocesan meetings and ordination anniversaries, men who clapped his shoulder and asked how the parish was doing and never once, in fifteen years, asked how he was doing, because none of them had been trained to ask that question of each other and neither had he. There was his family — brothers, more nephews than he could always keep straight at a glance, a standing invitation to Sunday dinner he took up perhaps twice a month, sitting at the end of a table crowded with other men's children, uncle to all of them and father to none, which had once felt like a clean and holy kind of sacrifice and now, some nights, simply felt like a room he was allowed to visit but never quite live in.

None of it touched the actual thing. He was lonely. So fucking lonely, if he let himself reach for the one word he'd never once used from the pulpit, in the one register no parishioner would ever hear, in the privacy of his own skull, where apparently no vow of composure held any jurisdiction at all.

He knew, in the part of his mind that still functioned as a theologian even when the rest of him had stopped functioning as a believer, exactly what was supposed to go in that hollow he felt in his chest. It had gone there before. He could remember — not abstractly, but with the kind of sense-memory that ambushed him at inconvenient moments — what it had felt like in his first years ordained, kneeling before the tabernacle at two in the morning because he simply wanted to, not because the breviary demanded it, and feeling something answer him that was not merely his own voice bouncing back. He hadn't imagined that. He was nearly certain he hadn't imagined that. But it had been a long time since anything had answered, and he had run out of new ways to ask.

Which was, he suspected, why he had not been able to stop thinking about her.

She had come to him unannounced, not quite a fortnight ago now, and confessed in the dark, through the screen, in a voice trying very hard to sound steadier than it was, to a loneliness so exact in its shape that he had sat on his side of that screen and felt, for one disorienting moment, as though he were somehow listening to himself. Grief for a father. Resentment she was ashamed of. The exact exhaustion of being the person everyone assumed was managing, because she had gotten so good at performing it that no one thought to check. He knew that exhaustion. He had built a fifteen-year vocation on top of it.

He'd told her, because it was true and because it was his job to say true things in that room: loneliness convinces you that you're the only one who's ever stood where you're standing. You're not. You won't be, either, if you let anyone stand there with you.

He had believed it, saying it. He still believed it, as doctrine. And walking back to the rectory afterward, hands cold in his pockets, he had been visited by the obvious, unavoidable question, arriving with all the cruelty of a thought that shows up exactly when a man is feeling pleased with himself: had he ever once let anyone stand there with him?

He hadn't. He knew that the moment the question landed. Not his brothers, who would have tried, who had tried — one of them, Maekar, had cornered him once after a dinner, quiet, asking if he was alright, really alright, and Baelor had said yes, of course, only tired, and watched the offer close itself back up like a door he had chosen, deliberately, not to walk through. Not the other priests. Not even, if he was honest, God — not really, not with the thing that was actually wrong, because admitting the actual thing out loud, even to Him, even in the dark, even where it was supposedly safe to admit anything, felt like the one betrayal he wasn't sure he'd survive committing.

He recognized something else in her, too, underneath the grief. That same instinct to manage her own drowning quietly rather than let anyone watch her go under, the same reflex against being a burden. He knew that instinct from the inside. He'd built a career on it.

It frightened him a little, watching it in someone twenty years his junior, because he knew exactly where that road went if nothing interrupted it early enough. He wanted, with an urgency that surprised him in its intensity, to reach her before she arrived wherever he currently was. Before the loneliness calcified in her the way his had done.

He simply didn't know how to do it without frightening her off entirely, without becoming one more authority figure informing her what she needed, which was, he suspected, exactly the kind of attention she'd spent her whole adult life quietly avoiding.

He was still turning the problem over, unsolved, on the Sunday morning he stood in the sacristy working his arms into the alb, the young deacon's voice carrying faintly from the sanctuary as the boy tested the bell.

The vestments went on in their fixed order, the way they had for fifteen years — the alb first, white and formless, the cincture cinched at the waist, the stole crossed over his chest the way it was worn by priests rather than draped straight the way a deacon wore it, and finally the chasuble, green for the long ordinary stretch of the year.

He murmured the old vesting prayers as he went, mostly from habit rather than intention, half in the Latin an elderly priest had taught him as a seminarian, before he'd properly learned to shave. He caught his own reflection, briefly, in the sacristy's dark window as he settled the chasuble across his shoulders — a tall man, greying now at the temples, dressed for a role he had once wanted with his whole undivided self and now simply performed, competently, the way a man performs any task he has done long enough to stop feeling much of anything while doing it.

Get it together, he told himself, in the tone he might have used on a nephew who'd skinned a knee and was making more of it than the injury strictly warranted. It's an hour. You've done this ten thousand times before.

The bell sounded, thin and clear, and Baelor walked out into the nave doing the practical arithmetic he always did on the way to the altar; a rough count of heads translated automatically into a rough count of hosts, a habit worn so smooth by repetition it required almost no conscious thought at all.

Except that his eyes, running the width of the church, caught on the back pew and simply stopped there, sum completely abandoned.

She was there. Sitting exactly where she'd sat the last two times, in the pew closest to the door, as though she wanted a clean line of retreat available at all moments, as though some part of her still hadn't decided whether she was staying. She looked, from across the church, like she'd apologize for existing in the space if anyone asked her to.

Baelor thought, with a conviction that arrived whole and immediate and slightly too fierce for a passing observation, that she could not have been more wrong about that if she'd tried.

The midday light was coming through the east windows at the low, slanting angle it only managed for a few hours that time of the year, falling directly across the back pews in long panels of colour, and it happened to be resting on her the moment he looked — gold and red and a deep, churchy blue laid over her like something intentional, though he knew perfectly well it was only the accident of architecture and the hour.

He thought, with the part of his brain that had apparently decided today was the day to stop cooperating with the rest of him, that he had never, in all his years at this altar, seen anything as purely, uselessly beautiful as her sitting alone in stained-glass light when she had no idea anyone was looking at her, and no idea, either, how much sorrow she carried visibly enough that a stranger could read it from forty feet away.

He lost, he would later admit to no one, a genuine portion of his own homily to the fact of her. He knew the passage well enough to preach it on autopilot — he'd written the thing himself three days earlier, in a version of himself that had apparently not accounted for this — but somewhere in the second point he caught himself having skipped an entire line of his own argument, recovered only by long practice and the mercy of a congregation too polite to notice a priest losing his thread. He watched her instead, in the gaps his voice could apparently manage without him. Watched her bite the inside of her cheek when something he said caught on some private snag of hers. Watched her brow pull together, briefly, at a line about mercy, as though mercy were a concept she was still deciding whether to trust.

Time did the thing it did during Mass, folding oddly, and he surfaced properly only at the Communion, distributing the host down the line with the automatic grace of long practice, until he registered, with a small, precise jolt, that she had risen from the back pew and joined the queue.

She had not, he remembered clearly, gone up the first time she'd come. He had noticed that too, at the time, and filed it away as simply information: she wasn't ready, and a priest who pushed a person toward the altar before they were ready did more harm than the waiting ever could. That she was standing now, moving forward a few careful people at a time, felt disproportionately significant for something so small — a woman joining a line — and he was aware, distantly, of being moved by it in a way that had very little to do with sacramental theology and a great deal to do with simply being glad, in some entirely personal register, that whatever had been keeping her back had loosened its grip a little.

She reached him a few communicants later, and knelt.

He hadn't expected the kneeling. Most of the parish took the host standing these days, the old rail rarely used except by the handful who'd never adjusted to the newer practice, but she went down onto the worn kneeler like it was a thing she'd done a thousand times before she'd ever stopped, muscle memory outrunning whatever else she might have decided about the morning, and he found himself praying, hard and specific and entirely impious in its motivation, that his hands would hold steady.

They did not, quite. Not enough that he thought anyone else would have caught it — fifteen years gave a man excellent control over the visible parts of himself — but he felt the small tremor in his own fingers as he lifted the host, and knew precisely why it was there, and hated himself for it with an efficiency that would have been almost funny had it not been happening to him specifically, in front of her, at the altar, during the single most sacred moment the day contained.

"The body of Christ," he said, and his voice, at least, held.

She opened for it the way most of the older parishioners still did, tongue offered rather than hands, and he registered the fact of it with a clarity he immediately, furiously, wished he hadn't. The pink, slight wetness of it, the plain vulnerability of the gesture, a woman kneeling in front of him with her mouth open and her eyes lifted to his through her lashes, trusting him with something that had nothing at all to do with what his body had apparently decided to make of the moment.

"Amen," she said, quiet, and he set the host down against her tongue, and for perhaps a quarter of a second, no more, the pad of his thumb grazed the wet warmth of it.

He felt the reaction low and immediate and entirely outside his own permission — his cock twitching hard against the front of the alb, an animal response to a moment he had spent his entire adult life training himself out of having at all, arriving anyway, uninvited, in the one setting on earth where it had absolutely no right to.

She rose. Crossed herself. Returned to her pew without a backward glance, entirely unaware, he was fairly sure, of anything beyond having received Communion for the first time in over a decade, which should have been the thing occupying the whole of his attention, and which he found he could not currently locate among the noise of his own reaction.

He had, God help him, an entire line of communicants still waiting.

He served the next in line, an elderly man who had been kneeling at that rail longer than Baelor had been standing behind it, with the effortful concentration of someone performing a familiar task while a separate part of his mind stood off to one side, arms crossed, informing him in no uncertain terms exactly what he was.

Hypocrite, the voice supplied, obligingly, and for once he couldn't argue with it.

He had spent the walk back to the rectory that first week convinced the problem in front of him was pastoral: a lonely, grieving young woman who needed someone steady to reach for, and a priest well-placed, by training if nothing else, to be that steady thing. He understood now, standing at his own altar with his body still humming with something it had no business feeling anywhere, let alone here, that he had gotten the shape of the danger badly, embarrassingly wrong.

The problem was never going to be knowing how to help her.

The problem was going to be whether he could stand this close to her at all without eventually wanting something from her that had nothing to do with helping, and everything to do with the plain, damning sin he had promised, fifteen years ago, in front of a bishop and his own weeping mother, that he would never again allow himself to want.

Something close to a week had passed since the confessional, and you had, despite every intention to the contrary, kept coming back. You told yourself it was for different reasons each time — the quiet, mostly, a kind of nothing that a weekday Mass demanded of you, ten minutes where nobody needed managing and your mother's grief could exist without an audience for once. In all four of those weeks, you had not planned to receive Communion. The plan, such as it existed, was to sit in the pew and let the ritual move around you, spectator rather than participant, the way you'd done as a child through the parts of Mass you were still too young to properly understand.

This Sunday was different, though you couldn't have said exactly when the decision got made. Somewhere between the Gospel and the final blessing, some quiet negotiation appeared to have concluded itself without consulting you, and by the time Father Baelor descended from the presbytery, distributing the host himself, your body had already decided the matter on your behalf.

You didn't remember deciding to stand. One moment you were sitting with your hands folded loosely in your lap, and the next your feet had committed you to the aisle, already three steps into the queue before the rest of you had caught up to ask what, precisely, it thought it was doing.

You told yourself the nerves climbing your spine were simply the ordinary nerves of the thing itself — ten years since you'd last done this, and your body apparently hadn't forgotten how much weight the act was meant to carry, even if the rest of you had spent a decade pretending otherwise. That explanation held for approximately four pews. By the fifth you were close enough to watch him working down the line, steady, unbothered, that same soft cadence repeating itself to each person in turn, and the nerves sharpened into something with a considerably more specific target.

You watched the woman two ahead of you receive the host into her open palm, easy, practiced, already turning away before she'd finished her Amen. That was how you'd meant to do it too — you'd decided as much, sitting in the pew, some sensible, unbothered part of you resolving to take the host in hand like a normal person having a normal religious experience.

The line moved with the same unbroken rhythm every queue like it seemed to share, and ahead of you his words repeated themselves at even intervals — the body of Christ, the body of Christ — until they nearly lost their shape entirely and became simply sound, a current pulling you forward rather than a sentence you were choosing to walk toward. And then it was your turn, and you were on your knees on the worn kneeler before you'd consciously authorized the movement, spine bent, chin lifted, and your tongue, God, your tongue was already out, waiting, and you were looking up at him through your lashes in a way that had nothing to do with piety and everything to do with something you didn't have a clean word for yet.

You had spent a great deal of your adolescence being taught, carefully and thoroughly, the difference between reverence and its imitations. You could probably still recite, if pressed, the specific ways a person's posture and intention were meant to align during the sacraments, the whole careful presence of a well-formed conscience. Nobody had prepared you for how completely that presence could collapse the moment desire decided to borrow its vocabulary. Kneeling had always meant one thing. It appeared to now mean several things simultaneously, and you had no reliable way of establishing which one currently governed your body.

You wondered, distantly, mortified, whether any of it read on your face the way it felt from the inside. Whether a man could look down at a woman kneeling in front of him with her mouth open and simply know.

"The body of Christ." His voice reached you barely above its usual register, quieter than you'd heard him use even in the confessional, and you had exactly long enough to wonder whether that meant anything before you ran out of time to wonder it.

You could have sworn — though you dismissed it in the same half-second you thought it, because surely you were simply looking for things now, seeing significance in whatever your own hunger handed you — that something moved behind his eyes as he looked down at you. Some fraction of dilation, dark spreading further than the low church light could account for. You told yourself you'd imagined it. A composed man, too many years a priest, did not come undone over a woman kneeling at an altar rail. You were, you reminded yourself, spectacularly good at inventing evidence for whatever you already wanted to be true.

"Amen," you managed, in a register you didn't entirely recognize as your own, and took the host onto your tongue. It tasted the way it always had — of nothing, faintly of paper, a blankness you'd forgotten could hold so much weight — and you drew the wet weight of it back into your mouth, uncomfortably aware, for the first time in your entire pious childhood, of every part of a gesture you had never once thought to be self-conscious about.

You crossed yourself, rose, and turned back toward your pew on legs you were no longer entirely confident belonged to you. By the time you reached it you had abandoned any pretence of composure and simply knelt again, forehead dropping toward your folded hands in a posture any observer would have read as devotion, and which was, if you were honest with yourself, mostly a structural decision. You did not trust your knees with your weight. Kneeling, at least, put the failure somewhere expected.

For however long remained of the Mass — ten minutes, perhaps, though it passed with the strange, syrupy slowness of time that refuses to behave when you most need it to — you were aware of a pair of mismatched eyes finding you, again and again, across the width of the nave.

You did not look back. You told yourself it was decorum. The truer answer was that you did not trust yourself either to survive whatever expression you found waiting for you there, and some cowardly, self-protective part of you had already decided, without evidence, what that expression would be. Disappointment, probably. A priest, watching a woman make a spectacle of an ancient, most-sacred rite because some starved, undisciplined part of her had wanted an excuse to kneel in front of him. You could not have named a single thing Baelor had actually done to earn that verdict. You handed it to him anyway, because it was easier to believe yourself pathetic than to consider the alternative: that he had looked, and kept looking, for reasons that had nothing to do with judgment at all.

It was, you supposed, a very on-brand mistake for you specifically to make: assuming the worst interpretation of yourself before anyone else had the chance to offer one, a habit you'd perfected over exactly the kind of year you'd just had.

When Mass finally released you, you gathered your things and made for the doors, only to find your escape blocked by the usual congregation of elderly women, several of whom had apparently decided the threshold was an ideal location for a leisurely post-Mass conference. Blasted old mules, you thought, uncharitably, easing your way through the knot of cardigans and hairspray with what you hoped read as patience rather than the quiet panic actually driving you.

The churchyard held its usual after-Mass scattering, knots of parishioners trading the same three pleasantries they traded every week, a couple of children weaving between legs, the sharp, cold smell of stone and cut grass that November insisted on despite the season otherwise doing its best to die.

You had almost recovered something like your normal footing when you spotted him, already outside, a few yards off, saying his farewells to a cluster of departing parishioners. You watched him for a moment before he saw you. Safe, for once, in the anonymity of simply being one more parishioner in a scattering crowd. He had a hand braced warm on some old man's shoulder, head inclined to catch whatever the man was telling him, nodding along at exactly the right intervals with the practiced attentiveness of someone who had spent years convincing an entire parish that each of them, individually, had his whole and undivided attention.

It was, you thought, uncomfortably close to the same trick you performed for your mother most days: competent kindness worn like a coat, covering whatever was actually happening underneath it. You wondered, watching him, whether he ever got tired of wearing his.

He must have slipped out through the sacristy door while you were fighting your way past the old guard. You prayed, with a fervency that would have embarrassed you an hour ago, that he hadn't clocked you yet, that you might simply slide past unseen and process the entire morning in the privacy of your own head, where it belonged.

God, apparently, was not in a forgiving mood.

"Wait—" His voice found you before you'd made it three steps past him.

This must be penance, you thought, aiming the complaint at God directly, for telling You off the other week. You turned anyway, because ignoring a priest calling your name across a churchyard felt like a significantly worse option than facing him.

He was still in the green chasuble, and you decided, with the kind of petty, deflecting focus you reached for whenever you needed somewhere safer to put your attention, that green wasn't his colour. Black suited him better — sharper, somehow, unfairly so, as though the absence of colour did something the vestments simply couldn't.

The two of you had drifted, without either of you seeming to choose it, a little apart from the general flow of departing parishioners, into a pocket of relative quiet near the low stone wall bordering the churchyard.

"You received Communion." He was smiling as he said it, easy, a little pleased, as though the fact of it were a small gift someone had handed him unexpectedly.

You nodded once, feeling suddenly, absurdly, like a student called on for an answer she wasn't sure was correct. "I thought it seemed appropriate. Sorry if I — I don't know, did something wrong."

His smile only deepened at that, wide enough to show teeth that weren't quite perfect. One canine set very slightly forward of the other, both slightly longer than the average, a small imperfection that somehow sharpened the effect rather than softening it. You found yourself thinking, with a specificity that alarmed you, exactly what those particular teeth would feel like against skin, and then you thought about the fact that you'd thought that, and wanted, briefly and sincerely, to walk directly into oncoming traffic.

This was, you reflected grimly, an extraordinarily inconvenient time to discover a specific interest in a man's teeth. You filed the discovery away next to the growing pile of other discoveries you'd made about yourself these last four weeks; a pile you were doing an increasingly poor job of pretending not to notice.

"You did nothing wrong." His voice gentled further, if that was even possible. "In fact, I'm rather proud of you."

Proud of you.

You blinked at him and felt the words land somewhere considerably lower than your chest, spreading out into a warmth that had nothing whatsoever to do with the Holy Spirit. You were, in that moment, sincerely and profoundly grateful for whatever biological quirk kept the more obvious evidence of arousal confined to men, because you would otherwise have been standing in a churchyard in a state no amount of decorum could have disguised.

You noted, somewhere beneath the more immediate crisis, that it wasn't only your body responding to the words. Nobody had told you they were proud of you in longer than you wanted to calculate. Your father had said it constantly, casually, about report cards and parallel parking and nothing in particular, and you hadn't realized, until a priest said it in a mostly unrelated context outside a church, exactly how much you'd been missing hearing it from anyone at all.

You must have taken too long to respond, because something crossed his face, a flicker of doubt, quickly papered over. "Sorry. That came out a bit strange, didn't it." He laughed, short, and for a moment looked almost boyish about it, which did nothing at all to help your current situation.

You laughed too, mostly to have somewhere to put the air currently trapped in your chest, and mostly to keep from examining the warm, insistent ache that had settled low in you and did not seem inclined to leave anytime soon. "Don't worry about it," you said, and then, because the silence that followed felt like it needed something in it, "it was nice seeing you."

"Nice indeed." He said it slowly, turning the phrase over like he was testing its weight, and you had the distinct, mortifying sense that you'd just stumbled into the kind of conversation you'd have mocked mercilessly in anyone else: two people standing a foot apart in a churchyard, trading pleasantries like teenagers who'd forgotten how words worked.

You were already half-turned to go when he spoke again. "We'll be getting the church ready for Christmas soon — decorations, the nativity, that sort of thing. We could always use another set of hands, if you were interested."

You hadn't expected that. Some vague, formless plan on your part had involved politely declining further entanglement with this parish beyond whatever your body had apparently already committed you to this morning, and here he was, casually assuming a future in which you'd be back, repeatedly, with a staple gun and a box of ornaments.

"Sure." You turned fully back to him, caught slightly off guard. "I mean — yes. I'll see what I can do."

He looked, for just a moment, more hopeful about that than the offer strictly warranted, though he recovered fast enough that you might have imagined it too, the way you'd apparently decided to imagine everything else about him today.

He looked as though he meant to say something further, but an elderly woman intercepted him first — the sacristan-adjacent one, you suspected, from the sheer righteousness of her posture — and launched into what appeared to be less a conversation than a fully prepared monologue on the subject of the Advent wreath.

Baelor towered over her, patient, nodding along to whatever she was saying while his eyes found yours over the top of her head, faintly, helplessly amused.

You mouthed good luck at him and turned to leave, and caught, in the last half-second before you did, the flash of one more toothy, uneven, entirely unpriestly grin aimed directly at you.

You walked home with absolutely no memory of the walk itself.

It was only much later, sitting at your own kitchen table with a cup of tea gone cold in front of you, that you let yourself think properly about any of it. The kneeling, the eyes, every feeling that came onto you without your permission.

You thought about the fact that you'd gone looking, four weeks ago, for the specific comfort of being comprehended without judgment, the thing you remembered feeling as a child and had wanted back badly enough to sit through your own grief to get it.

You had not, at any point in that search, accounted for the possibility that the comprehension might arrive wearing a Roman collar, or that wanting it might eventually stop feeling like faith and start feeling like something considerably harder to confess.

You thought, too, about the Christmas decorations, about staple guns and small nativity figures and days of proximity you had apparently just volunteered yourself into, without any of the caution the last hour should reasonably have taught you. You told yourself you'd think more carefully about that later. But you did not, in fact, do it.

You simply marked the date in the calendar on your phone, and found, when you looked at it sitting there among your mother's doctor's appointments and your own overdue dentist visit, that some small, traitorous part of you was already looking forward to it.

Christmas had a way of crawling under your skin, the way old songs do. You could go months without thinking of it at all, and then a single carol drifting out of a shop doorway would drop you straight back into a kitchen you hadn't properly stood in for over a decade. You remembered good Christmases, the kind that still arrived intact in memory without needing much reconstruction: the house loud with cousins, someone's dog underfoot, your grandmother's insistence on a specific brand of nougat nobody but her actually liked, the whole extended chaos of a family that hadn't yet learned how to lose people. Those years had been good in the uncomplicated way only childhood afforded. You hadn't yet understood that a table could shrink, that the chairs pulled out each year could simply, one by one, stop being needed.

You thought, unbidden, of the last Christmas Eve you'd spent with your father whole and healthy and utterly unaware of what the coming year held for him — the two of you assembling a jigsaw puzzle at the kitchen table past midnight because neither of you could sleep and neither of you wanted to admit it, some ridiculous thousand-piece rendering of a lighthouse he'd bought on a whim and insisted on finishing before morning, as though the deadline mattered to anyone but him. You'd found the last piece around two, and he'd made you both cocoa to celebrate, badly, too much sugar and not nearly enough milk, and you had not known, sitting there in your pyjamas laughing at his terrible cocoa, that you were spending the last ordinary, uncomplicated Christmas you'd ever get with him.

You would have paid considerably more attention, you liked to tell yourself, if you'd known. You weren't entirely sure that was true. You suspected you'd have taken it for granted regardless, the way you seemed to have been built to take most good things for granted right up until they were gone.

They had started thinning sometime in your teens, the guest list first, then the feeling itself, until Christmas became something you observed rather than inhabited — a season that happened around you while some quieter, more adult part of you took inventory of who was missing. You supposed that was simply what growing up did to a holiday built entirely on presence. This year the table would seat two, and one chair would stay pushed in on principle rather than practicality, because neither you nor your mother had yet found the courage to actually put it away.

Which was perhaps part of why you found yourself, on a Tuesday evening in the beginning of December, standing on a folding chair in the nave of a church that wasn't strictly yours, marvelling at the old women who'd spent the better part of the afternoon transforming the place into something out of a Christmas card. They'd draped garland along every available surface with a fervent, uncomplicated joy you found yourself envying more than you were entirely comfortable admitting.

You glanced toward the altar, toward the plain wooden cross presiding over all of it. You could spare me a little of whatever they've got, you thought, directing the request at Him with the blend of irony and genuine hope you'd become fluent in these past almost-two months. He didn't answer, which by now you'd come to expect. Silence, you'd decided, was simply His preferred register of correspondence with you.

You supposed you owed whatever had brought you back to this parish in October a debt you hadn't properly paid yet. Somewhere in the weeks since, without your quite noticing the transition, the building had become something closer to a bunker than a place of worship; somewhere you could exist without the performance the rest of your life currently demanded of you. You didn't have to be the strong one here. Not because you necessarily were the strong one everywhere else, but because here, specifically, nobody was paying close enough attention to require it of you.

The old women, you were fairly certain, didn't particularly care for you. You'd become something of a fixture over the autumn — reliably present, reliably unwilling to stay for the rosary, reliably uninterested in the small, warm currency of parish gossip they traded so easily among themselves — and you supposed that reticence read, correctly, as a kind of standoffishness.

You couldn't entirely blame them for the verdict. In the interest of honesty, which spoke poorly of whatever devout young woman a stranger might have glimpsed in you at first glance, you found you didn't much care for them either. It wasn't unkindness, exactly. You simply had nothing left over, most days, for the effort community required, and the women had sensed that absence the way people always seemed to sense exactly the thing you were trying hardest not to show.

You'd lost track of the hour somewhere in the effort of getting the wreath symmetrical — a task that had absorbed you far more completely than its actual importance warranted, the satisfying tyranny of a problem with a correct answer, unlike most of what currently occupied your days.

By the time you next surfaced enough to notice your surroundings, full dark had settled outside the tall windows, and the women who'd spent the afternoon polishing candlesticks and dusting the reredos had long since collected their coats and gone home to their own, presumably fuller houses. There was one stubborn corner of the wreath that refused to sit flush against the beam, and you stapled it into submission with more force than the task strictly required.

"You know, every single one of those will need to come out again come January." The familiar, lulling voice found you from somewhere near the floor.

You looked down from your perch — you'd had to stand on the chair to reach the beam over the door — and found him below you, his face arriving at roughly the level of your waist even accounting for the height the chair gave you. Why was he so fucking tall, you thought, not for the first time since October.

"I'm sure you'll find some other charitable soul to deal with it," you said, aiming for breezy and mostly landing there.

He laughed, low, and the sound did something to the base of your spine you'd rather not have examined closely.

You fixed the last staple and pivoted on the chair to face him properly. "Besides," you added, smirking, "I think some of these staples are older than I am."

His own smirk answered yours, quick and easy. Over the weeks you'd known him, you had arrived at the settled, private conclusion that Baelor was, against every expectation you'd walked in with that first Wednesday, a genuinely good priest to know.

Nothing like Father Arlan's gentle, uncomplicated warmth. Baelor's register was drier, more grounded, quick, despite it, to turn a homily's more solemn point into something almost funny, or at least as funny as a man in his position could reasonably manage without causing a diocesan incident. He'd once, memorably, described a visiting bishop's homily as spiritually correct but tragically overlong, pitched just quietly enough for only you to catch during the coffee hour afterward, and you'd had to disguise your laugh as a coughing fit for the better part of a minute.

But there was something else, too, something you'd started cataloguing without quite meaning to.

You'd caught it first during a November homily on the Prodigal Son, of all things. A pause where his voice simply stopped, a beat too long even for effect, his gaze gone somewhere past the back pews entirely before he recovered himself and finished the line. You remembered, too, a Tuesday afternoon that same month when you'd found him alone in the sacristy long after any practical reason for him to still be there, hands loosely folded, eyes fixed on nothing in particular, so thoroughly somewhere else that he hadn't heard you knock. It had taken him a full three seconds to resurface enough to greet you; three seconds in which his face had held an expression so nakedly exhausted you'd nearly turned around and left rather than intrude on it. By the time he'd properly noticed you, the mask was back in place, warm and unbothered, and you'd both pretended, with the same silent, mutual courtesy, that you hadn't seen anything at all.

There was a darkness sitting behind those mismatched eyes that had nothing to do with the warm, careful light he'd clearly spent years learning to project for public consumption. Something you recognized, with an unsettling flash of kinship, because you'd been living behind a similar performance yourself for the better part of a year. Even now, watching him smile at your staple joke, you could see it there underneath, patient and entirely unmoved by whatever surface amusement was currently crossing his face.

You had, on more than one uncharitable evening alone in your room, caught yourself wanting to reach up and kiss that darkness straight off him; an urge that arrived, inconveniently, with startling specificity, and that you suppressed each time by picturing, with deliberate cruelty toward yourself, the exact white of his collar glowing that much brighter in your mind's eye. A small and effective penance you'd invented all on your own.

"Here." You held the staple gun out to him, resigned. "Take this and help me down."

He reached for it with a half-smile still playing at his mouth, but instead of taking your hand, he simply set the staple gun down on the nearest pew and stayed exactly where he was, making no move whatsoever toward a helping distance.

"You got yourself up there," he said. "I'm reasonably confident you can manage the trip back down unassisted."

"And you can manage the very interesting phone call to the coroner," you shot back, "when I crack my skull open on these charming marble floors."

He shook his head, something between exasperation and fond disbelief crossing his face, but he came to help you regardless.

You'd expected a hand; his palm extended for you to brace against as you stepped down, the same practical courtesy any decent person would offer someone perched too high on unstable furniture. What he did instead rewired something in your chest before you'd fully registered it was happening. His hands came to your waist, both of them, spanning nearly the whole width of you with room to spare, and closed there with an easy, certain strength that lifted rather than merely assisted.

You came down off the chair already caught. His hands didn't release you once your feet found the floor, they stayed exactly where they'd landed, warm even through the fabric of your sweater, and the momentum of the drop left you standing closer to him than either of you had ever managed before, the backs of your knees still grazing the chair's edge, your front nearly flush against the solid wall of him. You had to tip your head back to find his face at all, the angle sudden and unfamiliar even after two months of knowing exactly how tall he was in the abstract.

And when you found it, his expression wasn't one you had a name filed away for. Not the easy mirth from a minute ago. Not the quiet darkness you'd just spent an entire private paragraph of your own thoughts cataloguing. Not even the careful, generic kindness he handed out to every stranger who walked through the doors. This was something else, something focused entirely on you with an intensity that made you feel, absurdly, like the only thing left standing in the building.

The church itself had gone very quiet around you both — no children running, no old women's chatter, nothing but the two of you and the faint, resinous smell of fresh pine garland strung along every surface that afternoon, incongruously festive against whatever was actually unfolding here.

"We wouldn't want to have to explain to our self-appointed sacristan why she'd need to clean blood off her floors, would we?"

His voice, when it finally arrived, had dropped somewhere you hadn't heard it go before. Low, rough at the edges, scraped clean of the careful, cultivated softness he used from the pulpit and in the confessional alike. Fuck, you thought, with the kind of clarity reserved for genuine emergencies, and had to physically bite the inside of your cheek to keep something considerably less dignified than a word from escaping you.

Your brain, which had apparently decided this was the correct moment to abandon you entirely, produced a single unhelpful thought at top volume: that whatever you were currently feeling qualified, by any reasonable Catholic accounting, as a sin already fully committed, whether or not your body ever got around to acting on it. His hands were still at your waist. He had not moved them, and you found you had absolutely no intention of pointing that out to him.

"I can only imagine the headlines," you managed, aiming for something like your usual register and landing somewhere considerably shakier. "Beloved cool local priest murders parishioner over minor stapling dispute."

He laughed at that — a low, private sound you felt as much as heard, given how little distance currently separated the two of you — and in the same motion your own hands found his wrists, not to push him away, you noted with some private alarm, but simply to have somewhere to put your hands that wasn't the fabric of the cassock that covered his chest.

"Finally," he said, something almost boyish slipping into his voice despite its lower register, "you admit I'm a cool priest."

"Never said the opposite," you managed, and were fairly certain your heartbeat had become audible at this point, some frantic percussion filling your own ears loudly enough that you half expected him to hear it too, if he simply stopped talking long enough to listen for it.

He didn't stop talking. He also didn't step back.

What you noticed, in the strange, suspended quiet that followed, wasn't the words at all: it was the small, controlled way the distance between your faces kept shrinking, inch by inch, so gradual you might have missed it entirely if every nerve in your body hadn't been standing at full and humiliating attention.

His eyes had dropped, briefly, to somewhere south of your own eyes, and you felt the weight of that gaze land on your mouth like a physical touch you hadn't known a look alone could carry. You didn't move away. You were fairly sure, standing there with his hands still warm at your waist and the whole of him leaning steadily closer, that moving away had stopped being something your body currently had access to as an option.

Then thunder cracked somewhere close enough to rattle the stained glass in its leading, and the spell broke apart all at once.

Baelor recoiled like he'd been struck, stumbling half a step backward and nearly catching his heel against the kneeler of the pew at his back. His hands left your waist so abruptly the absence of them registered as its own small shock, cold rushing in where his palms had been. He put several feet of distance between you with the swift, overcorrected urgency of a man putting out a fire he'd only just noticed was burning him, and you stood exactly where he'd left you, rooted to the same patch of marble floor, arms hanging uselessly at your sides because you couldn't immediately think what else to do with them.

He turned toward the nearest window, ostensibly checking the weather, though you suspected the actual view held considerably less of his attention than whatever was currently happening behind his own eyes. You watched his shoulders rise and fall once, twice, some private negotiation being conducted entirely without your input.

"I should be going," you said, into the silence neither of you seemed inclined to fill, wrapping your arms around yourself in a gesture you recognized, distantly, as purely defensive, though you couldn't have said exactly what you thought you were defending against at this point.

He looked back at you then, and you caught the specific effort it took him to swallow whatever he'd been about to say instead of the thing he actually said, which was, "Right." A short, laboured breath followed the word, like it had cost him something to produce. "Have you got an umbrella?"

You nodded, not trusting your voice with anything more elaborate, and busied yourself gathering your coat and bag from the pew where you'd left them, grateful for the excuse to look at literally anything besides him.

"I'll come back tomorrow," you said, to the buttons of your coat rather than to his face, "to finish whatever's left."

He said nothing to that. When you finally made yourself look up, he was watching you with an expression you didn't have the emotional bandwidth left to interpret, and you decided, with the last reserves of self-preservation currently available to you, that you didn't especially want to try.

"Good night, Baelor."

You hadn't called him that before — not to his face, not without the Father in front of it — and you felt the shape of his name leave your mouth like something you'd been keeping in a drawer you'd forgotten you owned. You didn't wait to see what it did to his expression. You turned and walked to the doors, footsteps too loud against the marble in the church's electric hush, and did not look back once — not through the doors, not into the wet dark of the churchyard, not all the way to your bicycle.

You weren't sure, if you had, that you would have found the will left in you to actually leave.

What exactly are you doing?

Baelor asked himself the question kneeling at the side of his bed, in the small, plain bedroom of the parish quarters that had been the whole of his home for ten years now. Narrow bed, a crucifix above the headboard he'd hung there himself his first week, a desk crowded with breviaries he increasingly opened out of habit rather than hunger.

Are you out of your mind entirely?

For the first time in longer than he wanted to calculate, he knelt not performing the posture but actually reaching for what it was meant to produce — comfort, or something adjacent to it, anything at all that might quiet the chaos currently occupying his skull.

"Our Father, who art in Heaven—"

His voice wavered on the fourth word and gave out entirely somewhere in the fifth.

"Our Father—"

Her laugh arrived instead. Not summoned, simply there, whole and uninvited. The exact pitch of it from an hour ago when she'd made the joke about the coroner, and behind the laugh, inevitably, her face: chin tipped back to find his, mouth still curved with the last of the humour, eyes doing something he hadn't yet found a word brave enough to use.

He lowered his head further, forehead nearly meeting his own clasped hands. He had heard that laugh perhaps a hundred times over these past two months. He could not account for why it should return to him now, tonight, with such insistence, refusing to be filed away with the evening's other ordinary noise.

He knew the shape of temptation well enough by now to recognize its usual visitors. Fifteen years he'd been fighting it in one form or another, and for most of that decade and a half it had arrived the way temptation was supposed to — faceless, fleeting, a passing current easily broken by discipline and the plain stubbornness of prayer. This was different. This had roots. And prayer, tonight, was not coming to him with anything like its old ease.

When, he wondered, had those roots first taken hold? He turned the question over the way a man probes a bruise to test how deep it goes, expecting each interaction between them to yield the same comfortable diagnosis he'd been offering himself for weeks: compassion, simply. A priest's ordinary, sanctioned care for a grieving soul.

How readily the heart baptized its own sins, dressing them in vestments respectable enough to walk past its own conscience unchallenged.

He knew, kneeling there with the evidence assembling itself against him one memory at a time, that this had never been only compassion. Compassion had not made him remember, with the specific clarity of a man cataloguing evidence, the warmth of her palm the very first time they'd shaken hands beneath the vestibule light, both of them strangers still. Compassion had not made him look at her, weeks later, sitting alone in stained-glass light, and think she resembled something closer to a miracle than to a parishioner. Compassion, God knew, had nothing whatsoever to do with the way his own cock had throbbed, mortifyingly, at the memory of her kneeling before him at the altar rail, tongue offered, so entirely disposed toward receiving him — not the capital-H Him she'd knelt for, but him.

No. This was not compassion. This was desire.

Baelor wanted her.

The realization did not arrive first as language. It existed, before he dared give it words, as a certainty his soul appeared to have recognized considerably ahead of his conscious mind's permission. When he finally did put language to it — silently, without moving his lips, though it felt no less spoken for the silence — the shape of the thought landed like blasphemy against his own teeth.

I want her.

Not merely the light she brought into a parish that had grown grey and administrative around him. Not merely the sharp, unpredictable wit she threw at him like a dare. Every part of her. Even, and especially that, the darkness she carried behind her own carefully practiced eyes, the same darkness he had recognized, the very first time he'd glimpsed it, as an exact echo of his own.

He wanted her wholly. Wanted, with a specificity that frightened him, to imagine some entirely different future, one in which she crossed a room not toward the confessional but toward him. Wanted to wonder, with a tenderness that felt more dangerous than any simple hunger could have, what it might be to hear her say his name in some context that had nothing whatsoever to do with prayer. And, God help him, wanted to hear her moan it.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

"No." The word left him barely above a whisper.

But no to what, exactly? To himself? To God, wherever He currently was? To the relentless, unwelcome honesty currently dismantling him from the inside out? To the hardening evidence, even now, of exactly how little his own body cared for the word he'd just spoken?

His vows had once felt like architecture: stone, load-bearing, built up patiently over years until they no longer required conscious thought to remain standing, because conviction itself had become the mortar holding every course of them in place. Tonight they felt like glass instead. Transparent enough that he could see straight through to an entire unlived life on the other side of them. Fragile enough that he feared one careless touch of longing might be all it took to shatter the whole structure at once.

He searched, kneeling there, for disgust. Certain, if only he could locate it, that it would be enough to save him. He tried to name what he was feeling as corruption. As weakness. As the plain, ordinary failure of a man who had simply stopped being strong enough to want what he'd promised to want instead.

What he found, reaching for disgust, was grief.

Because beneath the desire there was love. He could see it now that he'd stopped looking away from it: the faint, unbearable outline of an entirely different life. One with someone actually beside him rather than merely near him. Unwavering loyalty, offered and received both. Being loved, and — this was the part that undid him most completely — being able to see it happening, to actually feel it landing, rather than simply trusting it existed somewhere beyond his ability to perceive it, the way he'd spent fifteen years trusting God's love existed without ever quite managing to feel its weight.

It had accumulated so quietly he'd missed the accumulation entirely. In conversations that ran twenty minutes longer than either of them had any real reason to justify. In the uncomplicated comfort of simply being near her, which asked nothing of him and somehow still gave him more than most of his days currently offered. In the way his own schedule had begun rearranging itself, without his conscious permission, around the mere possibility of crossing paths with her — a Tuesday errand that could easily have waited until Thursday, suddenly urgent, suddenly today. In the strange emptiness that settled over the whole parish on the days she didn't come.

He understood, kneeling there, that he was thoroughly and completely finished.

Because lust, at least, could be confessed. Named, absolved, resisted with enough discipline and enough distance. But what was a man supposed to do with affection that had stopped being distinguishable, at some point he couldn't pinpoint, from prayer itself?

His lips trembled around the next attempt.

"Lord—"

The word broke apart before it finished forming.

He had spent years — his whole vocation, really — teaching other people that grace was never withheld from anyone who sought it honestly, that God did not turn away an honest accounting of a struggling heart. And yet honesty, tonight, felt like the single most impossible thing currently available to him. Because if God were to search his heart in this exact moment, He would find no noble struggle waiting there to reward. Baelor already knew that much. He was already lost, and some new, terrible clarity in him suspected God knew it too, and had simply chosen, as He had for four long years now, to say nothing about it either way.

Perhaps that was what finally pushed him across whatever threshold remained between kneeling there in honest, wretched prayer and what he did next. Perhaps it was simply exhaustion, years of dryness and denial collapsing all at once under the sheer weight of wanting one particular, unrepeatable woman rather than some abstract, manageable temptation. Whatever the mechanism, his hands moved before the rest of him had finished deciding to let them. He undid the drawstring of his pyjama trousers with clumsy, hurried fingers, wrapped his hand around his own cock — already full, already aching — and began, without further ceremony, to work himself with long, rough strokes.

He turned his face into the mattress at the last second, some final scrap of habit or shame driving him to muffle the sound rather than let it fill the small room the way everything else about tonight already had.

In the dark behind his own closed eyes, only one image held. Her face. Not exactly as she'd looked tonight, though the memory of tonight fed everything that followed. Her eyes, specifically, the way they'd caught his after she'd teased him, some light living in them that he had spent two months telling himself he was imagining, a light that might, if he let himself believe it even for the length of this single traitorous hour, have meant she wanted this too. He held to that possibility the way a drowning man holds to whatever debris happens to be floating nearest.

He held, too, to the image his own imagination built for him next, unbidden and merciless in its detail: her, entirely undone beneath him, her spine arched at some impossible, desperate angle, her mouth open around sounds that had nothing left of teasing in them. He imagined the give of her, imagined thrusting into her again and again, deep and unhurried and then not unhurried at all, imagined that every stroke of it might somehow reach past her grief and turn it, briefly, into something closer to pleasure — as if he alone might be capable of giving her that, as if wanting it badly enough might make it true. He imagined her nails finding his back, dragging half-moons into skin that had not been touched with anything like hunger in longer than he could accurately remember. He imagined her voice breaking around his name, over and over, in a register that had nothing whatsoever to do with confession.

What finally undid him — what tore the last of his composure loose entirely — was not any of it. It was the imagined shape of her mouth releasing three specific words in his direction, words he had no right whatsoever to imagine anyone giving him, let alone her, and yet there they were anyway, vivid and unbearable and entirely his own invention: I love you.

He came hard around his own fist, a broken, guttural sound tearing loose from somewhere low in his chest before he could catch it against the mattress, his whole body drawing tight and then breaking apart at once, the mess of it spilling hot over his knuckles.

He stayed exactly where he'd fallen, face pressed into the bedding, and breathed. Once. Twice. A third time before anything like steadiness returned to him.

He raised his face eventually, feeling the cool, unmistakable patch where his own breath had dampened the sheet beneath him, and stared up at the ceiling instead, at the water stain shaped vaguely like a rowboat he'd been meaning to have looked at for the better part of a year.

A thought arrived, quiet enough that he nearly missed the size of the blasphemy folded inside it: if loving her brings me closer to creation than years of praying ever brought me to the Creator, what exactly am I meant to do with that.

He covered his face with his free, cleaner hand.

Perhaps that, he thought, was the actual sin waiting underneath all the others he'd been so carefully cataloguing tonight. Not the desire, or not only the desire. The realization — arriving now, with nowhere left to hide from it — that somewhere along the long road toward this particular altar, he had gone looking for God, over and over, for years, and found only silence waiting at the end of every attempt.

And that tonight, for the first time in longer than he dared admit even to himself, some other voice — hers, or the idea of her, or whatever she had quietly become to him in the space where God's silence used to sit — had finally, unmistakably, answered.

You hadn't slept well. You'd known it the moment you opened your eyes, before your body had even finished the transition out of whatever half-formed dreams had kept you turning most of the night. You had the unmistakable heaviness behind the eyes that came from too little rest rather than too much of it. You'd drifted in and out of something that wasn't quite sleep for hours, catching yourself somewhere between waking and dreaming with your own pulse doing something inconvenient, replaying, on an unwelcome loop, the weight of his hands at your waist and the taut, terrifying stillness of the half-second before the thunder broke whatever had been about to happen between you.

What had kept you awake, if you were being honest with the version of yourself still too groggy to construct a better lie, was a pair of eyes. Blue, though not quite matching, one shade lighter than the other even in memory. And a proximity you still hadn't fully accounted for.

Or that's what you told yourself, dressing for the day, that it was simply eyes and proximity keeping you up, nothing more specific than that, nothing requiring further examination before coffee.

Your mother had been lighter that morning than you'd seen her in longer than you wanted to count — humming something tuneless over the stove, actually eating the toast she made rather than simply making it and leaving it to go cold on the counter. She'd even mentioned, unprompted, something about clearing out your father's side of the closet before spring — not today, not this week, but someday, spoken aloud for the first time since the funeral, which felt like its own small, cautious miracle. You knew better than to expect it to last.

Grief, in your admittedly limited experience of managing hers alongside your own, didn't improve in a straight line; it simply had good days scattered unpredictably among the difficult ones, and you'd learned not to read too much promise into any single morning. Still, you let yourself enjoy it while it lasted.

December seemed to have settled properly over the town by now — breath visible in the cold, the last of the leaves finally surrendered from the trees lining the route you'd walked perhaps thirty times since October, familiar enough now that your feet found the way without requiring much input from the rest of you.

You held the memory of your mother's laugh at something on the radio the whole walk to the parish, turning it over like a stone in your pocket, and told yourself, with the kind of deliberate optimism you rarely trusted yourself with anymore, that today was going to be a good day.

You repeated the thought enough times that it started to feel less like a hope and more like a small, private incantation — as if enough repetition alone might be sufficient to summon the thing into being.

That confidence lasted exactly as long as it took you to push through the church's side door and see two teenage boys — the Dustin brothers, you'd learn shortly, though you didn't yet have names to put to their faces — already up on a stepladder, stapling ornaments to the exact beam you'd left unfinished the night before, their staples crooked and their banter loud and entirely unbothered by the fact that this had been, as far as you understood things, your job.

Something twisted low in your stomach, sharp and disproportionate to the actual size of the slight. You told yourself it didn't matter who finished the ornaments. You did not, in fact, manage to believe yourself.

You shrugged out of your coat in silence, watching the boys' cheerful, careless work a moment longer than necessary, and made your way toward the sacristy, brow already furrowed before you'd even reached the door. The room smelled, as it always did, of candle wax and old wood polish, vestments hanging in their orderly rows along one wall like a wardrobe built for a much stranger kind of theatre.

Baelor was there, alone, occupied with something at the shoulder seam of a violet alb, the colour of Advent, penance and waiting both folded into a single shade of cloth.

"Good morning." You kept your voice light. "What needs doing?"

He turned to look at you, and what met you in his eyes was so entirely unlike what had been there mere hours ago that you nearly took a physical step back from it.

Where warmth had stood the night before — warmth you'd felt with your whole body, warmth that still had your pulse doing something complicated whenever you let yourself think about it — there was now only a careful, deliberate distance, the kind a man constructs on purpose rather than simply falls into.

"Garrick and Harlan are already tending to it. Don't trouble yourself." The smile that came with it didn't make it anywhere near his eyes.

You tried to swallow around whatever his voice had just done to your chest and forced something like a smile of your own. "I brought climbing equipment today. In case it was needed."

"They're handy boys. I'm sure they'll manage." He turned his attention back to the alb, the conversation apparently concluded from his end.

You stood there a moment, fidgeting with your own fingers, looking down at them rather than at him. "Right," you said, mostly to fill the silence. "Well — there must be something else I could do."

"There always is." He offered nothing further, and you waited, foolishly, for an elaboration that simply never arrived.

You tried once more for something like the warmth that had, or so you'd let yourself believe, been growing steadily between the two of you these last weeks. "You look tired," you said, arms coming up to wrap around yourself, the gesture more defensive than you'd intended it to read.

His hands paused over the fabric for the barest fraction of a second. "Do I?"

"A little," you admitted, the faintest smile tugging at your mouth despite everything.

"Occupational hazard." He laughed, politely, and it landed less like genuine amusement and more like something he believed himself obligated to produce. A pause followed, longer than the joke warranted. "Would you mind helping Mrs. Reed in the parish hall? They're sorting donations for the Christmas drive."

You agreed, because there was nothing else on offer, and turned to leave.

The afternoon passed in an accumulation of small, catalogable evidence. The way he found reasons to be in whichever room you currently weren't. The exact, careful politeness he extended to you precisely as he extended it to every other volunteer that afternoon, nothing more, nothing that marked you as separate from Mrs. Reed or the Dustin brothers or anyone else currently sorting canned goods into cardboard boxes. At one point you both reached for the same box of ornaments at the same moment, and he withdrew his hand so quickly, so completely, that you nearly dropped the box entirely, fumbling to catch weight he would ordinarily have simply helped you carry.

You thought, sorting through a crate of secondhand ornaments while Mrs. Reed chattered pleasantly beside you about the parish's fundraising goals, of the specific way his voice had dropped the night before — rough-edged, stripped of its careful public register — and wondered whether you'd imagined the whole of it after all. Wondered whether desire had simply invented a version of events flattering enough to suit itself, the way desire apparently could, given half a chance and a dimly lit church.

By mid-afternoon you had started, despite your own best efforts not to, hunting for a cause. You ran through the obvious candidates and discarded most of them quickly enough — nothing you could point to, no specific offense, no moment you could identify as the hinge everything had swung on. And then, unbidden, unwelcome, one possibility surfaced and refused to submerge again: maybe I made him uncomfortable yesterday.

The thought should have landed like something manageable. Instead, it landed like a stone dropped into still water, and once it had broken the surface, every ripple that followed reshaped how you read the entire day. His hands at your waist, longer than strictly necessary. The way he'd looked at you before the thunder cracked. The whole suspended, tortuous length of that almost-moment you'd spent half the night convincing yourself you hadn't misread. Perhaps you had misread it after all. Perhaps you'd made a decent, well-intentioned man deeply, understandably uncomfortable, and this — the distance, the exact politeness, the careful redirection to donation boxes — was simply the kind, considerate way he'd chosen to handle your mistake without ever having to name it aloud.

By the time the afternoon's volunteers had gathered their coats and gone, dusk pressing early and blue against the windows the way it did this time of the year, you found him sitting alone in one of the front pews of the small side chapel, facing the tabernacle. Not praying, as far as you could tell. Simply sitting, spine slightly bowed, hands loose in his lap.

It occurred to you, watching him from several pews back, that you had never once actually seen him pray. Not properly, not in all the days you'd come here, though you'd certainly seen him perform every other visible function of his office with total competence. The votive candles nearest the tabernacle had mostly burned down to stubs by now, small orange points holding on against the gathering dark, and you found yourself wondering whether any of them had been lit by him.

You stood there a few moments longer than was probably polite, looking at the width of his back, the black cassock making him seem larger somehow in stillness than he ever did in motion. From this angle the collar was entirely invisible, hidden beneath the fall of black fabric at his throat, and for one strange, guilty moment you were glad of it; glad, however briefly, of the illusion that the man sitting in front of you belonged to no one and nothing beyond himself.

"Everything's finished," you said, quiet, from where you stood. "I think everyone's gone."

He didn't turn. You noticed, though, the small, almost imperceptible way his head dropped a fraction further. "So it seems," was all he offered.

You took a few steps closer and sat yourself in the pew directly behind his, close enough now that you could have reached out and touched his shoulder if you'd had any idea what you would have done with that kind of contact.

You fought, for several long seconds, the pressure building behind your teeth and the humiliating need to simply ask, to stop guessing and hunting through the day's evidence and just ask. You eventually lost.

"Did I do something wrong?"

Your own voice arrived in the same register a child might use bracing for a parent's disappointment, and you hated yourself for it even as the words left your mouth, already too late to call them back.

He turned then — properly turned, for the first time all day giving you the whole of his attention rather than some careful, rationed fraction of it — and his expression shifted through several things in quick succession: confusion first, and then something that looked, unmistakably, like guilt. Real guilt. Immediate and undisguised.

"What?" The word came out on an unsteady breath.

"Yesterday—" You laughed, quiet and humourless, more embarrassment than amusement, and didn't finish the sentence. You tried again, choosing your words more carefully this time, leaving him room to answer honestly rather than simply defensively. "I don't know. You've hardly looked at me all day."

It worked better than a direct accusation would have. You watched him understand that too; watched him recognize the door you'd left open for him to walk through without having to admit to anything more than he was ready to admit.

"I'm sorry." Not defensive. Not brushing past it. Simply, plainly sorry, and something about the sincerity of it hurt considerably worse than deflection would have.

You searched his face for something you didn't have a name for yet. "You don't have to apologize, Baelor."

Something moved across his face at the sound of his own name in your mouth, something you couldn't have fully described if pressed, though you filed the reaction away regardless, another entry in a ledger that was growing longer than you knew what to do with.

He opened his mouth. Closed it again without producing anything. His eyes dropped to his own clasped hands, and you watched, with a strange, suspended clarity, his thumb begin moving absently over the opposite knuckle, back and forth, some private and wordless working-through of a thing he couldn't say aloud. A breath came and caught somewhere in the middle of itself before he managed to release the rest of it. His shoulders sagged, incrementally, as though something he'd been carrying alone for years had finally, briefly, allowed itself to be felt as weight rather than simply as habit.

For one long, suspended moment, it genuinely felt as though he was about to tell you something enormous.

"I'm just tired," he said instead, very quietly.

You studied him for a long moment before you answered. "That isn't the whole truth, is it?"

Another silence, longer than the first. When he finally exhaled, it sounded less like an ordinary breath than something closer to surrender.

"No."

Your heart skipped, actually skipped, one single missed beat, because for the length of that one heartbeat you were entirely certain he was about to tell you. That whatever enormous thing had been sitting behind his eyes all day was finally going to be given words, right here, in the blue dark of a side chapel neither of you had bothered to light.

Instead, he smiled. Weary. Apologetic, in a way that felt like its own small, insufficient penance.

"But it's the only answer I can allow myself right now."

You let the silence sit between you after that, unwilling to push further into a door he'd just as good as told you he wasn't ready to open. You weren’t satisfied with that answer, not at all, but you understood, watching the tension still sitting in his shoulders, that pressing further tonight would cost more than either of you currently had to spend.

You said good night instead, quieter than you'd meant to, and left him there in the blue dark with whatever he wasn't yet willing to hand you, telling yourself, without much confidence, that there would be another evening for it.

There always is, he'd said, hours ago, about something else entirely.

You hoped, walking home through the cold, that it was still true and applicable to the space that seemed to separate you all of a sudden.

The Vigil Mass had let out a little after eight, though the building did not empty of people so much as slowly leak them, handshake by handshake, through the side door into a churchyard gone silver with frost.

Baelor had stood at the threshold the better part of an hour receiving the currency of Christmas Eve and had absorbed all of it with the same trained warmth he produced every December, until the last car pulled out of the gravel lot and left him alone with a stack of foil-covered dishes he had no real intention of eating and several hours yet before Midnight Mass would require anything further of him.

He did not go to the rectory. He told himself, locking the front door rather than the side, that the walk back through the nave would do him good — some vague and unexamined instinct toward penance, though he was long past pretending he still knew the difference between penance and simple avoidance.

He crossed the dark church lit only by the sanctuary lamp and the ranks of votives still guttering red beside the Nativity scene the altar guild had finished dressing that afternoon: the manger no longer empty, the way it had sat through the whole of Advent, waiting. Mrs. Reed had processed the Infant in sometime during the Vigil — she claimed the honour every year, and no one had yet found the courage to contest her for it — and laid Him at last in the straw, small and plaster-pink, catching what little light remained in the building.

Baelor did not know why the sight of it undid something in his chest tonight of all nights, when it had failed to manage the same in ten Christmases prior at this altar. He suspected he knew precisely why, and declined, as he had declined nearly everything else worth confessing this month, to look at it directly.

He took the back pew. Her pew, though he would not have said so aloud to anyone, and had in fact spent three weeks pretending the association had never lodged itself in him at all. Baelor has tried to convince himself of the fact that any pew, chosen at random, might have served just as well for a man wanting a few hours alone with a God who had gone conspicuously silent on him for longer than he currently had the patience to calculate. He, almost always, failed spectacularly.

It had been three weeks, now, since he had watched her walk out that same side door and told himself, with the conviction of a man constructing an alibi, that he had done the decent thing. A priest who could offer a woman nothing but scandal owed her, at minimum, the mercy of not letting her get any closer to a life that would cost her considerably more than it ever gave back.

He had told himself, that last afternoon in the sacristy, that the coldness had been a kindness; a controlled withdrawal engineered for her benefit rather than his own. The responsible action of a man who understood, better than she currently could, exactly how much damage he was capable of doing to a young woman who had already lost enough. He had held onto that story for the better part of a week, turning it over each night like a stone worn smooth from handling, comforted by how reasonable it sounded, how selfless.

He had built that justification brick upon carefully mortared brick, reinforced with enough real theology that it had held, more or less, clean through the third week of Advent. It took him nearly ten days to notice the story had a hole in it large enough to walk through and that the architecture he had thought as precise was clearly not holding tonight.

He braced his forearms against his knees, the cassock pulling taut across his shoulders, and made himself do what he had been circling for three weeks without ever quite landing on: the full accounting. Not the version he preached — love that costs nothing was never love, only convenience wearing love's vestments — but the version underneath it, the one he had apparently reserved for no one at all, not even himself, until an empty church at this particular hour finally cornered him into it.

He had not gone cold to protect her.

He had gone cold because for one suspended half-second three weeks ago, with her spine curved back against his own hands and thunder cracking the stained glass loose in its leading, he had wanted. Wholly, specifically, with an intensity that bore no resemblance to the manageable, textbook temptation he'd spent fifteen years training himself to weather. And the wanting had frightened him more than any sin he had ever been taught to guard against from that pulpit.

Lust, Baelor had been telling himself at the moments he felt more vulnerable, he could have managed easy enough. Lust had its own liturgy: name it, confess it, do the penance, watch it pass the way weather passes. He knew the path.

What had actually moved through him in that sacristy would not pass, though, because it was not lust. He had known that even as he fled it, his own hands leaving her waist so fast the absence carried its own small violence, and the knowing had done considerably more to terrify him than any fear of scandal ever had.

He had told himself he was protecting her. What he had actually done was protect himself and dressed the cowardice in a cassock respectable enough that even he had been fooled by it for most of a month.

A man protecting her would have found some way to remain honest with her. Distant, yes, but certainly careful and honest. He had rather manufactured a performance of indifference precise enough to convince a perceptive young woman that she had imagined two months of something. He had watched her work it out in real time, that terrible afternoon in the parish hall — watched her hunt for the offense she must have given him, watched her land, wrongly and with visible pain, on herself as the cause — and he had let her sit inside that wrong conclusion for three weeks rather than correct it, because correcting it would have required naming what was actually true, and naming it was the one thing he had not yet found the courage to survive.

How readily the heart baptizes its own sins, he thought now, recognizing the shape of it — recognizing, too, that he had thought nearly the identical sentence three weeks prior, kneeling at the side of his own bed, and had apparently learned nothing from the thought except how to think it a second time with a fresh coat of shame applied.

None of this recognition had made the following days any easier to survive. If anything, the clarity made it worse: he no longer had the comfort of believing himself noble about it, only lonely, and specifically, deliberately lonely this time, having manufactured the loneliness himself with his own two hands and then had nowhere honest left to put the blame for it.

He had not known misery like the misery of the past twenty days. Not in fifteen years of vocation, not in four years of dry, wordless prayer. He had simply not accounted for the weight of an absence that was entirely his own doing, a door he had closed with his own hand and then had to walk past, every day, in his own church, knowing exactly whose fault it was that it stayed shut.

Now it was the twenty-fourth of December, and he had not seen her since the day he'd given her nothing but a cold shoulder dressed up as tiredness.

The church clock ticked over its quarter-hour somewhere above the belfry. Soon, he thought. Midnight, the bells, the whole parish arriving half-frozen and candlelit for the one Mass of the year that still filled every pew he owned. He had perhaps two hours left of whatever this currently was — solitude, penance, cowardice examining itself in the dark — before duty required him upright and vested, singing the old proclamations over a congregation with no notion that their priest had spent three weeks failing every single thing he had ever told them love was supposed to look like.

He sat in the back pew — her pew, he admitted again to himself — facing the tabernacle, alone in every sense of the word he currently had access to. He was not praying, not exactly. He had stopped pretending, these past weeks, that sitting in front of the tabernacle and praying were reliably the same activity.

He heard the side door before he heard anything else. It had a particular three-note complaint at the old hinge before it settled that Baelor registered and did not turn. Parishioners came and went from the church at every hour on Christmas Eve; some private, unshakeable devotion drew the lonelier half of his flock back through those doors long after the Vigil crowd had gone home to their families, chasing whatever the empty nave offered that the full one hadn't. He assumed, hearing the door, that this was simply one more of them, and kept his eyes on the tabernacle, and did not turn.

Footsteps crossed the stone toward his end of the church, measured and quiet against the marble, and stopped at the pew he currently occupied. He felt, before he processed it as thought, the small shift of weight as someone settled onto the bench beside him.

He smelled her before he saw her.

Jasmine. Not perfume exactly, or not only. Something warmer than that, something that seemed to rise off her skin rather than sit on top of it the way scent from a bottle usually did, faint and green and just short of sweet, the note he had spent three weeks failing to name in memory whenever he tried and failed to recall precisely what it was about being near her that had always, since the very first handshake in the vestibule, made something in his chest go quiet in a way incense never once managed.

Baelor had never told her he loved that smell. He had never told her anything close to the truth of what moved through him when it reached him, and it reached him now, sudden and total, a full second before she rounded the end of the pew, and by the time she sat down beside him — close, in the way of someone who had chosen him rather than simply taken the nearest available seat — whatever composure an hour of brutal honesty had cost him to assemble had already abandoned him entirely.

He turned.

She was watching him already, had been, he suspected, for the length of those footsteps, and the smile she offered did not come anywhere near her eyes. It sat crooked at one corner instead, apologetic and uncertain in a way that made his chest contract sharply enough that he nearly reached for her before he'd decided to do anything of the kind.

He knew that smile. It was an expression he recognized immediately because he'd been wearing some close cousin of it himself for nearly three weeks.

He said nothing. He had spent twenty days rehearsing, in odd, unguarded moments, some version of what he might say if he ever got to see her again, and found now, faced with the actual reality of her sitting an arm's length away, that every rehearsed line had evaporated completely, leaving him with nothing but the plain, humiliating fact of having hurt her and no adequate words assembled anywhere in him to address it.

They simply existed there together for a while, in a silence that should have been unbearable and somehow wasn't. He could feel the warmth of her radiating against the side of his cassock where her shoulder nearly, not quite, met his. A sweet, ordinary heat that stood in stark and almost startling contrast to the last time they'd been this close, weeks ago, with thunder cracking overhead and his own hands still burning at her waist. There was nothing carnal in it now, or nothing only carnal. It read instead as something closer to relief given a temperature, comfort with a pulse behind it.

Three weeks ago, in this same building, a comparable warmth and a comparable proximity had ended with his own hand around his own cock and a confession he could not bring himself to make even in the dark, even to God directly. What moved through him now bore almost no resemblance to that night's hunger. It was not smaller. If anything it occupied more room in him, sat heavier. It simply was not, tonight, primarily a thing his body wanted. It was something considerably more dangerous.

He looked at the plain wooden cross above the altar and let himself think, for the first time without immediately flinching from the thought, that he still wanted her. He thought, with a clarity that would have frightened him a month ago and now simply arrived, quiet and total, that he could have gone to his knees right there on the cold marble and prayed at the altar of her. He could ask, again and again, for an absolution only she was positioned to grant him; plead, in whatever language a man used for a thing this far past reasonable, that she never left again the way these twenty days had made him believe she might.

He did none of it. He sat, frozen by the sheer size of what he'd just allowed himself to think and let the silence continue instead.

"I hope there weren't too many entitled women today," she said finally, her voice landing somewhere between uncertain and hopeful, testing the ground before committing her full weight to it.

He huffed something close to a laugh and turned to look at her properly. "Let's just say I won't need to cook for myself for at least a week." The joke came easier than he'd expected, some old, grateful muscle memory taking over where his more careful faculties had failed him entirely. "I could see myself through to Epiphany on goodwill alone."

She smiled at that — a real smile, however small, climbing further up her face than the one she'd walked in with — and he could have sworn, absurdly, that his own heart actually moved in his chest at the sight of it, some physical lurch he had no theological vocabulary adequate to explain.

They held each other's eyes a moment longer than the joke strictly required, and the silence that followed felt entirely unlike the one that had come before it — warmer, though not yet safe.

"I actually wasn't sure about coming." Her eyes stayed on her own hands, folded in her lap. "After the other day, I thought — I don't know. I didn't want to be the sort of person who doesn't take a hint. I thought that maybe I needed to give you some space. In case I was becoming a bit too much."

"Don't be silly." The answer left him faster than he'd intended, almost tripping over itself in its hurry to correct her. "It's me who owes you an apology. My behaviour that day was—" he searched for a word that wouldn't require explaining the whole of what actually lay beneath it and settled for an inadequate one. "Poor. It was poor, and it was unfair to you, and I am sorry for it."

She nodded, faint, more to herself than to him, and something in the set of her shoulders told him she wasn't finished. "You had me believing I was unwanted here." Her voice cracked on the last word, just slightly, and he felt the crack land somewhere in his own chest like a physical blow. "Which is stupid, I know — you don't owe me anything, you never did — but I'd started thinking of this place as somewhere that was actually mine. Somewhere I got to just exist, without anyone needing managing from me, for once. And then you—"

She didn't finish it. She didn't have to. He watched the first tear break loose and travel the length of her cheek before either of them had acknowledged what was happening, and something in his own chest gave way at the sight of it more completely than three weeks of solitary, brutal honesty had managed on its own.

He turned fully toward her then, his whole body pivoting on the pew, and his hands found hers where they sat clenched in her lap, covering them before he'd consciously decided to. Her warmth beneath his palms did something complicated and inconvenient to the rest of him, some low, insistent pull he chose, deliberately, to ignore in favour of the considerably more urgent thing happening in front of him.

"You will always have a place here." He got the words out before she could continue, though it turned out not to matter, because she spoke straight over him anyway, the sentence already building too much momentum to be stopped by anything as small as his interruption. "That was never in question. It will never be in question."

"I thought that I understood you." Her breath was coming faster now, catching unevenly between words. "Your loneliness — that sadness you keep locked up behind everything else, that feeling like you have to carry the whole weight of everyone alone — I thought I understood that, in you, because I recognized it. And I thought you understood me too, and I — I—"

Her breathing had gone properly ragged now, words fracturing apart faster than she could assemble them, and he stopped her the only way he could think to in the moment: lifting both hands from hers to her face instead, thumbs coming to rest against the wet tracks already cutting down her cheeks.

Her name left his lips — the only solid thing he had left to offer her, thrown out as deliberately as a lifeline to a drowning woman — and it worked exactly as he'd hoped. Her eyes found his again, properly, holding there instead of skittering away.

"I understand you," he said, quiet and entirely certain, the first fully honest sentence he'd managed to give anyone in longer than he wanted to calculate. "And you understand me. And I am so ashamed — so genuinely ashamed — of having caused you even a fraction of this pain. I—"

He didn't finish. She closed the remaining distance between them in a single motion, the whole of her colliding into his chest, her face burying itself in the black fabric over his heart, and whatever he'd been about to say dissolved, unimportant now, into the more urgent business of simply holding her.

He wondered, distantly, whether she could feel how hard his heart was currently working against her ear, pressed as she was directly over it. He was fairly certain she could, because Baelor didn’t bother trying to still it.

His arms came around her without any further input required from the rest of him, holding her shaking frame together while her sobs worked themselves out against the fabric already growing damp beneath her face, and he stayed exactly like that — steady, present, entirely hers for as long as she needed him to be — for considerably longer than he bothered counting.

Her sobs thinned eventually, then stopped, and she drew back from him at her own pace, wiping at her face with the back of one hand in a gesture that struck him as almost childlike in its simplicity. "Sorry," she managed, on a breath still not quite steady.

"Don't be. Please." He shook his head, meaning it entirely.

She nodded, more to herself than to him, some private decision apparently being finalized. "How about we just — forget this happened. All of it." Her eyes found his again, searching. "Stop apologizing to each other and go back to where we left off. I promise I'll still believe you're a cool priest."

The laugh that pulled out of him was real, surprised out of him despite everything the evening had already asked of him. "I'm holding you to that." His hand found the back of her neck, gentle, tilting her face back up to his when it had started to drop. "I’ll remove you from wreath-duty until next year."

"What?"

"The wreath. You're off the hook until next Advent."

She laughed at that too — a real laugh this time, breaking through whatever was left of the tears — and the sound of it did something to the whole of him that fifteen years of careful discipline had absolutely no defence prepared against.

He turned back toward the altar eventually, leaning into the worn wood of the pew behind him, and she shifted beside him a moment later, settling her weight against his side with an ease that suggested she'd stopped questioning whether she was allowed to. His arm found its way around her shoulders without any real deliberation on his part, and her head came to rest in the crook of it, cheek against the side of his chest, close enough that every breath she took registered against him.

He breathed her in. Jasmine, warm and close and entirely real this time, no phantom trace left to chase down a stranger's collar or a shop aisle.

He fucking loved jasmine.

A.N.: sooooo, what do we think? i warned it would be a slow burn, but they're getting there... i will work on the next parts along the weeks, they will be shorter (or at least i'll try) because proofreading this behemoth was a workout in itself lol. as always, comments and feedback is very much appreciated. i love you all <3

TAGLIST: @qardasngan @nerdyinfluencertastemaker @princessphilly @shyravenns @loveslide @dulcebloodhnd @caitlynluna @sacha1slytherin @alternarabuda @jjubilee-fluff @a-sunflower-in-bloom @heieufh @karakatitsa-sonya @eleventhboi @celestialsonglines @xglittergoddess @warpedlilium @themoonseroticoracle @hrh007 @fraaiefreule91 @hannisreading @samthegreenapologist @dont-try-pesticide @thorins-queen-of-erebor @outpostsworld @sotragedynut @nicoall12 @escapic-mezzanine @m0th-g0th @noble-17 @bbjkfnmc @sol-in-wonderland @sem-ra @mitth-eli-vanto @justmasblack @coff33mug

you knock me off my feet | part two | part three • michael jackson x newrisintvocalist!reader

↳ by @comoquesoybambi (bad era, michael is basically obsessed)

my little reporter | part two • michael jackson x journalist!reader

↳ by @/am3sss (bad era, fluff)

again | part two | michael jackson x dancer!reader

↳ by @tpwkyarely (angst, hurt/comfort)

beautiful stranger | part two • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @mjuniverse (pre thriller era, slow burn, yearning, very angsty, right person, wrong time, soft!michael)

gone by morning | part two • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @startingsomethin (thriller-bad era, angst, cheating, smut, fluff)

spotlight • michael jackson x popstar!reader

↳ by @hcwait (thriller era, slow burn)

making of an it girl | part two • michael jackson x tourdancer!reader

↳ by @intelligenthottie

baby be mine | thrill you tonight • michael jackson x girlnextdoor!reader

↳ by @iceemochaa (post otw-pre thriller era, fluff, slightly suggestive)

stargirl | part two • michael jackson x singer !reader

↳ by @ytrhbz (thriller era, whipped!michael, fluff)

remember the time | part two | part three • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @chmpngekisses (thriller-bad era, angst)

his new obsession | part two • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @luvvreader (yearning, slow burn)

by your side | part two • michael jackson x actress!reader

↳ by @svnnywrites (thriller era, hurt/comfort)

ONE-SHOTS-BLURBS-HC’S

baby be mine • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @angelfacediary (otw-bad era, angst, fluff)

nine months of home videos • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @angelfacediary (pregnant!reader, so so so fluffy)

out of time • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @urelliee (bad era, angst, heartbreak, very bittersweet)

pretty young thing • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @tpwkyarely (angst, comfort, tw: dv)

through his lens • thriller!michael jackson x reader

↳ by @neverlandzangel (thriller era, married!michael, fluff, domestic bliss)

arrow through the heart • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @startingsomethin (dangerous era, oh so angsty)

excuse me that’s my wife • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @mvsticmoony (jealous!michael, fluff)

where is my husband! • michael jackson x singer!reader

↳ by @mvsticmoony (fluff)

love caught on tape • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @mvsticmoony (invincible era, flashbacks, married life fluff)

a love letter to june • michael jackson x fan!reader

↳ by @hcwait (dangerous era, very fluffy)

in sickness and in health • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @king-mila (bad era, protective!michael, sick!reader, fluff, hurt/comfort)

america’s sweetest bunny • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @michaeldiary (dangerous era, playboymodel!reader, sooo fluffy, slightly suggestive)

little pieces of her • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @brownsugarletters (thriller era, fluff)

young hearts, run free • michael jackson x guitarist!reader

↳ by @shakinghamster (thriller era, fluff, workplace romance, cheating)

unforgettable • michael jackson x fan!reader

↳ by @ytrhbz (history era, fluff, reader is that girl)

cause if it’s aching, you have to rub it • michael jackson x fem!black!reader

↳ by @serenebows (thriller era, shy!reader, fluff)

all over, all over, all over • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @hon3yarchives (dangerous era, fluff, suggestive)

sign the girls • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @michaelpilled (thriller era, suggestive, flirting)

a memory to look back on • michael jackson x pregnant!reader

↳ by @lovecherishly (bad era, soo fluffy)

sweet tooth • michael jackson x sweet!reader

↳ by @carmaloves (bad era, so very fluffy)

stuck in the elevator • michael jackson x reader

↳ by @londynham (romance, fluff, angst)

working overtime • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @urbanfunkchild (pre bad era, kind of smutty, possessive!michael)

love never felt so good • michael jackson x fem!black!reader

↳ by @proseandj (invincible era, fluff)

like a stradivarius • michael jackson x gn!spouse!reader

↳ by @imhandicapableofmath (married!michael, domestic fluff, humour, suggestive)

“she thinks you smell like cinnamon” • michael jackson x gn!spouse!reader

↳ by @imhandicapableofmath (married!michael, fanfiction meta, emotional comfort, teasing, fluff)

#1 loverboy • michael jackson x gn!reader

↳ by @invincibledc (bad era, fluff)

read my lips • michael jackson x deaf!black!reader

↳ by @invincibledc (protective!michael, fluff)

home movies • michael jackson x pregnant!reader

↳ by @ktrsis (bad-invincible era, flashbacks, soo fluffy)

the lady in my life • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @cupcakeprincezz (thriller era, fluff)

surprise visit • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @cupcakeprincezz (bad era, very fluffy)

secret touch • michael jackson x fem!singer!reader

↳ by @invinor (dangerous era, fluff)

inspiration • michael jackson x singer!reader

↳ by @liyahhsnuckhere (pre bad era, sooooo fluffy, suggestive)

the chateau • michael jackson x younger!fem!reader

↳ by @elleist (dangerous era, fluff, very cute)

imagine sitting on his lap

↳ by @humannatures (fem!reader, fluff)

tabloid junkie • michael jackson x fem!reader

↳ by @moonlitjane (protective!reader, fluff, suggestive)

hidden in the spotlight • superstar!michael jackson x costumedesigner!fem!reader

"Hm," you hummed. "Enjoyin' the pool, pretty boy." You lifted your leg and purposely kicked up some water, trying to splash him. Michael barely reacted, just nodding as he watched you. His lips were pressed into a thin line, his dark curls already starting to frizz from the heat.

The two of you sat there quietly for a moment. Sometimes that was enough. Sometimes you could just enjoy being near each other without saying anything at all. Then, completely out of nowhere, Michael spoke. "We should get married."

The words were so sudden that you nearly slipped straight into the pool.

"What?" You stared at him. "Michael, what are you talking about? Have you finally lost your mind because of the heat? I told you to stop dancing during heatwaves."

You immediately reached up and grabbed his cheeks, squishing his face between your hands as you inspected him. There was no other explanation. The man had finally gone crazy.

Michael let out a surprised giggle, the sound soft and bright as he tried to pull away from your grip. His hands came up to cover yours, gently removing them from his cheeks before holding them between his palms. "No, I'm fine," he laughed. "I was just thinkin'."

His smile faded slightly. "We've been together for a while now. I just..." He glanced away, eyes settling on the rippling water. "Most of my brothers are married now. They got families."

His voice grew quieter toward the end, almost getting lost beneath the sounds of the water. For a moment he didn't say anything at all.

You knew that look. Michael wasn't really looking at the pool. He was looking somewhere far away, lost in his own thoughts. He'd spent so much of his life focused on his career, on tours, albums, rehearsals, interviews. Everything was always moving. Always demanding something from him.

But sometimes he wanted something that belonged only to him. His fingers tightened around yours. "I just..." He swallowed. "You love me and I love you."

A shy smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he finally looked back at you.

"It'd basically stay the same as it is right now. Except..." He ducked his head slightly, suddenly looking far more nervous than the man who had blurted out a marriage proposal thirty seconds ago. "Except you'd be Mrs. Jackson."

The smile on his face widened a little.

"And we'd have a family someday." He said it so casually, but there was something hopeful in his eyes. Something that made it clear he'd thought about this before. A lot. "A big one."

"Say something, mama..." His smile started to falter. "You're makin' me nervous."

For once, Michael Jackson actually looked nervous.

You just stared at him like he'd suddenly grown a second head.

"Michael..." You laughed in disbelief, shaking your head. "It's not that simple. I love you. God, I love you so, so much, but you know that, right?" You paused, trying to process everything he'd just thrown at you. "What about Joseph? You know he already hates me. And did you even tell anybody?"

This was a lot.

Michael Jackson was arguably the biggest star in the world, standing at the peak of his career, and he was sitting beside a swimming pool casually asking you to marry him like this wasnt a life long commitment. Michael's tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek as he thought.

"We won't tell anybody," he said after a moment. "I swear."

His fingers squeezed yours tighter.

"We'll do it just for us."

The nervousness from earlier faded as he spoke, replaced by that stubborn determination he always got whenever he wanted something.

"Just me, you, 'n Bill."

You blinked. "Bill?"

"Yeah." Michael nodded immediately. "Bill.” 

"Michael, that's not the point."

"It is the point." He shifted closer, curls bouncing as he shook his head. "Nobody has to know. No reporters, no family, no managers. Nobody gets a say except us."

There was something almost desperate in the way he said it, like he wasn't talking about a wedding anymore. Like he was talking about having one thing in his life that belonged to him.

Just him and you.

"No interviews. No headlines. No Joseph." He made a face at the mention of his father. "Just us." His thumb brushed across your knuckles.

"I don't care about any of that stuff, bunny. I just want you." The words came out so simply, so honestly, that your chest ached. "The rest can figure itself out later."

You stayed silent, your bottom lip pulled between your teeth as you chewed on it. You did love him. That had never been the problem. The two of you had been together for so long without ever breaking up that, honestly, it already felt like a marriage. The only thing missing was the title.

"Okay." Michael blinked. "Okay?" he repeated. You nodded before you could stop yourself, before you could overthink it or talk yourself out of it. "Okay. Let's do it. Let's get married." The grin that spread across his face was so wide you could see every bit of gum.

"Really?"

"Really." The next thing you knew, he was kissing all over your face and hands, barely able to sit still from excitement. "You won't regret it, I swear," he said between kisses. "I promise. It'll be the most secretive wedding ever. C'mon."

He jumped to his feet and held his hand out.

You looked at it suspiciously. "What?"

"We're gonna do it right now." Your mouth fell open. "What? Michael."

"I'll call Bill and we'll figure it out."

"Michael, you can't just plan a wedding that quick. It takes months."

"It won't today." He shrugged like it was the simplest thing in the world. "Gotta do it in secret n' all."

. . .

By the next morning, Michael was dragging you across state lines to get married. The two of you had slipped out before sunrise with Bill, leaving before anyone in the house had even woken up. No family. No managers. No reporters. No photographers hiding in bushes.

Just the three of you. It was so rushed and unplanned that neither of you were wearing anything remotely wedding-like. You were dressed in regular clothes, and Michael looked no different than he normally did on any other day.

Not that he cared. In fact, he'd insisted on it. "It's better this way," he'd said for the hundredth time from the passenger seat.

"How is this better?"

“Cause we look normal."

You rolled your eyes, yeah right. Michael Jackson still looked like Michael Jackson even in the most ‘normal’ outfit in his closet.

Michael just smiled and reached over to grab your hand. Outside, the scenery rushed past the windows as Bill drove. The world was still waking up, the roads mostly empty, good. 

It should've felt ridiculous. Getting married in another state with only a bodyguard as a witness. No planning. No invitations. No fancy clothes.

But sitting there with Michael's hand wrapped around yours, watching him practically vibrate with excitement, it pretty you. Like something only the two of you would do. Michael squeezed your hand.

"Mrs. Jackson," he said suddenly. You groaned immediately. "We aren't even married yet." 

"I know." His smile somehow got bigger. "I'm just practicin'."

"You're so annoying."

The complaint barely held any weight behind it when you started laughing right after. Michael just grinned, looking far too pleased with himself.

Eventually the laughter faded and the car fell quiet again. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the occasional noise from the road beneath the tires. Michael's hand never left yours. His fingers remained intertwined with yours as he stared out the window, watching the scenery blur past.

Then he turned, not just a stolen glance. He really looked at you.  His expression softened immediately. "You sure you want this, pretty girl?" he asked quietly. "Just don't wanna force y'to do anything."

Your heart squeezed. Even now. Even after you'd already said yes. Michael was always like this. So careful when it came to the people he loved. So worried about making the wrong choice for them.

You squeezed his hand back. "Michael, I wouldn't have agreed if I didn't want to be with you forever." His eyes dropped to your joined hands. "And I mean forever." The corner of his mouth twitched upward. For a moment, Michael didn't say anything. He just stared at you with that look he got sometimes, like he couldn't quite believe you were real.

Then he let out a small breath and smiled. "Ain't gettin' rid of me now."

"I wasn't trying to."

"Good." He shifted closer on the seat, still holding your hand. "'Cause I got plans." You laughed. "That sounds threatening."

"I'm serious." His eyes lit up immediately. "I'm gonna get us a huge house.”

"You already have a huge house."

"No I mean one just f’ us.."

"Michael."

"A really huge one, n’ it’ll have a zoo. And a park for all our kids." You rolled your eyes while Bill sighed from the driver's seat. "And we're gonna have so many kids."

"How many?" Michael paused. You watched him think.

"Maybe... six." 

"Six?" He was insane. There was no way you could have six kids, though Michael had mentioned adopting before. He wanted a kid from every continent.  "Okay, maybe eight."

"Eight?" You nearly choked. "What?" he defended immediately. "I like kids."

"Michael, We’d never sleep again." His laughter filled the car, bright and warm and completely carefree. For a second, looking at him like this, it was impossible to imagine a future where the two of you weren't together.

. . .

When you guys made it to the courthouse, it was still early enough that the building was mostly empty. The marriage officiant had definitely been surprised to see Michael Jackson standing in front of him asking to get married, but to his credit he stayed professional and didn't make a big deal out of it.

Now the two of you stood together at the front of a small courtroom, hands intertwined. Bill sat in the front row on Michael's side, looking strangely out of place as the sole guest at the wedding.

The officiant continued his speech, his voice echoing softly through the quiet room. There were no cameras. No crowds. No screaming fans waiting outside. Just the handful of people gathered in this room.

Exactly how Michael wanted it. When the officiant finally nodded toward him, signaling it was his turn, Michael immediately looked at you. For a second he just smiled.

Then he started speaking. "I didn't really prepare anything," he admitted with a nervous laugh. "I kinda decided I wanted to marry you yesterday." Bill snorted from the front row.

You couldn't help smiling. Michael's gaze never left yours. "But..." He swallowed. "I know how I feel." The nervousness slowly disappeared as he spoke. "You've been there longer than anybody else."

His voice was soft, but steady. "You were there before all of this got bigger. Before records and tours and everything that came with it." His thumb brushed against your knuckles. "You stayed through the hard parts too."

His eyes lowered briefly. "The days when everything felt like too much. The days I was tired. The days I didn't wanna get outta bed or go to rehearsals or deal with anybody." You felt your chest tighten.

"Every time life got hard, you were there." A small smile crossed his face. "Even before we were officially together." The room fell quiet. Michael squeezed your hands. "People are always tellin' me what to do. Where to go. Who to be."

He laughed softly. "And most of the time I don't mind. It's part of my job." His expression softened. "But you..." He paused. "You were always my choice." Michael glanced off to the side, shyly. He was still shy even while doing his vows. "You were the one thing in my life that belonged to me."

His eyes started shining. "The one thing nobody picked for me." A shaky breath left him. "And I wouldn't trade that for anything." For a moment, it looked like he'd forgotten there were other people in the room. Like it was just the two of you. "I love you," he said quietly. "I loved you before today and I'm gonna love you after today."

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "And if I get my way, we're gonna have a big family and grow old together." Bill immediately groaned. Michael ignored him. "I know I work too much. I know I'm stubborn." 

"Very stubborn," Bill muttered.

"Thank you, Bill." The room filled with laughter. Then Michael looked back at you. His smile faded into something gentler. "But no matter what happens... I promise I'll keep choosing you. Every day." His voice cracked slightly at the end. "Because I think that's what marriage is." The room went silent again. “And I love you. So much.”

And since apparently both of you were complete crybabies, by the time your vows were finished neither of you were doing a very good job of holding it together. Your voice had shaken through half of your speech and Michael had looked seconds away from crying the entire time you were talking. Every time you glanced at him his eyes seemed even glassier than before, and judging by the way he kept blinking rapidly, he was trying just as hard as you were not to embarrass himself.

The officiant eventually finished speaking and officially pronounced the two of you husband and wife, but honestly neither of you paid much attention to the words. The second it was over Michael was wrapping his arms around you, pulling you tightly against his chest as if he couldn't quite believe this was actually happening. You immediately hugged him back, both of you laughing through tears while holding onto each other. For a moment the courthouse, the officiant, and even Bill completely disappeared from your minds. It was just the two of you standing there, finally married after years of loving each other.

Michael buried his face against your shoulder, squeezing you tighter. You could feel him smiling. The kind of smile that made his cheeks hurt. The kind he got whenever he was genuinely happy.

After a minute he finally pulled back enough to look at you. His eyes were still suspiciously watery, but the grin on his face hadn't gone anywhere. He looked over your shoulder toward Bill and gave him a small nod. Bill immediately sighed like a man who'd been waiting for this moment all morning.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a small velvet ring box. The sight of it made your eyebrows shoot upward so fast they nearly disappeared into your hairline. Michael suddenly looked very interested in the floor. Your gaze snapped back to him.

"Michael."

His smile widened.

"Michael."

The guilty expression on his face told you everything you needed to know before he even spoke. Apparently while you'd been busy processing the idea of getting married, he'd already been making plans.

Bill handed over the box with the exhausted look of a man who had somehow gone from bodyguard to witness to secret wedding accomplice in less than twenty-four hours.

When Michael opened it, two simple bands sat inside.

They weren't huge. They weren't covered in diamonds or flashy enough to attract attention. They were simple, elegant, and surprisingly normal. Looking at them felt strangely emotional because they suited the two of you perfectly. There was nothing performative about them. Nothing designed for cameras or headlines. They were rings chosen by Michael for the life the two of you wanted, not the life the public imagined you had.

His fingers were noticeably shaky as he picked one up.

The excitement that had followed him throughout the entire day seemed to settle into something softer. Something more real. Suddenly he looked less like a global superstar getting married and more like a nervous man who was terrified of messing up one of the most important moments of his life.

Taking your hand carefully, he slid the ring onto your finger.

Neither of you spoke.

You simply watched as his eyes dropped to the ring now resting on your hand. For a few seconds he just stared at it. Like the reality of everything had finally hit him all at once. The road trip before sunrise. The courthouse. The vows. The signatures. The fact that after all these years, you were actually his wife.

When he finally looked back up at you, his eyes immediately filled with tears.

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

The sound made him laugh too, which only made the tears worse. His hand tightened around yours as he shook his head, smiling so hard it looked painful.

Neither of you cared that you were crying. Neither of you cared that Bill was standing a few feet away pretending not to witness the emotional breakdown happening in front of him.

All that mattered was the ring on your finger, the matching one waiting for his, and the fact that somehow the two of you had managed to pull off the most ridiculous wedding imaginable. No guests. No fancy venue. No planning. But it was yours and perfect.

— 

That's how you remembered the wedding, anyway.

It had happened so fast that sometimes it felt more like a dream than an actual memory. A courthouse several states away. Bill as the only witness. Ordinary clothes instead of wedding attire. No flowers, no reception, no announcements. Just you and Michael promising yourselves to each other because neither of you wanted to wait any longer.

For months afterward, nobody knew. Not even the people closest to him.

The rings stayed hidden whenever they needed to be, tucked away beneath gloves, pockets, and excuses. It became your little secret, something that belonged only to the two of you. Every now and then you'd catch Michael staring at his wedding band when he thought nobody was looking, a goofy smile spreading across his face before he'd quickly pretend he wasn't doing anything.

Of course, a secret like that was never going to stay hidden forever.

The truth finally came out months later while the two of you were preparing to move from Hayvenhurst into the ranch Michael had spent so much time building.

The entire Jackson family had shown up to help with packing. The house was chaos from the second everyone arrived. Boxes were stacked against walls, furniture was being moved around, and family members seemed to be wandering in and out of every room at all times. Conversations overlapped one another so much that it was almost impossible to hear yourself think.

You were currently sitting on the floor of the living room with Janet beside you, both of you surrounded by half-filled boxes.

A roll of tape hung from your wrist as you pushed the flaps of a box together. Janet, meanwhile, was leaning against another box nearby, happily gossiping about practically everything and everyone she could think of.

The two of you had been talking for nearly an hour at this point. You barely noticed the noise coming from the kitchen where Michael and several of his brothers were supposedly helping pack. Emphasis on the supposedly part. From the amount of laughing you could hear, you were fairly certain very little actual packing was taking place.

"They're not getting anything done, are they?" Janet asked, glancing toward the other room. You pressed tape across the top of the box. "Not a chance." She laughed. "Thought so."

The conversation continued easily after that. You and Janet had always gotten along, and packing boxes gave you plenty to talk about. Neither of you paid much attention to what was happening elsewhere in the house.

At least not until a sudden silence fell over the kitchen. The kind of silence that immediately made people suspicious. Your hand paused midway through reaching for another strip of tape. Janet frowned. "What happened?" Before either of you could investigate, voices started carrying from the next room.

A few moments later, Katherine Jackson appeared in the doorway holding Michael's left hand. The sight alone was enough to make your stomach drop. Because wrapped around Michael's finger was a wedding band. And judging by the expression on Katherine's face, she had finally noticed it. Behind her trailed half the Jackson family looking equally confused, shocked, and curious.

Michael himself looked like a deer caught in headlights. Your eyes met his from across the room. He forgot to take his wedding band off. His expression alone told the whole story, the guilty look, the slight widening of his eyes, the way he suddenly looked everywhere except at you, meanwhile Katherine was still holding his hand up for everyone to see like she'd discovered evidence in a criminal investigation.

The room had gone completely silent now, every Jackson sibling staring at the ring and then at Michael, then back at the ring again.

You watched Michael swallow. He watched you. Neither of you said a word. Janet was the first one to piece it together.

Her mouth slowly fell open as she looked from Michael to you, then down at your own hand where your wedding band sat plain as day. Somehow nobody had noticed either of you wearing them until now.

"Oh my god."

Immediately every head turned toward her.

"Oh my god," she repeated louder, pointing between the two of you, "y'all got married.” Janet was the first person to recover from the shock. The second she spotted the matching ring on your hand her entire face lit up and she practically launched herself across the floor. Before you knew it she was wrapping her arms around you in a tight hug, nearly knocking over one of the boxes you'd spent the last ten minutes taping shut.

"Oh my gosh, congratulations!" she squealed, pulling back only long enough to grab your hand. "Look at this ring, it's so pretty."

She immediately started turning your hand back and forth to admire it, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. Meanwhile Michael's brothers looked significantly less shocked than everyone else.

Confused, yes. Offended, they hadn't been told, definitely. But surprised? Not really. Most of them had done something similar at one point or another.

They all exchanged looks as the realization settled in, and honestly the more they thought about it, the more it started making sense. "You know what," Jermaine said, folding his arms, "Congrats we’re all happy for you." Everyone nodded.

Because when it came down to it, most of them understood exactly why he hadn't said anything. Growing up under Joseph Jackson meant learning very quickly that if you wanted something badly enough, sometimes it was easier to just do it first and deal with the consequences later. Or even better, never mention it at all and hope nobody noticed.

Judging by the looks on several faces around the room, that strategy had apparently worked for more than one Jackson sibling.

Michael was standing near a stack of boxes now, one hand shoved into his pocket while the other absently rubbed the wedding band on his finger. The sheepish expression on his face suggested he knew exactly what everyone was thinking.

Katherine sighed and shook her head. "Michael." His shoulders immediately straightened. "Yes mother?"

"You drove across state lines and got married without telling anyone." Michael thought about it for a second. "Technically Bill drove." A nearby box hit him. Janet had thrown a roll of tape.

Michael laughed as it bounced harmlessly off his shoulder.

The room quickly filled with conversation again, everyone demanding details at the same time. Questions were flying from every direction. Who proposed, how long had you been married, where did it happen, who knew, how had nobody noticed the rings.

. . .

The media didn't find out for a long time, honestly longer than either of you expected. Somehow the secret held. Whenever Michael was in public, on stage, at interviews, award shows, anywhere cameras might be pointed at him, the ring came off. Yours stayed tucked beneath gloves sometimes or simply went unnoticed. Besides, neither of you really needed rings to remind yourselves what you were to each other. You'd made those promises already. A piece of metal wasn't going to change that.

Life moved forward after that.

The ranch became home, exactly like Michael had always dreamed it would. Somewhere quieter, somewhere that belonged to the two of you instead of the world. And while Michael continued building his empire, you finally allowed yourself to pursue your own career fully.

For years people had known you as Michael's girlfriend, then quietly as Michael's wife behind closed doors. Now people knew your name for your own accomplishments too. Not as famous as Michael, nobody was.

Nobody on earth was.

But you were successful in your own right, carving out a place for yourself that had nothing to do with who you were married to. It was something Michael had always encouraged. Every magazine, every interview, every achievement, he kept track of them all with ridiculous amounts of pride.

Which was why the moments the two of you actually got together felt so precious now.

Between recording schedules, performances, interviews, meetings, travel, and everything else life kept throwing at you, being in the same room at the same time wasn't nearly as common as it used to be. Tonight was one of those rare nights.

The two of you were stretched out across the living room floor, talking about nothing important. At least you were.

You'd been rambling for several minutes now about work, a recent interview, something one of your coworkers had said. Michael had nodded in all the right places, but you could tell he wasn't fully listening. His head was somewhere else.

You could always tell. His fingers kept tapping absentmindedly against the sole of your foot, his gaze occasionally drifting toward the ceiling before returning to you. The more you watched him, the more obvious it became. Something was on his mind.

Eventually he turned his head toward you.

Without warning, he hooked an arm around your leg and tugged you closer until your shoulder bumped against his. "Don't you think it's time?"

You blinked tilting your head at him. "For what?" Michael hesitated for a second. Not because he was unsure. More because he was trying to figure out how to say it. His fingers traced absent patterns against your ankle. "I mean..." His voice softened. "For us to start a family." The room suddenly felt quieter. Michael looked down at your intertwined legs rather than directly at you. "We've been married two years now."

The same dream he'd talked about sitting beside that swimming pool years ago. The same dream he'd whispered about late at night when neither of you could sleep. The huge house. The family. The kids running "We always said we would," he continued, a little quieter now. "Get married first, then start a family."

His eyes finally lifted to yours. There was hope there. Hope and excitement and maybe a little fear. Not fear of having children. Fear that your answer might not be the same as it was years ago. "We don't have to right this second," he added quickly. "I ain't saying tomorrow or anything."

You immediately smiled. The backtracking had begun. Michael always did this whenever something mattered too much. "I just..." He laughed softly and rubbed a hand across his face. "I think about it a lot." That confession seemed to embarrass him more than anything else. His cheeks tinted pink.

"I think about teaching them things. Taking them places. Reading bedtime stories." A smile tugged at his mouth. "I think about little feet runnin' through the house." His gaze drifted around the room. "This place feels too quiet sometimes." When his eyes returned to yours, they were softer than before. "I think it'd be nice." For a moment neither of you spoke.

You just looked at each other lying there on the living room floor, two people who had spent years chasing careers, building a life together, and somehow finding their way back to this exact conversation.

The one that had always been waiting for them. The one that had started long before the wedding, long before the ranch, long before anyone knew the two of you were married.

Back when a young Michael Jackson sat beside a pool and told you he wanted a big family. And judging by the way he was looking at you now, he still wanted it just as badly.

"It would..."

The answer alone was enough to make Michael's entire face brighten, hope immediately appearing in his eyes before you even finished speaking. For a moment he looked like a little kid being told he could have dessert before dinner.

Then he noticed the hesitation in your voice. His smile softened. "But?" he asked gently.

You let out a long sigh and rolled onto your back, staring up at the ceiling for a moment. This wasn't easy to explain because it wasn't that you didn't want what he wanted.

"I don't know, Michael." Your hands waved vaguely in the air above you as if somehow the right words would appear between your fingers. "I mean... I want a family. I do." Immediately some of the tension left his shoulders.

"But I'm not the same girl I was then." The words hung between you. You turned your head toward him. "Back then it was easy. We were talking about some future that seemed really far away. I wasn't expecting..." You motioned toward yourself. "All this."

The career, the interviews, the opportunities. Everything. You hadn't planned for any of it. You certainly hadn't expected people to know who you were outside of your relationship with Michael. Now your career was finally taking off and every month seemed bigger than the last.

You'd worked for this. Fought for it. And if you were being honest, you weren't ready to walk away from it yet. Not even temporarily. Because you knew what pregnancy would mean. Time away, cancelled projects. The industry didn't exactly wait for anyone.

Michael listened quietly, his fingers still resting against your ankle. He didn't interrupt, didn't argue. Didn't try to change your mind. Instead he just nodded slowly. Like he understood exactly what you were saying. "Yeah," he said softly. "Okay." The disappointment was there.

You could hear it. But there wasn't any resentment behind it. Just understanding. "We're still young." His thumb brushed absentmindedly across your skin. "We got time." You felt some of the tension leave your chest. Michael shifted closer until his shoulder bumped yours. "Just don't forget."

The words came out quieter this time. Not demanding. Not angry. Just honest. "You know I really want a family." You looked over at him. There was something almost vulnerable about the expression on his face. The fame, the records, the tours, all of that disappeared in moments like these.

At his core, Michael was still the same man sitting beside a swimming pool years ago talking about a huge house full of kids. The same dream he'd always had. You reached over and squeezed his hand. "I'm not forgetting."

His smile returned immediately. Not as bright as before. But genuine.  "Okay." He leaned down and pressed a small kiss against your ankle. Then another. You laughed and pulled your leg away.

"Michael."

"What?"

"That tickles."

A grin spread across his face. The kind that usually led to trouble. Before you could react, he grabbed your ankle again and kissed it repeatedly just to annoy you. You immediately started laughing, trying to kick him away while he acted completely innocent.

. . .

Michael wasn't angry, at least not at first. He was frustrated. There was a difference. Every time he brought up starting a family, the conversation somehow ended up in the same place. First it had been too soon, then it had been my career is just taking off, then I'm scared, and every excuse sounded reasonable on its own. He knew that. He wasn't blind to your concerns.

But after two years, then almost three, it was getting harder and harder for him not to wonder if the answer was simply no. The worst part was that he couldn't even be mad at you for chasing your dreams. He knew exactly what it felt like to work your whole life for something. Still, a small part of him couldn't help thinking that if he was willing to slow down for a family, why couldn't you? The argument had started the same way most arguments did.

Quietly then it got bigger. Now you were walking away from him down the hallway while he followed close behind, both of you talking over each other. "That's not what I'm saying," you snapped. "Then what are you saying?" Michael shot back, frustration finally slipping into his voice. "Because every time I bring it up, there's another reason."

You kept walking. Michael sped up until he was beside you. "Come on, talk to me." When you didn't answer immediately, he reached out and wrapped his hand around your wrist, stopping you before you could disappear into another room. "You knew this is what I wanted when we got married," he said, his voice quieter now but no less frustrated. "So why are y'acting like this?"

You spun around. Immediately he knew he shouldn't have said it like that. The look on your face told him everything. "I'm not acting like anything."

"Then tell me what it is."

"I already have."

"You keep changing the answer." The words came out sharper than he intended. For a moment neither of you spoke. The silence sat heavily between you. Then your frustration finally boiled over.

"You're being annoying." Michael blinked. You immediately kept going before he could respond. "You know not all of us were famous as kids and can just step back and expect people to wait." The second the words left your mouth, you wished you could grab them out of the air and shove them back in.

Your eyes widened. Michael's expression changed instantly. Not dramatically. That would've been easier. Instead it was subtle. The frustration disappeared. The hurt settled in. His hand slipped from your wrist.

For a second he simply stared at you. You could practically see the moment the comment landed. Because out of all the things you could've said, you'd managed to hit one of the deepest insecurities he had. The idea that people only saw his success and never the sacrifices. The pressure. The childhood he never got to have. The fact that he'd never really been allowed to step away in the first place. "Michael, I didnt.." He took a step back.

"Don’t act like it was an accident." You hated how quiet his voice sounded. "That's not what I meant."

"Right." His jaw tightened. "Alright then."  The words were barely above a mumble. There was no yelling. No dramatic outburst because Michael wasn’t that type of person. That made it worse. Michael simply looked away, nodding once as though he was trying to convince himself he didn't care.

Then he turned around. You watched him walk away, your stomach dropping with every step. Because you'd been together long enough to know the difference between when Michael was angry and when he'd actually been hurt. And this time, you'd hurt him.

You followed after him immediately.

"Michael, you know me. I didn't mean that." He didn't answer. That alone made your chest tighten. Usually Michael talked. Even when he was upset he'd explain himself eventually, he'd ramble, he'd defend himself, he'd say something. This silence was worse.

You hurried after him as he headed for the staircase. "Michael." Nothing. His shoulders were tense beneath his shirt, his hand gripping the railing tightly as he climbed the stairs. That's when you noticed it. His hand was shaking.

Not from anger. From emotion. The realization made you feel even worse. "Michael, look at me." He laughed softly. Not because anything was funny. The sound was bitter. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet enough that you almost missed it.

"Do I know you anymore?" The question hit harder than any yelling would've. Your feet stopped on the stairs. For the first time since the argument started, Michael turned around. His eyes looked glossy. Not enough to cry.

Enough to tell you he'd been hurt. "You knew what I wanted when we got married," he said, staring at you from several steps above. "You knew."

"I still do."

"Then why's it always somethin' else?"

His voice cracked slightly. "First it was a year. Then another year. Then your career. Then you were scared." You opened your mouth. He shook his head before you could speak. "And maybe those are real reasons. Not sayin they arent" His gaze dropped to the stairs for a moment. "But every time I think we're gettin' closer, the finish line moves again."

The honesty in his voice made your stomach twist. Because he wasn't trying to win an argument anymore. He was telling you what he'd actually been feeling. "I don't need ten kids tomorrow," he continued, rubbing a hand across his face. "I just need to know we're still walkin' toward the same thing."

Silence. "I married you because I loved you." His voice softened. "And because we wanted the same things." The words weren't cruel. That somehow made them hurt more. You could hear the confusion underneath them, like he genuinely didn't know where he stood anymore. "Michael..." He looked away again.

"'M going upstairs." The sentence came out exhausted, not angry. Just tired. Like he didn't have the energy for another argument. He turned before you could stop him, continuing up the stairs toward the second floor. You remained where you were for a few seconds, watching him disappear around the corner.

The worst part wasn't that he'd yelled. The worst part was that he hadn't.Because Michael only got this quiet when something had cut deeper than he wanted to admit.

 You'd felt horrible afterward, and for a while you genuinely tried to fix things. You apologized more times than you could count, tried catching Michael alone, tried starting conversations whenever the opportunity presented itself, but every attempt seemed to end before it even began. He avoided you like the flu. If you walked into a room, he'd find a reason to leave it. If you sat down nearby, he'd suddenly remember somewhere else he needed to be.

At first it hurt. Then it frustrated you. Then eventually it became normal. Somewhere along the way the two of you fell into a routine neither of you wanted to admit existed. You lived in the same house, slept under the same roof, shared the same life, but somehow managed to orbit around each other without ever actually connecting. It was exhausting.

His family noticed, of course. There was no way they wouldn't. The tension followed both of you everywhere. Janet looked concerned every time she saw either of you. Katherine seemed permanently worried. Even his brothers, who usually preferred staying out of relationship drama, eventually got tired of watching the two of you act ridiculous.

Which was how you ended up here. Trapped in a room with the entire Jackson family because they'd apparently decided enough was enough. Nobody had actually called it an intervention. But that's exactly what it was.

You'd already apologized. Over and over again. What else was there? "Seriously?" Jermaine asked.  Nothing. "Y'all are married." Silence. "You live together. You share a house."

You scoffed, sinking further into the couch cushions as your arms folded across your chest. "Yeah, well tell that to him," you spat, turning your head to glare directly at Michael.

Immediately half the room groaned.

You knew you weren't helping. You knew that. Somewhere deep down a reasonable part of your brain was screaming at you to stop talking before you made everything worse, but after months of being ignored, months of feeling invisible in your own marriage, all that hurt was bubbling over.

Across the room Michael's head snapped toward you. The glare he sent back could've set you on fire. "You're so insufferable," he shot back, shaking his head. "I swear, you don't even know how to be an adult." The room immediately went still. Janet actually covered her face. "Oh God," Randy muttered. You sat up straighter.

"Oh please, Michael," you laughed bitterly, "you've been ignoring me for months. If anything, I'm the adult in this situation."

His jaw tightened. For a second he just stared at you like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Then he laughed. Not because anything was funny. The kind of laugh people let out when they're so frustrated they don't know what else to do. "The adult?" he repeated. "The adult?"

"Yes."

"You expect me to talk to you after what you said?" Your expression hardened immediately. "How many times do I have to apologize?"

"That ain't the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"The point is every time something gets hard you say sorry and expect everything to magically disappear."

"No, seriously." He sat forward now, all the frustration he'd been bottling up for months finally slipping through the cracks. "You hurt me and then acted like saying sorry should fix everything."

"What was I supposed to do?" you demanded. "Get on my knees and beg?"

"I wanted you to understand why it hurt!"

"I do understand!"

"No, you dont."

The room had completely given up trying to intervene at this point. Everyone was simply watching. Months of unresolved tension were pouring out all at once. "You think I don't know what I said was wrong?" you snapped. "You think I haven't been miserable?"

Michael immediately stood. The movement was so sudden it startled everyone. His hands were shaking again. The same way they had the night of the argument. "You know what?" he muttered, grabbing the back of a nearby chair. "Forget it."

"Michael."

"No." His voice cracked slightly. "You want me to grow up? Fine. Here's the grown-up answer." He looked directly at you. For the first time in months there was no avoidance, no pretending, no looking away.

"You knew what I wanted when I married you. You knew how important it was to me. Then every time I brought it up, it became another excuse, another reason to wait, another promise pushed down the road." Your stomach dropped. The room had gone completely silent.

"And then when I finally got frustrated," he continued, his voice quieter now, "you made it sound like everything I've done in my life came easy."

"Michael."

"Be serious."

His head shook. "Just... be serious and grow up." The words weren't nearly as harsh as the exhaustion behind them. Because suddenly he looked tired. Tired of having the same argument over and over again. Without waiting for a response, he turned and headed for the door.

"Michael," Katherine warned.

"I'm done mother."

"Michael." But he was already leaving. The door shut behind him, leaving the entire room sitting in stunned silence. A few moments passed before Jermaine let out a long sigh and dropped his head back against the couch.

"Well," he muttered, "that somehow went worse than I expected." Nobody disagreed. "I'm going upstairs. Don't follow me."

Your voice sounded hollow, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with work or lack of sleep. You didn't wait for a response, didn't look back to see anyone's reaction. Instead you stood from the couch and walked out of the room before anyone could stop you.

The truth was you looked just as miserable as Michael had.

Neither of you were winning.

Neither of you were happy.

The argument hadn't solved anything.

It had only ripped open wounds that had been festering for months.

After that, things somehow got worse.

The silence that had once been awkward slowly became permanent.

You both threw yourselves into work with almost frightening intensity. Michael started taking on more projects, more meetings, more recording sessions. Every time you looked at his schedule it seemed fuller than before. You knew exactly why.

He was avoiding you. The painful part was that you were doing the exact same thing. It was easier to be busy. Months passed that way. Whenever one of you was home, the other was somewhere else.

You stopped asking where he was. He stopped asking where you were going. Eventually the distance became something you carried around so long it almost started feeling normal. Almost.

Which was why the question hit you like a truck.

You were in Europe for a series of appearances and events, running on very little sleep and even less patience. The morning had started normally enough. Security escorting you through the hotel lobby, managers discussing schedules beside you, cameras flashing as you stepped outside.

Paparazzi weren't unusual. At this point they were practically background noise. What was unusual was the crowd. The sheer amount of them. The second the hotel doors opened, a wall of photographers surged forward. Flashbulbs exploded from every direction.

Voices shouted over one another. Your security immediately tightened around you. At first you barely paid attention. Then a microphone was suddenly shoved so close to your face you almost walked into it. Questions started flying.

Most of them blurred together. Until one didn't. 

"How do you feel about Michael Jackson hiring a surrogate to carry his child instead of you?"

Everything stopped. At least inside your head. The world around you kept moving. Cameras kept flashing. People kept shouting. Security kept pushing forward. But your brain froze.

"What?" The word never even left your mouth. Another voice immediately followed.

"Is your relationship over?"

"Are you two separated?"

"Did he tell you about the baby?" Your stomach dropped. The crowd suddenly sounded miles away. Your body kept moving on instinct while your mind struggled to catch up. A surrogate? A child? What were they talking about? Your security team was already guiding you toward the waiting vehicle, creating a barrier between you and the growing crowd.

Questions followed you the entire way. Each one somehow worse than the last.

"Did Michael leave you?"

"Did he choose a surrogate because you refused?" You climbed into the car without answering a single thing. The door slammed shut. Instant silence. For several seconds nobody inside the vehicle spoke.

Your manager was saying something. Security was saying something. You couldn't hear any of it. Your heart was pounding too loudly. Because there was only one thought repeating itself inside your head. What surrogate?

Michael hadn't mentioned a surrogate. Michael hadn't mentioned a child. Michael hadn't mentioned anything.

You felt like you were walking through a haze for the rest of the day.

The interviews blurred together. Conversations went in one ear and out the other. People kept asking if you were alright and every time you answered automatically, telling them you were just tired.

Tired.

That was easier than explaining the knot twisting itself tighter and tighter in your stomach. By the time evening came around you'd already made up your mind. The final event of the night was canceled, your team protested and your manager was unpleased. You didn't care. The only thing that mattered now was getting home.

The worst part wasn't even the possibility of a surrogate. It was that he'd done it without telling you. That somehow things had gotten so bad between the two of you that he no longer felt the need to include you in decisions that big.

The thought made your chest ache. By the time the plane landed you were exhausted. You'd crossed time zones, barely slept, barely eaten, and spent the entire trip replaying every conversation you'd had with Michael over the past year.

Still, none of that stopped you from heading straight for the ranch. Luckily he was home. The ranch was unusually quiet when you arrived, the familiar halls almost eerie after weeks of hotels and crowds and cameras. You moved through the house quickly, barely acknowledging the staff who greeted you.

Michael was sitting in the bedroom. Your bedroom. Or at least it used to be. The room neither of you had really shared in months. For a second you simply stood in the doorway staring at him. He looked up. Surprised and confused. He clearly wasn't expecting you home.

Then all the hurt you'd been holding together for the past twelve hours finally cracked. The newspaper in your hand hit the bed with a loud slap. Michael flinched. His eyes dropped to the front page. Immediately his expression changed.

Not guilt. Recognition. Like he'd already seen it. Which somehow made your stomach drop even further. "Michael." Your voice came out weaker than you'd intended. "Say it's not true."

The words sounded more like a plea than a demand. For the first time since arriving home, you realized how desperate you sounded. Your eyes burned, you hated it. "Please."

Michael stared at you for a moment, his hands ran down his thighs awkwardly. Then he slowly stood for a second neither of you moved. The room felt painfully quiet. "That's why you came home?" His voice was soft. 

"Don't try to avoid my question."

Your brows furrowed as you stared at him from across the room, exhaustion and hurt mixing together into something ugly. You'd flown across continents, canceled events, spent hours trapped on a plane with nothing but your own thoughts, and now he was standing there looking everywhere except at you.

"Tell me to my face." Michael bit the inside of his cheek.

For a few seconds he said nothing, his eyes dropping toward the newspaper spread across the bed. The headline seemed ridiculous now, sitting there in black ink between the two of you. Months ago it would've sounded impossible. Now neither of you knew what was impossible anymore.

"It's true," he finally said, his voice quiet. "But I was gonna tell you when you came back."

You felt like you were gonna pop a vessel. "When I came back?" you repeated, staring at him in disbelief. "Michael, are you hearing yourself right now?"

He immediately shook his head and ran a hand through his curls, frustration written all over his face. "It wasn't planned, alright? Debbie offered and I... I wasn't thinkin'. I didn't know the media was gonna find out."

The explanation only made you angrier. "Don't. Don't sit there and make it sound like I'm the problem." His head snapped up at that. "That's not what I'm sayin'."

"It sounds exactly like what you're saying." Your hands flew up as you paced across the room. "You knew the media would find out eventually. They find out everything. Everything. Are you serious right now? I got ambushed outside my hotel by hundreds of photographers asking me questions I couldn't answer because apparently my husband made a life-changing decision without telling me."

The volume of your voice kept rising despite your efforts to stay calm.

"I had to cancel events, Michael. I had to get on a plane and fly home because people are running around saying our marriage is over and I don't even know if they're wrong."

Michael's jaw tightened. For a moment he simply stared at you. Then something in him seemed to snap. "That's what you care about?"The interruption caught you off guard. He took a step forward, shaking his head.

"The media? Your events? Your deals?" His voice was rising now too, months of bottled-up frustration finally surfacing. "You realize how selfish that sounds?"

You stared at him.

"Selfish?"

"Yes, selfish."

His hands were shaking again, the same way they always did when he got emotional. The same way they had the night of your first big argument. "Because that's all it's been about for years. Your career. Your schedule. Your opportunities. Every time I tried talking about our future it became about your career."

Your mouth fell open.

"That's not fair and you know it."

"Isn't it?" he shot back immediately. "Every conversation ended the same way. Not now, Michael. Maybe next year, Michael. My career, Michael."

"Because I worked hard for this!" The words echoed through the room. "So did I!" The answer came just as fast. For a second neither of you spoke. The silence that followed felt heavier than the shouting. Michael looked away first, laughing bitterly as he rubbed his face.

"You think I don't know what sacrifice looks like?" he asked. "You think I don't understand putting your dreams first? I spent my whole life doin' that." His eyes finally met yours. "And I still wanted a family."

The hurt in his voice made your stomach twist. Not because he was wrong. Because he genuinely believed what he was saying. Because he'd been carrying this around alone for months. "You never cared about starting a family."

The accusation hit like a slap. Immediately your expression hardened. "Don't do that." "You didn't."

"Michael."

"You didn't."

His voice cracked.

Not from anger.

From hurt.

Years of hurt.

"I wanted that with you."

You took a step toward him, your own voice breaking now.

"I married you, didn't I? I built a life with you."

"Then why'd it always feel like I was the only one still waiting for it?" You both went silent.

The argument had long since stopped making sense. Neither of you were talking about the surrogate anymore, or the media, or even the family you were supposed to have. Months of hurt had piled on top of each other until neither of you could tell where the original problem ended and the new ones began. The room felt suffocatingly quiet after all the shouting, the kind of silence that only came after people had said too much and still somehow not enough.

Michael stood near the door staring at the floor. He looked exhausted. Not angry, not frustrated, not even defensive anymore. Just exhausted. The fight seemed to have drained every ounce of energy from him. His shoulders were slumped, his curls falling into his face as he rubbed a hand over his eyes.

"This isn't working. We aren't working," he finally said.

The words settled heavily between you both. They weren't shouted. They weren't thrown out to hurt you. If anything, they sounded like something he'd been trying not to admit for a very long time. Michael swallowed hard before continuing, his voice dropping even lower. He said he didn't want to argue anymore, that he was tired of fighting, tired of every conversation ending the same way. Then he turned toward the door and quietly said he'd sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight.

Before you could stop yourself, before you could think about whether it was the right thing to say, bitterness spoke for you.

"Yeah, run like you always do."

The moment the words left your mouth, the atmosphere in the room changed.

Michael stopped walking.

For several long seconds he didn't move at all. His back remained turned toward you as his shoulders rose and fell with a slow breath. Then another. You watched his hands clench at his sides. Watched him stand perfectly still as if he was trying to keep himself together.

When he finally turned around, the look on his face made your stomach drop.

You expected anger.

Expected him to yell.

Expected another round of arguing.

Instead, he looked heartbroken.

His jaw was clenched so tightly it trembled. His eyes were red around the edges, glossy with tears he clearly hadn't meant to let anyone see. There wasn't any anger left in his expression. There wasn't enough energy for anger anymore. There was only hurt.

The kind of hurt that settles into someone's bones.

The kind of hurt that comes from being disappointed too many times.

For a moment he simply stared at you. The silence stretched so long it became painful. Then he laughed softly, a sound completely devoid of humor. It sounded more like someone trying desperately not to cry.

"I'm done."

The words were quiet.

Painfully quiet.

Not spoken as a threat.

Not spoken as a punishment.

Just spoken as a fact.

Like he was finally admitting something he'd spent months trying to ignore.

His hand dragged over his face as he shook his head. He said he was tired. Not tired from work or touring or interviews. Tired from this. Tired of arguing. Tired of hurting. Tired of feeling like every conversation ended with both of you further apart than before.

When he looked back up at you, there were tears sitting in his eyes.

"You're not the same person anymore."

The sentence seemed to hurt him as much as it hurt you. You could see the regret immediately afterward. See it in the way his face twisted. But he didn't take it back.

"And maybe I'm not either."

His voice cracked. For the first time all night, neither of you interrupted each other. Neither of you argued. Neither of you tried to defend yourselves.

Michael's gaze stayed fixed on you and when he spoke again his voice sounded so broken it almost didn't sound like him.

"I miss my wife."

The words hit harder than anything else he'd said. Harder than the shouting.. Because he wasn't saying it like you were standing right in front of him. He was saying it like you'd already left. Like he was grieving someone who was still alive.

"I miss you, bunny." he admitted. "I miss talking to you. I miss hearing about your day. I miss when you'd come find me just because you wanted to be around me. I miss making you laugh. I miss staying up all night talking about nothing. I miss when we actually wanted to be together."

Michael looked down for a moment as if he physically couldn't keep looking at you while saying these things. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper.

"I don't know where she went."

And that was exactly why this hurt so much.

When he looked back up, there was something defeated in his expression. Like he'd finally reached the end of his strength. Like he'd spent months trying to hold onto something that kept slipping through his fingers.

"This isn't a marriage anymore."

The words came out broken.

His shoulders shook slightly as he exhaled.

For a second it looked like he might take it back. Like he might walk across the room and pull you into his arms and tell you he didn't mean any of it. But he didn't.

Instead he stood there with tears on his face and years of love in his eyes and quietly whispered the one thing neither of you ever thought you'd hear.

"I want a divorce."

The sentence seemed to physically hurt him.

Like it tore something apart inside his chest just to say it. The room fell silent afterward. Neither of you moved or spoke. You simply stared at each other across the bedroom, surrounded by years of memories and promises and dreams that suddenly felt fragile.

And looking at him now, looking at the man who once drove across state lines because he couldn't wait another day to marry you, it didn't feel like the end of an argument.

It felt like watching the future the two of you had built together collapse right in front of you.

"Fine."

The word slipped out before you could stop it. There was no anger behind it anymore, no bitterness, no fight left to fuel it. It sounded exhausted. Hollow. Like something pulled from the deepest part of you after months of carrying around hurt that had never properly healed.

You couldn't bring yourself to look at him.

Instead, you turned away completely, your eyes focusing on a spot somewhere across the room while your fingers found the wedding ring sitting on your hand. Your thumb rubbed over the familiar band again and again, tracing its edges absentmindedly. It had become a nervous habit over the years, something you did without thinking. Back then it used to make you smile.

 Back then it reminded you of a courthouse several states away, of a nervous Michael whose hands shook as he slid it onto your finger, of promises whispered between laughter and happy tears.

You stood there staring ahead while memories forced themselves into your mind. The proposal beside the pool. The way Michael's face had lit up when you'd said yes. The secret wedding. The road trip before sunrise. The nights spent talking until neither of you could keep your eyes open. The dreams you'd built together so casually because neither of you ever imagined a future where those dreams wouldn't happen.

Forever had seemed so easy back then, you'd both been so certain. So convinced that love alone could carry you through anything. Behind you, Michael didn't move. He remained standing exactly where he was, staring at your back.

Waiting. 

Maybe some part of him was still hoping you'd stop him. Maybe he was waiting for you to turn around and tell him you didn't mean it. Maybe he was waiting for himself to take back everything he'd just said.

The problem was that neither of you seemed capable of reaching the other anymore. Too much had happened and many conversations left unfinished. Too many nights spent sleeping angry. The silence stretched on.

Seconds passed then minutes. Neither of you moved. Neither of you spoke. You could feel him standing there. And despite everything, despite the arguments and resentment and heartbreak, you still loved him. You knew you always would.

Love had never been the problem. Somewhere along the way you'd simply stopped understanding each other. Behind you, Michael's eyes never left your back.

His chest hurt actually hurt.

Because despite everything he'd said, despite asking for a divorce, despite convincing himself for months that this was what needed to happen, some foolish part of him had still hoped.

He'd hoped you would stop him. He'd hoped you would turn around. hoped you would tell him he was wrong. Instead all he could see was your hand twisting the wedding ring around your finger while you refused to face him.

The realization felt like something breaking inside his chest. His gaze drifted around the room. Photographs sat scattered across dressers and shelves of you two. 

There was one from Neverland where you'd both been laughing so hard neither of you had noticed the camera. Another from a vacation neither of you had planned properly. One from a birthday where frosting somehow ended up all over Michael's face.

Michael swallowed hard. His vision blurred. For a moment he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, tears were sliding down his face. He wiped them away immediately. Not because he was embarrassed. The tears just came anyway.

He thought about the life he'd imagined, children running through the halls of the ranch. Family dinners. Growing old together. The future he'd talked about since he was young. Every version of that future had included you.

Every single one. The thought that none of it was going to happen made him feel physically sick. His voice was so quiet when he finally spoke that it almost disappeared into the room.

He admitted that he'd missed you, he'd missed you for months.

He missed hearing about your day. He missed sitting beside you doing absolutely nothing. He missed the way you'd seek him out just because you wanted to be near him. He missed laughing with you. He missed feeling like he was your favorite person in the world.

You missed him too.

You missed the version of him that would pull you into conversations about absolutely nothing. You missed his excitement whenever he got a new idea. You missed finding him asleep in random places around the ranch because he'd worked himself too hard again.

You missed your husband. The problem was that missing someone didn't always tell you how to save them. The room remained silent after that. Michael waited.

One final time. But nothing happened.

You didn't turn around. You couldn't.

Because if you did, you weren't sure you'd survive seeing the look on his face. Eventually Michael nodded to himself. The movement was small. A quiet acceptance. Then he turned toward the door.

His hand settled on the doorknob and remained there for a moment. The room was so quiet that he could hear himself breathing. You still didn't turn around. Then the door opened.

A second later it closed softly behind him. The click echoed through the room.

And standing there alone with your wedding ring still wrapped around your finger, the silence that followed felt unbearable, because for the first time since the marriage you felt lonely.

Mourning something you'd never had proved itself to be an impossible cruelty. The kind that tormented the soul deep into the night and refused to give back the part of yourself you hadn't realised you'd lost until you suddenly found yourself grieving it so deeply, time slips away.

In some ways, it felt like trying to catch snow in your bare hads only to have it melt the moment the icy substance makes contact with your warm flesh.

Realistically, she knew it was okay to feel the intense loss that she'd encountered fourteen days ago, but there was something in the back of her mind telling her she didn't have the right. It wasn't like something had been taken from her. She never had it to begin with.

But that's the thing about hope, it clings to your body like an uninvited shadow and makes a fool out of optimism.

The hours seemed to drag along. While her days hadn't really changed in the grand scheme of things, it now felt like the lights had been dimmed, as though the sun was taunting her from outside the world she lived. Things she thought she knew suddenly made no sense, plans she had made fell flat and in an instant, the future she'd envisioned for herself no longer existed.

Motherhood wouldn't have been the only factor in life she'd define herself with, but God, had she wanted it. The thought of growing her baby, keeping it safe within herself until it was ready to show the world the beauty it would bring had been her dream for so long, she couldn't have imagined a life where it didn't happen.

Years prior, when she was only a child heself, she was that little girl, the one who would carefully carry a baby doll around in her arms at all times and care for it as though it was real. Older generations would look at her and smile, giving a condescending, "aww, she'll be a great mom when she's old enough."

At the time, it felt harmless. Now when she thought about it, her insides ached with a pain she had never known existed.

She wanted to be a mother so bad, it physically hurt.

When she started dating Michael, back in 1982, she's never imagined life would turn out this way.

For a start, she hadn't known his fame would sky rocket the way it had. She'd known him to be talented and expected great things, but being the most famous person to exist, second to Jesus Christ himself, felt like a huge reach, but it was true.

His name rang across the globe. He didn't just have fans, he had subjects, people who were willing to do anything and everything for him just to spend a moment in his company.

Their realtionship was deep and complex. They understood one another in ways others didn't. She saw beyond the fame and got down to the man behind the curtain. He saw a women who had so much to offer the world and encouraged her to spread her wings. The first few years of knowing each other, things had been turbulent. Their paths intertwined and then veered off path, only to circle back around until they found each other once again.

A delicate balance of on and off until a year an a half ago when Micharl had decided he couldn't do it anymore. So scared of losing her and despising the idea of living a life without her, he had gotten down on one knee in the flower gardens of Neverland and asked her to take his surname and become his wife. No more breaks, no more, "when the time is right."

They'd gotten married shortly after and it had been the best decision she had ever made. Loving Michael came easily. He was everything she every wanted. Kind, driven, loyal, but above all else, he loved children just as much as she did. So when he requested they start trying for a baby on their honeymoon, she'd immediately agreed, eager to begin a family with the man she loved.

Envisioning a child with his eyes and smile, there was nothing she craved more. She hadn't even flinched when he droned on and on about the huge family he wanted. She wanted it too and for a while, it felt as though that dream was in reach.

The then waiting came.

One week. A month. Two. Six. A year.

Something wasn't right. It didn't matter what they did, how many times he had buried himself her, what position they laid in or what old wives tales they tried, every single test came back negative and with each negative result they recieved, a piece of her heart broke along with it.

Unable to live without answers, they'd both taken the medical route, subjecting themselves to rigorous testing for any fertility issues and holding one another at night, whispering soft echoes of reassurances to each others ears to rid themselves of any negative thoughts before the results came through.

Then it dropped.

The bomb that dismantled her from the inside out.

Asked to return back to the medical facility, the couple held hands as they were told the cause of their problems. Michael was perfectly okay. On paper, he could and should be able to do his part in crafting life.

She was the issue.

The words sank in at an alarming rate, so much so that even a fortnight later, she would still recite them in her darkest nightmares.

"Missus Jackson, your infertility issues appear to be linked to several factors." The doctor has spoken in a cool, matter of fact tone. "The scans suggest polycystic ovary syndrome, this is something that can disrupt ovulation, and there is evidence of scarring in one fallopian tube from a past infection. We also found small uterine fibroid that may also be affecting implantation."

The world fell silent in that moment, the air that had once been warm and inviting suddenly fell into a icy chill. If it wasn't for Michael's hand clutching desperately onto her own, she wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't have broken into a thousand tiny shards.

The doctor had continued to talk, but after that diagnosis, nothing else sank in. She caught the back end off the conversation before they left.

Basically, they could keep trying, but with everything stacked against her, it was incredibly unlikely she would ever be able to conceive children of her own.

Returning home that night had been particularly odd.

For a while, neither of them said a word. Then, seemingly out of no where, the silence had been broken by a deverstaing roar of tears.

Michael sat on the sofa, sobbing a deverstatingly painful cry into her lap, clinging onto her like he would lose her if he'd dare to let go. The hope of the future they both thought they'd have was suddenly so different and so she comforted him through the tears, unable to process the news herself as she sat there completely numb.

In bed that night, he held her tight, like he was terrified at any moment someone would rip her from is grasp or as though his love alone could somehow change their fate and they'd wake up the next day to hear from the doctor that they'd mixed up the results and she actually could carry children.

Obviously, that hadn't happen.

When they woke up the next morning, the same outcome greeted them.

Two weeks later and not much had changed.

They hadn't spoken about it. Not really.

Moments of sadness lingered, where they would look at each other on occasion and remember the crux of their problems. Neither knew how to address it, so they simply didn't.

Standing in the full length mirror of her closet, looking back at the reflection that reminded her so much of a women who was once blinded with a sense of hopefullness, now she only saw a void. A faux expression forced upon her face so no one could see the cracks beneath.

She hadn't told anyone. No one other than Michael and he's supported her. So much of their lives had been sensationalised by the greedy media. This couldn't be something they let slip. Not right now.

Closing the clasp on the dainty gold necklace around her throat, she had failed to notice the bedroom door opening. Completely in her own world as she flattened the metallic pendant against her collarbones, she was only alerted to another presence in the room when she heard the familiar dip of the mattress springs.

In the mirror, tired eyes lifted to the sight behind her. Michael, already dressed in some fine collared shirt, the gold and red detailing against the dark obsidian of the base material giving him a regale elegance she would find pretentious in any other man, yet for him fit perfectly.

Their eyes met and he offered her a small, soft smile, the kind that told her everything would be okay and like always, she felt compelled to believe it.

They'd gotten his far, hadn't they?

His knees parted, arms held wide and with a small crook of his fingers, he requested her presence.

"Baby, come here." He spoke, less like a demand and more like a plea. "I want to talk to you about something."

With no reason to object, she gave one last glance at her reflection, sighing at the dull sight that greeted her and then crossed the carpeted floor towards him.

Michael didn't hesitate one bit. The moment she stepped into his orbit, his arms fell around her waist and tugged her closer until her hands fell against his shoulder. They hadn't been intimate since the news, but the affectionate way he looked up towards her as her gaze flickered down hadn't changed.

"Is everything okay?" She asked, not all too worried when he was looking at her that way.

Embarking on his Dangerous world tour in less than a month, her assumptions quickly fell to the technicalities that regarded such planning.

While true he loved his fans, Michael absolutely detested touring and it was no secret to those that surrounded him.

After the Bad tour reached it's conclusion, he'd been insistent that he would never tour again. It wss too much. The travel, the sleepless nights, the energy and perfomances. Not to mention fans fainting every night, the lack of stability and perfectionist in him screaming in his mind when one simple thing didn't go right.

He couldn't subject himself to that again.

Then one day, he decided he absolutely would.

Not for himself, but to raise money for disadvantaged children.

Every cent he earned from the Dangerous world tour would go straight into his Heal The World foundation to help people across the globe.

Naturally, her mind ran to that. With the opening night fast approaching, she assumed his nerves had started to surface and with an gently stroke of her fingers against his broad shoulders, she attempted to sooth his aching muscles.

"You can tell me anything." She assured after a moments silence.

Brown doe eyes fell towards the plush carpet before he dared look back at her and when he did, his hold on her waist tightened a fraction.

"I've been speaking to Debbie Rowe." He began, noting the confusion on her face. "You know, she said she'd be willing to help."

Head tilted downward, she strained to hear his voice. The more he spoke, the less things made sense. Brows pinched together, mouth opened in a subtle act of perplexity.

She knew the name. She'd met the women. But what the hell did she have to do with touring?

"Debbie Rowe..." she spoke, her words lingering in the air around them. "your nurse?"

"Yeah."

"Willing to help with what exactly?"

His gaze softened, his fingers leaving smoothing patterns beneath the knitt, blue sweater she'd stolen from his closet earlier than morning.

"You know... our problem."

His eyes widened a fraction and thought it was a blink and you'll miss it moment, she noticed the way his gaze subtlety dropped to her stomach making this whole conversation much clearer than any words he used.

A wave of nausea washed over her and immediately her own hands fell from his body.

This wasn't a simple conversation. This was torture on a level she had never imagined he would subject her to.

"What do you mean? You've been talking to your nurse about this?" Hardly able to believe the words that left his mouth, she stepped back and as she did, his touch fell from her waist, leaving only coldness where his hands had been.

His face fell, lips curved downwards into a frown the second she rejected his grasp, like he had physically burnt her skin with the palm of his hands.

"I mean, she's a friend too and I was just looking for someone to talk to, you know?" His words fast in pace, in a quick attempt at rationalising what he'd uttered. "Air out my frustrations and-"

"Your frustrations?" She cut him off, scoffing at the lack of empathy in which he chose to show.

"Yeah... you know, about the whole... infertility thing."

A firey ring of anger bubbled in her stomach, rising up as his words settled around her. Suddenly, any fraction of rationality escaped her mind and pure outrage took its place.

It felt like an insult, like he was mad at her for something she had no control over.

"You're frustrated I'm infertile?"

The venomous way she spat the words hit him square in the heart and his eyes widened once again, mouth dropped with words he wanted to say but failed to reach his tongue.

Michael had realised the error in the way he approached the conversation, he never had been good at explaining himself, but it was too late now. They were in too deep and he needed to get this off his chest.

"I didn't mean it like that. I meant it like... I'm sad."

Any other time he used that excruciatingly deverstating tone, she would have bucked and rushed right over to console him. She'd only ever wanted things to work out for them, but now she felt the cracks in the ice they stood on starting to form and it was only time before they were plunged into the frigid depths below.

She laughed, actually laughed out loud, but there was no humour in the sound as it reverberated off the walls of their home.

"You were sad." She repeated, rolling her eyes like she was amused by the situation. "So what? You're trying to find some miracle cure here?"

"No." Running a large hand over his face, Michael tried hard to stay calm. "But Debbie... she'd be willing to have my kids."

"What?" She exploded, eyes narrowed in disbelief, her entire body frozen in shock.

"Not how your thinking! No! Nothing like that. Never!" Michael rushed to his feet, hands falling to her upper arms, seemingly almost repulsed by the insinuation. "You know, through a doctors office. She'd be a surrogate."

She wanted to scream until her voice gave out. She wanted to throw herself on the floor like a stubborn toddler, kicking and screaming until she got her own way.

How could he have done this to her?

Breathing heavy, her vision began to cloud through the sheen of tears she swallowed back.

This couldn't be happening.

He looked at her with so much hope in his eyes, willing her to answer so they could start the process and he could finally have everything he wanted. His body so close to her usually only providing her with comfort, but now his presence repulsed her.

Time was relative, but she thought that even he would realise how much of a sore spot this would be for her.

"It's been only been two weeks..."

Her voice soft quite, she hadn't known if he'd heard. The only sound she could hear was the fast pace thumping of her pluse in her ears. His touch lingered, but she no longer felt any peace with it.

"What?"

"Two weeks ago, I found out I can't have children." She uttered in debelif, shaking her head like she still couldn't believe it and stepping back once again, only to watch as his arms fell to his sides.

"Baby-"

Michael tried to reach for her again, but she recoiled, talking over him and trying hard not to sob over his stupid decisions.

"I haven't even processed it properly yet." Voice weak, as though the conversation was physically draining the energy from her with ever word spoke.

"I know."

"I haven't told my family."

"I know." He repeated.

Each 'I know' doing little to sooth the terrible ache rushing through her body.

"...and you're already planning happy families with another women."

The realisation hit her like a bullet to the back. So cruel and sudden, she practically stumbled on her from the impact.

She didn't care that they wouldn't be intimate in order to conceive. She cared that he hadn't even taken her into consideration before asking another women he was seemingly too close with, to carry the children that up until a fortnight ago, she thought would be hers.

"That's not true!" Michael's voice raised, rushed with an effort to assure her that wasn't even close to what he wanted. He loved her. "We'd still be together."

"Together?" She laughed, running a frustrated hand through her hair and huffing in irritation as strands tangled around the diamond of her engagement ring.

"Yes."

"While another women is pregnant with your child."

"It won't change anything." His answer automatically, like he'd already planned this conversation.

For the first time since he dropped the bomb on her, she forced her eyes to meet his. An almost vulnerable look looming within the darkest depths of his gaze and she didn't know if he was actually dumb enough to believe what he had just said, or was simply hoping she was.

"You're not that naive." Stepping into his personal space, she didn't once break eye contact. Not until he looked down at the floor and forced her hand. "A baby changes everything!"

"Why does that have to be a bad thing?"

He didn't understand and why would he? It wasn't him awake throughout the night, cursing the very body he was born with for failing to give him the one thing he so desperately desired. He wasn't questioning his worth as a human being or as a partner.

A piercing gaze spared her way. Now that he was no longer sitting, he no longer had to look up at her in order to see her face. Part of her wanted to run and hide, but she'd vowed for better or worse and this was easily her at rock bottom.

"I know your family." The murmur of her voice broke through the silence, arms folded over her chest with a hand resting against her jaw. It was all getting a little too much now.

Furrowing his brows, Michael tilted his head and shuffled carefully on his feet. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I know you've separated yourself from the Jehovah's Witness lifestyle, but your folks haven't." She sighed heavily, feeling the searing heat of his gaze. "We both know your parents want you to be married to the women carrying your children."

She'd been there when Michael struggled through the guilt of leaving that faith behind. While his belief in God never swayed, his thoughts on that particular practice did have him questioning life.

Still, she saw how it still plagued him, how he made decisions based off the life he was raised in. It's why he still hadn't celebrated Christmas and why he'd yelled at her when she'd splashed out on a particularly fancy watch for his thirtieth birthday.

It wasn't a lack of effort that kept him going back, it was the guilt that threatened to swallow him whole every time he tried to dip a toe into something he'd been taught to believe to be a sin.

Where his siblings had managed to break free, Michael was still somewhat attached.

"That won't matter..." he tried, voice trailing off. "It's surrogacy."

"You don't believe that and I don't believe that it'll just be surrogacy."

She willed him to see reason, to understand where she was coming from, but Michael shook his head in return. Stubborn in nature and used to getting what he wanted, he couldn't let this fall through.

"That's just your mind playing tricks on you." He insisted, burying his hands into the pockets of his black slacks.

"Okay, so tell me this." She began, gaze unwavering in an attempt to decipher every micro expression sitting so pretty across his face. "When Debbie is carrying your baby and your mother is holding the ultrasound pictures... who do you think she's going to call the mother?"

Katherine Jackson was an absolute saint of a women. If heaven was a real place, she was surely an angel sent down to Earth to protect one of God's greatest creations. She absolutely adored the women and always looked to her for guidance.

All this aside, Katherine was of a certain generation, one set in their ways. She wouldn't mean to cause harm, but the moment she heard someone else would be carrying her grandchildren, things would be different.

"No. She wouldn't. I'll tell her-"

With a wave of her hand, she didn't allow Michael to finish. "And once she's pregnant, you'll have Debbie move in..."

"Well, of course." He nodded like it was obvious, like she was foolish for even needing clarification. "I'll have to keep a close eye on her."

She didn't know what he meant by that and she didn't want to find out.

Sharing her space with the women who could do the one thing for her husband she couldn't, all the while knowing it's the only he thing he really wanted would deversate her.

"And that changes things!" She yelled.

"Girl, you're talking crazy."

She's never been a violent woman, but in that moment, she seriously considered lunging forward and strangling him right then and there.

Pacing the floor back and fourth, wearing the carpet thin and bitting down so hard on her lower lip, the blood rushed forward. Every thought in her mind begged for this to be a mistake.

Maybe she was still dreaming or perhaps she had misheard.

Stepping forward, Michael pressed a large grounding hand to her shoulder to stop her steps. Slowly she turned to face him and only then did she see a wash of disappointment paint the sharp contours of his face.

"I need to be a dad!" He admitted, leaving no room for argument.

"I know." She had never wanted to deny him of that.

"No, I don't think you do." It was his turn to get angry. Michael scoffed, stepping away and turning his back to her only to face her again, this time his cheeks red with irritation. "That's all I've ever wanted. For as long as I can remember, that's been the only thing that kept me going. I'm going through with this! There is no other reality for me!"

He didn't shout. He didn't have to. Michael had the ability to speak perfectly calm with authority and when he did, he became the most terrifying person in the room. He wasn't aggressive nor violent, but he knew how to scare people.

The heavy weight of his words lingered in the air and she was forced to confront them, because right now, he wasn't giving her an option. He was demanding something she no longer felt like she was a part of.

"So then, what am I?" Boardering on a whisper, eyes glistening with unshed tears.

"Huh?" His face screwed up in confusion, not understanding the gravity of the question she's thrown his way. "What?"

"What am I if I can't give you that."

The clarity hit harder than he imagined and with a distinct huff, his hands fell against his narrow hips. "You're my wife."

"Am I?" Voice high pitched, eyes wide in debelif. "It sure as hell doesn't feel that way. You're planning on moving another women in without so much as consulting me."

"Stop putting words in my mouth. You know I love you."

"No, actually, I don't." She saw the way his face dropped at the admission, but couldn't allow herself the luxery of stopping long enough to care. "You couldn't even give me a month to wrap my head around this. You instantly found someone else to replace me with and what, I'm supposed to be fine with it."

"You're acting like I'm betraying you."

"You are." She spat, not once feeling sorry for it.

If he'd been wise enough to leave his dark curls down, she knew he would have been hiding his face behind the curtain of black. Unfortunately for Michael, he'd used one of her hair ties this morning and created a low hanging ponytail of sorts. Soft tendrils had fallen loose, but certainly not enough to disguise his expressions.

"No, I'm not." He fought back, hating the accusations thrown at him. Hands moving between them in a frustrated motion. "I'm finally doing something I want."

"Why her?" Unable to hold the question on any longer, it had been plaguing her the moment he uttered those words.

Because that was the thing, Debbie wasn't just another women. She was someone he'd let in. Someone he's gotten close to and trusted.

There weren't many people Michael had in life that he could consider a real companion, someone to guard his secrets and share part of his soul with. Maybe she'd been naive not to question her place in his life. Had she known Debbie had shifted from a nurse into something much more threatening to their marriage, she would have acted sooner.

"What?" Michael almost laughed.

"Why Debbie?" She snapped, no longer dancing around the situation.

Throwing his hands up, it was his turn to start pacing now. "Why does that matter?"

"Because out of every women in the world, you picked her."

"I didn't pick her." He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose between elegant fingers.

"Yes, you did." She spat through gritted teeth. "Plenty of women would offer to have your babies. You're Michael Jackson for crying out loud."

She wasn't saying it was a good idea, God no. If surrogacy was a route they would ever go down, there would be a lot more planning than picking a random fan off the street, but this wasn't a rational conversation and she had a point to prove.

"I know."

"You went to her. You cried to her, told her things you should've been telling me." Heart heavy with the reality crushing their realtionship, holding back tears had never felt so hard. "You've been talking to her about our marriage."

"I wasn't talking about our marriage."

"You were talking about me! My diagnosis!"

And somehow, that was worse because it wasn't about confiding a secret to a friend. It was complaining about a medical mishap, something she couldn't control that had changed their lives forever without her permission.

Not just that, but the women he'd so carelessly trusted with her secret was a women she didn't know and the realisation that he had gone to someone else rather than approach his own wife wouldn't be something she could easily forget.

"That's different." But even he knew that was a weak excuse.

"No." She sniffed. "It really isn't."

"She's my friend." He muttered through a shaky breath. "I need someone to talk to."

And that was it, wasn't it? In his time of need, he hadn't seeked her out, but rather looked for the comfort of another women. It didn't matter if they were intimate or not, because all it proved was that he no longer trusted her to be cautious with his emotions.

She couldn't shake the idea off. The series of events that lead him into the arms of someone that wasn't her. The thought of him crying against someone else's shoulder, clinging to them with flushed cheeks and tear filled eyes as this other women rubbed his back and soothed him until he calmed down. The image made her sick.

"You had a wife! I'm right here." She whispered, her voice barley there.

"You haven't exactly been easy to communicate with."

Time stilled.

Physically, the world continued to spin, but here in the shared space of their home, in the bedroom they had spent so much time loving one another, everything froze.

Her lungs no longer held any purpose, breathless from the cynical spite he'd thrown her way and the worst part is, part of her believed it.

"Wow." She muttered, no longer able to fight back the single tear that left a damp trail along the curve of her cheek.

"I didn't mean-"

"No." For what felt like the tenth time that night, she cut him off. Eyes sharp as a knife and focused in his direction. "Please, don't take it back now. Let me hear it."

"Baby-"

"Tell me, Michael!" She insisted through the heartbreak, slamming her foot down in a demand for answers.

Seeing the torment on her face and her need to actually hear his side of things, he couldn't deny it, no matter how bad he had felt saying it out loud.

"You shut down." He sighed, head in hand. "I tried... you wouldn't talk about it."

Conveniently, it seemed as though he'd forgotten about the night they recieved the news, how she latched onto him and allowed him to cry desperately in her arms for hours while still trying to process the reality of their situation herself.

She knew she wasn't perfect. Maybe he really had tried to speak to her about these things and she had dismissed him. A vague image flickered in her mind two days after the results. He'd cornered her in the kitchen, his arms wrapping around her waist as he mentioned something about starting a family anyway. She'd tuned out. It felt too sudden.

Though she understood Michael was sensitive. At the time, she hadn't thought much of it. Now she realised he probably saw it as a rejection she hadn't intended on giving.

Anger returned.

"I got told I could never carry a child!" She reminded her husband, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists. "Forgive me for needing a while to come to terms with that."

"Yeah, well I was told I'd never be a father."

That wasn't the case at all and he knew it, but Michael wasn't beyond manipulation in order to get what he wanted and what he wanted was to start a family, by any means necessary.

Throwing her hands up in the air, she scoffed in defeat, eyes trained to the ceiling, like she was praying for answers she would never get. "I can't believe this."

"What now?" Michael sighed, kicking the carpet beneath his sock covered feet.

"You think this happened to you." She accused with a subtle understanding laced within each syllable.

"It did happen to me!" He snapped.

"No! It happened to us!" She practically screamed, needing him to see that he wasn't the only one feeling lost. "We could have dealt with it together, given us space and time to come to terms with it and then, maybe we could've looked into adoption or surrogacy... we could've done it together." Without permission, a sob broke through her lips. "But somehow, you've made yourself the victim here."

"I lost something too, you know!" The vulnerability in his words had him shudder.

"What did you lose?" She asked, at a loss with this conversation.

"My children."

"You don't have children." She huffed, rolling her eyes at the poor excuse he conjured up.

"You know what I mean."

It felt as though they were going around in circles, neither person understanding the others point of view and her heart cracked at his ability to be so unknowingly cruel.

"No, actually, I don't think I do." She breathed out a silent cry, wrapping her arms around her stomach like she could physically hold herself from falling apart in front of him. Her pride would never recover. "Because from where I'm standing, the only thing you've actually lost is your faith in me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He enquired, eyes softening with how utterly defenceless she appeared.

"It means, two weeks ago, I recieved a news from a doctors office that broke my heart. " She laughs though the conversation was void of any humour. "Five minutes ago, my husband did the exact same thing before he let me recover from the first injury."

"Stop making me the bad guy." Michael pleaded, wanting to reach out and hold her, but knowing better.

"Then stop acting like one."

"I'm trying to fix this!' He insisted, eyes widening a fraction.

"Fix this?" She questioned, eyebrows arched and mouth settled into a solid line.

"Yes."

"I'm not fucking broken, Michael!" She yelled, holding herself tigher as the pieces threatened to fall. "I'm a person with thoughts and feelings and you're so quick to replace m-"

"I'm not replacing you." He insisted through a heavy breath, tangling his fingers in his tied up hair.

"The second you found out I was infertile, you started imagining another women pregnant with your baby."

"That's not what happened." He shook his head.

"Then tell me how it started."

He said nothing. Not a single word and somehow, that was worse. A look of guilt etched against the soft features his face, something he could probably mask from anyone else, but she had spent ten years loving him. She knew every face and up until now, this one had never really been directed towards her.

Like a stone sinking in her gut, dread filled her from the inside out. He didn't have to say a word. She knew.

"Oh my God." She gasped, hand falling to her mouth. "I'm an idiot."

"What? Don't say that." His voice dropping in tone, quiet and sympathic in a way it hadn't been the entire conversation. "You're not."

The room fell silent for a moment, until she found the courage to speak up.

"You were talking to her before the diagnosis, weren't you?"

The heavy weight of her words only paralleled by the heavy ache in her heart. Her lips quivered and all the while, she watched as he refused eye contact, looking anywhere but at her.

"W-what?" He stuttered. "Of course not."

"Don't stand there and lie to me!"

"I just..." The words trailed off, he couldn't finish the sentence.

"You just what, Michael?" She snapped, tears falling freely now and she had no intentions of wiping them away. He could see exactly what he'd done to her. "Finish the sentence."

Here, he looked less like the legendary pop star the world had come to know and more like a scared little boy, hiding from the bad things that go bump in the night.

Only, he wasn't a child anymore. He was her husband and she could hardly look at him without seeing an act of betrayal as it played out so plainly in front of her.

With a heavy sigh of defeat, he gave in. Tired eyes lifted and the look of anguish on her face was enough to steal the breath from his lungs.

He stepped forward, knowing that if she just let him hold her, he could fix this, but with every step he took upwards her, she took one back. No longer wanting to feel like a predator hunting its prey, he stood still and answered with a guilty nod.

"I was worried, okay?" And he had been, it was just never meant to go this far. "We'd been trying for over a year and the tests... they all came back negative."

A year of failed attempts was enough to exhaust anyone, that she understood. What she would never understand was rushing off to a friend the moment things get bad and planning a whole other life so carelessly.

Her heart cracked inside her chest, breathing became a difficult task. She'd never imagined the person she loved the most would be the one the ruin her so deeply.

"So you already had a backup plan?" She spat.

"No!" Michael combed his fingers through his hair, groaning in frustration.

"You already had her!" She yelled and with a look of shame, neither of them could deny it anymore. The color drained from her face and with the last of her energy, she managed to whisper. "You did."

He knew what he'd done was wrong, but some part of him refused to acknowledge it. Michael wasn't dumb, there was a reason why up until now he'd kept this whole thing under wraps, but it wasn't how she was thinking.

"It wasn't like that." He spoke, eyes locking into hers, just willing her to take a leap of faith and believe in him. "I just needed to know this could happen for me... that I could have children."

"Yeah..." She whispered into the void, wishing for nothing more than to wake up from this nightmare. "you had her waiting in the wings, preparing for the perfect moment to spring this on me."

"Stop."

His usually soft eyed look had hardened. He couldn't take this anymore. The constant back and fourth was enough to drive anyone to the brink of insanity. Every second that moved between them, he could feel the agonising weight of their love story resting on his shoulder. Shallow breathing falling from his rounded lips just to keep him from toppling over and falling to the ground.

"While I was praying." She started, her voice cracking with sadness bleeding into her words.

"Stop!" He repeated, only this was a painfully curated plea more than a soft request.

"Hoping... sitting in waiting rooms." She continued, only torturing herself more as the conversation lingered like dead weight in the air.

"Please, baby..."

"And it only took you two fucking weeks to picture a different women carrying your child." If something heavy had been sitting near by, she would have thrown it across the room just to rid herself of the anger she felt bubbling to the surface. "You couldn't even give me a month."

Scratching the back of his neck, Michael felt the moment his cheeks flushed as embarrassment began to rise to the surface. "That's not fair."

"A fucking month!" She continued, in that same aggressive tone. Frustration lingering like an unwanted compainion, threatening to break free and destroy all that they had built between them.

"Baby-" His fingers flexed on instinct, reaching for her hand and then deciding against it.

Staring at nothing in particular, feet planted to the floor. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on the delicate flesh, unable to process the absolute mess that had become of them.

Worry flooded Michael. Seeing her angry, that was something he could work with. At least then, he knew what she was thinking, how she was feeling and could give her space until she calmed down enough to talk rationality about whatever issues were clouding her judgement.

"Ten years." The words left her mouth, but she barley registered it. All the fight leaving her body now she'd been presented with all the facts.

"What?" Genuinely perplexed, brows furrowed and mouth downturned into a deep frown.

"I've loved you for ten years." She clarified, chest heaving and voice wrecked from the earlier shouting. Utterly defeated as she thought back to a simpler time in life when she truly believed they could get through anything so long as they stayed united. "Yeah, it took us some time to get here, but I thought once we got married, that would be it. We were bound together. Ten years in the making..." crying felt redundant, but she had nothing more to give. "and it took you fourteen days to imagine a future without me in it."

Panic began to set in as he watched the women he'd vowed to protect crumble before him. Her nose pink, eyes unfocused, like if she chanced a glance in his direction, she'd fail to exist within the scrutiny of his gaze.

"I never imagined a future without you." His voice barley that of a whisper, but his eyes urged her to look back and show some sign that she understood his point of view.

"No?" She let out a small laugh, fingers wrapped around the golden pendant sat between collarbones. "Just one where another women plays the part I can't."

Michael physcially recoiled like she's burnt him. He hadn't meant to make her feel like she was easy to replace, but it was obvious he had. Intentions didn't matter when the person you cared for the most suddenly began to look at you like you were a stranger.

"I still want you." He confessed, struggling to understand why she wouldn't see reason.

"No!" She shook her head in protest. "You'll tolerate me. You want the kids more."

"That's not true." But even as he said it, he knew it to be a lie.

"And if Debbie disappeared tomorrow... or I didn't want to go through with surrogacy or adoption. If children were completely off the table forever..." stepping forward, she could finally feel the heat of his body. So close, she could touch him, but couldn't convince herself she should. "would you still choose me?"

The question hung between them and suddenly the air started to feel stale. Her eyes finally found his, his lack of communication prolonging a hefty silence between them.

She didn't need him to say anything. Funnily enough, the words he didn't say communicated more than he ever could.

"Oh." The word fell from her lips without permission and she recoiled, creating more distance between them as she stepped back because finally, she understood.

This wasn't going to work.

As he stood, partially paralysed, watching the life leave her eyes. He knew she was only seconds away from allowing his dumb need to always control the world around ruin everything they'd built in the past decade of life.

"Baby, don't-"

"You're acting liie this is something I want." She scoffed, arms winding around her waist, eyes cast down to the floor.

"I did this for us!" Michael snapped, though his anger was completely misplaced. His desperation to keep her near provoking a side of himself he never wanted to show.

"No." She didn't yell. Her voice perfectly still. "You did this for you."

"Why does it matter? You want kids to. You've always said you couldn't wait to be a mom." Each word spoke with perfect diction, clear and precise. Hands held outwardly to get his point across further and desperation clinging to him like a second skin. "Why are you making this an issue now?"

"Because I needed time to heal... to understand what's going on with me and how to move forward." She wasn't even angry more, crying for the life thought she'd be living instead of the hell she was faced with. "I wanted some input into these huge, life altering decision. I get to decide what's right for me, for our marriage and you just... fuck." A sob broke free and cracked her open. "You took that away from me and maybe it wouldn't hurt as much if you'd been thinking about surrogacy with a stranger, but Debbie?"

"Come on." Michael sighed, tired of repeating himself. "It's not like that."

She said nothing, she barley flinched at the harsh tone of his voice. The world moved around her, but she didn't notice. Feeling like a ghost in her own home, she could no longer deny the distance between them.

Two weeks might has well have been two decades. He didn't see her the way he used to. She wasn't some new, shiny thing he saw for himself in the future. She was something worn down and broken that he was willing to drag along.

For a second, she remained perfectly still, hand held out in front of her and eyes fixed on the beautiful rings decorating her finger. Two bands that had once made her feel so warm and cared for now felt foreign on her skin, a reminder of all the things she could no longer have and the lengths her husband would go to in order to continue living the live he envisioned for himself.

They weren't a unit anymore. They hadn't been the moment he stepped back and discussed plans of impregnating another women behind her back, long before either of them had been tested for any infertility issues.

Having been with him through the good and the bad, she'd seen him at his lowest, sobbing over the vindictive rumours tabloids so carelessly threw his way. She'd seen him overjoyed, his beaming grin so bright it rivaled the light of the sun. She'd held him when he was lonely and cried with him when he was sad. His victories had become her own and his losses hurt her soul so deeply, you'd have thought they were one.

Now standing in front of him, listening to his act of betrayal, she no longer felt like they were bound as man and wife. Physcially, he was in reach. If was wanted to, she could push forward and hold his hand. Emotionally, he'd never felt so distant.

A heavy sigh of defeat past her lips and with a decision made, she watched herself slide the gold engagement and wedding band off her finger.

"No." Michael gasped in a panic, eyes wide and heart thumping frantically in his chest. "No! Don't do that."

"I can't do this." She whispered, placing the rings in his plam, flinching subtly as their fingers made contact and pulling away fast like his touch had scolded her flesh.

"Put them back on." He urged, trying to hand them back, but she moved away, backing herself into a corner just to prevent any further touch. His face fell, crippled with an emotion he couldn't name.

"I can't stay married to a man who makes decisions like this without me." She insisted, her voice so matter of fact, it scared him.

Michael's eyebrows raised high, teeth worrying his lower lip. "I wasn't making a decision. I was enquiring with a friend."

"You found a surrogate... you're planning on having a baby with a women who knows you intimately." She scoffed, eyes wet and unfocused.

"You're making it sound dirty. I'm not trying to hurt you." And he sounded so sincere, but she couldn't bring herself to believe it anymore.

Crossing the line into her personal space, Michael no longer cared about valuing her comfort as he desperately pulled her arm up and placed the wedding band back into her hand.

"Don't do this. Put it on." He persisted, eyes wild and voice raw. "Don't leave."

"Take it back." She uttered.

"No. I don't want it." Michael argued, holding her fingers over the ring in a desperate act to make her reconsider. "I brought this for you. To show you what you mean to me, to show the world you're mine... in every way that matters."

"That's doesn't mean anything right now."

Michael felt the wetness on his cheek before he realised what it was. Crying at the thought of losing her and aching because he knew on some level, he already had.

"It should." His voice cracked, doe eyes wide with terror. "You're my wife."

"I was your wife." She corrected, pulling her wrist from his grasp, the weight of the rings feeling heavier than ever.

Michael's eyes pooled with tears, mouth opened in horror at the subtle correction. He could feel his heart giving out, the loss of physical contact no longer the only barrier between them.

"No." He shook his head, breathing heavy and crying right alongside her. "Please. No. Don't- don't do this to me."

Ignoring his request, she continued to talk as though those particular words hadn't left his lips at all.

"You know what hurts the most?" She asked, but didn't want for answers. "Not that you talked to Debbie, or that you even found a surrogate. It's the fact that it never, not once, occurred to you to ask me. You didn't come up to me and ask 'what should we do now.' You just decided what you wanted and thought I'd go along with it."

"I thought I knew best." He whispered, staring at her face under the florescent bedroom lighting.

"That's your problem... you always think you know what's right, but you never stop before you jump ahead."

"We can still start a family." Michael desperately clinging to the dream had to try just once more.

She laughed bitterly, wiping under her eyes with the back of her plam. "Listen to yourself." She mocked. "This isn't working."

"I love you." He uttered in blind hope that it might make her stay.

"Stop saying that like it's going to fix anything." She spoke, eyes rimmed red and irritated from the steady flow of tears.

"I made a mistake." He finally admitted with a firm nod. "I understand that."

"A mistake is forgetting our anniversary, or forgetting to call while you're on the road." She clarified, refusing to be moved by those big Bambi eyes looking at her in fear. "You made an active choice here and it's not something easy to forgive."

"I can fix it." He promised, taking her hand and watching as it fell limp in his desperate hold. "I'll tell Debbie we're not doing it. I'll stop talking to her all together if that's what you want... just tell me what to do."

His pleas were earth shattering and part of her wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him everything would be okay, they could figure this out together. They'd been through a lot in their realtionship and this was just another obstacle life had thrown there way.

But it wasn't that easy. It wasn't a vase he'd broke, but her trust and that was an entirely different conversation he wasn't ready to have.

"You can't undo this." She ignored the soft whisper of her name as it fell from his lips, looking over at where his hand clutched her own in a move of solid desperation, her skin sunken in from his harsh grasp.

"After my diagnosis..." she began, looking him straight in the eye even if it hurt to do so. "I looked over at you in the doctors office. It killed me, but I thought to myself, 'at least I have Michael.' Turns out, you weren't thinking that way about me, because if you were, you would've held my hand and let me grieve, you would've asked me what I wanted."

"I know." His shoulders slumped and he wiped his face as a result of the onslaught of tears. "I was wrong, but please don't go."

"I have to." She told him straight, not wanting to prolong this painful heartbreak further.

"We can get through this." Michael promised, squeezing her hand with his own.

"Maybe." She watched as hope flashed across his face, but she couldn't focus on that while pulling her hand out of his tight hold. "But not today."

His face crumpled, awful and pale like he was about to throw up if she took another step from him. For her own sanity, she had to.

Stepping away, she ignored his cries as she crossed the room, placing the rings he'd tried to give her back on the nightstand beside the lamp he used for some late night reading.

She didn't look back, she couldn't. She considered herself to be a strong women, but for Michael, she was weak as a kitten. If she chanced a glance over her shoulder, she ran the risk of turning back and allowing him the victory of winning her back.

Wasting no time, she left the room with the door closing tight behind her.

Michael stood, head in his hand, sobbing over his own mistakes and wondering if he would ever be able to make this up to her or if he really had just lost the only women he'd ever truly loved.

Husband!Michael who never ever fails to open the door for you. He never lets anyone beat him to it, and he most certainly doesn't allow you to open the door.

Husband!Michael who constantly takes photos of you, even when you're doing the most mundane of tasks. Reading? Picture. Talking? Picture. Watching a movie? Picture. Breathing? Picture.

Husband!Michael who starts leaving hints that he's ready for a kid. He buys books on parenting, leaving them purposely in plain sight. Talks about how sweet his nieces and nephews are, all while side eyeing you to see your reaction.

One time he was sitting beside you on the couch and without prompting said, "Yknow, you would look really good pregnant. Like really really realllly good."

You look at him like yeah right, but he's looking incredibly serious.

Husband!Michael who runs victory laps around the Neverland estate when you tell him you're pregnant. He’d take a long lap, and run back to you panting.

“you’re positive???”

When you nod he would scream and take yet another lap.

Husband!Michael who immediately starts building a nursery and buying all sorts of baby clothes, despite not knowing the gender. He buys you anything and everything that could help make the process easier for you. You have a whole closet now full of pregnancy balls.

Husband!Michael who just about faints when he first sees the baby through the ultrasound. He held your hand tightly, eyes brimming with tears. The sight of him made you emotional, and you squeezed his hand.

He kneeled beside you and kissed your hand, "I promise you, I will always be here to take care of and cherish you and our baby."

And there wasn't an inch of you that didn't believe him.

Masterlist

You woke up first.

The light coming through the bedroom window was the grey of a New York morning after rain — it wasn't quite harsh, more like the gentler kind of sky that allowed you to keep the lights off at home, powered only by the cloud.

This kind of weather made the room look like a photograph someone had taken with an old SLR camera, slightly underexposed. Your bedside lamp was still on from the night before which brought a slight warmth to the otherwise still room.

You had no memory of getting into the bed. You had a vague memory of him carrying you, sometime around three, after the second round, when neither of you had been able to keep your eyes open any longer.

You were warm.

You were warm because Michael was wrapped around you from behind, one of his arms heavy across your waist and one of his legs hooked over yours, and his breath was slow and warm against the back of your neck.

You lay still for a long time. You did not want to move. To risk waking him would mean that he might once again try to leave, clouded by his insecurity.

Instead, you watched the grey light shift on the ceiling and you let yourself feel, properly, what it felt like to wake up with him actually in your life. He wasn't just a side character that reared his head when things needed to get interesting, or propel the plot forward. He was a real, living, breathing, perfect thing you wanted to hold onto forever.

Light.

That was the word for it.

Everything in your body felt lighter. Your shoulders. Your jaw unclenched. You had been carrying what felt like 3 tonnes of anxiety for three months without ever realising you were doing it.

All of it had loosened in the night. You had not understood, until now, how much you had been holding. How much energy it had taken to be the woman who held back, who let him set the pace, who was patient and grown up and careful.

You were not going to be that woman anymore. You would not hold back. Not with him. Not when you had so much to lose.

He shifted behind you. A small sound in his throat, sleepy, contented. His arm tightened briefly around your waist and then went slack again.

He wasn't quite awake yet. You could feel his eyelashes against the nape of your neck, him off in some dream world.

You closed your eyes. You smiled into the pillow.

He stirred properly about twenty minutes later.

You felt him wake up by degrees — first the shift in his breathing, then a small stretch of his arm across you, then a kind of confused pause where you knew he was working out where he was. You waited, happily on him letting it all come back.

His face pressed into the curve of your shoulder.

"Morning," you said.

He made a noise that was not quite a word.

"You alive back there?"

"Mm."

You laughed. You felt him laugh too, a small huff of breath against your skin.

He propped himself up on one elbow behind you. You turned over to face him.

His hair was a complete disaster. It had been wet when you fell asleep and had dried into something that looked like a small animal had been living in it. There was a faint pink mark on his cheekbone where he had been pressed against the rug for an hour before you'd made it to the bed. He blinked at you in the grey light, looking sleepy and rumpled and not at all like the most famous man in the world.

He looked at you for a long minute without saying anything.

Then —

"It's you."

"Hi." You said back, meekly.

He smiled. The real one. One you think you might have only ever seen a rare few times. There wasn't anything hiding behind it anymore.

"You're still here," you said.

"Where would I have gone?"

"I don't know. I half thought I'd wake up and find a note."

"A note." He said, surprised.

"On the kitchen counter. Something polite. Dear Y/N. Thank you for last night. I have several pressing engagements in Geneva."

He laughed, a loud, achingly cute cackle. He buried his face in the pillow next to yours after realising how loud he was.

"Geneva." He mumbled.

"It very well could have happened, knowing your crazy schedule."

"I don't even know where Geneva is."

"It's in Switzerland, Michael."

"Okay, well I do know where Switzerland is."

He turned his face back toward you.

The look on his face reminded you of the first dinner you had. It had only been a few months back, but everything just felt so different. You felt like you had known him in all of the alternate universes.

He reached out and brushed a strand of your hair out of your face. His hand stayed at your jaw afterward. He just held it there for a moment.

"How are you feeling?" he asked. Quiet and caring.

You thought about it.

"Lighter," you said. "I feel really light."

He nodded slowly.

"Me too."

There was a beat.

"I was so tired," he said. "I didn't know how tired I was until I flopped into your comfy bed."

"I know."

"I've been carrying this for so long. I don't know how long. Years, maybe. Just a genuine disbelief that anything romantic could ever work out for me"

"I know, love."

The word came out before you knew you were going to say it. You had never called him that before. Not in the time you had spent together You had been so careful with the names you used for him, so professional about it — Michael. It felt almost too formal now.

He didn't say anything. But you saw his eyes change. Soft and surprised and a little wet.

You watched him take the word and hold it.

Then he leaned over, and kissed you. Slow. Lazy. A morning kiss.

He tasted like sleep.

His mouth was warm and unhurried and there was no urgency in him, none of the desperation of last night, just a man kissing a woman, not allowing preconceived false truths to hold him back.

When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead against yours.

"I want to make you breakfast," he said.

"Do you cook?"

"I cook a… little."

"How little?"

He looked at you, eyes serious, still very close. You could see his smile lines, his eyes bare, no eyeliner, no makeup at all really. He was gorgeous  his skin patchy in areas, but it felt a little like looking at constellations.

"I can make toast."

"That is not cooking, Michael." You stated, matter of factly.

"I have a range of toast techniques."

You couldn't help but cackle now. You threw your head back, completely unguarded. He looked so genuinely pleased with himself for the joke.

"Alright," you recovered. "Show me your range, Jackson."

₊˚°⊹˚

Your kitchen, in the daylight, looked exactly like what it was; a small, gritty New York apartment kitchen that had been chosen by a single woman in her early thirties, who did most of her serious eating at the restaurants other people took her to.

There was a kettle, and an old vintage toaster; a loaf of sourdough on the counter from the bakery on the corner, which you bought every Sunday and which lasted you until Thursday; you mostly ate it as toast at 3am when the adrenaline from the show was haunting you.

It sat lamely beside your fruit bowl, that looked like it belonged in a sad conceptual painting hung in a museum.

He stood in the middle of your kitchen in a pair of his boxer shorts and the undershirt he had been wearing last night, hands on his hips. He surveyed your countertop like a man planning an expedition.

"Right," he said. "Toast."

He whipped his head around to you as you hovered in the doorway.

"Do you have butter?"

"I have butter, in the refrigerator."

"Do you have jam?"

"I might have jam."

"Then we are well within my range, m'lady."

You sat down at your kitchen table in his dress shirt — the one from the night before, the white one, which you had pulled on while he was still asleep and which came halfway down your thighs — and you watched him.

He was so focused on the toast.

"Michael."

"Mm."

"You can walk away. It'll pop up when it's done."

"I prefer to monitor the cooking situation."

You just eyed him, unsure that toasting bread could be labelled 'cooking'.

"I have had bad experiences." He finally said, breaking the brief pause.

"With toast?"

He turned around and grinned at you, clearly not wishing to elaborate.

It was a cheeky and boyish look.

The toaster popped.

His face did something complicated.

"It's a bit dark," he said.

You got up and then looked into the toaster.

The toast was quite literally jet black.

Not lightly browned, or slightly singed like some folks liked. Black. Like coal. There was a faint wisp of smoke coming off it.

You pressed your hand to your mouth.

"Michael."

"I genuinely thought I had this in me!"

"It is on fire."

"It is not on fire."

"It was on fire, look at it."

He was laughing now, leaning on the counter with his hand over his eyes. It was coming from somewhere deep.

You had not heard him laugh like this before. You had heard the small relieved laugh in passing, and the soft, slightly cracked laugh on the phone. You had noticed around a month in that he faked so many aspects of himself, to fit in, to be like everyone else. You loved that now after your admissions to each other, and the unraveling of your feelings for each other – he was ready to bare the truth to you.

He reached for you and pulled you into him by your waist. You leaned your face on his chest, you were much shorter, so you could hear the beat of his heart from this angle. He was warm, and smelled a little like expensive aftershave and rain.

He kissed the top of your head.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm going to do better. I'm going to make you better food than this."

"You have a lifetime to redeem yourself, Michael."

He went very still.

You realised what you had said about half a second after you had said it.

You looked up at him.

He was looking down at you. His eyes were enormous.

"A lifetime," he said. Quietly.

"That came out before I —"

"No," he said. "No. Don't take it back. Don't take that one back."

You looked at him for a long minute.

"Okay," you said. "I won't."

He cupped your face with both hands. He kissed you, very gently, on the forehead. Then on the bridge of your nose. Then on your mouth.

You stood in your kitchen in your bare feet, in his shirt with his arms around you and the burnt toast still smoking faintly on the counter beside you, and you thought, this is the rest of my life. This is what the rest of my life looks like. This man, with his questionable cooking skills and boyish charm.

Later in the day, after hanging around the apartment, dancing to the radio and cleaning up the mess left in the wake of heated intimacy, you finally managed to witness him cook. Well, sort of.

The slice of bread had survived Michael's wrath.

He buttered it, put jam on it and then lovingly cut it into triangles, which charmed you completely.

He set the plate down in front of you with the kind of ceremony usually reserved for a state dinner.

"My masterpiece," he said.

"Michael."

"Eat it before it gets cold."

You shovelled the toast down, realising you had not eaten since lunch the day prior.

It was lukewarm, basically like heated up bread, soft in the middle. There was entirely too much jam on it, and it was the best piece of toast you had ever eaten in your life.

₊˚°⊹˚

He had to go.

Not back to LA; not yet. To his hotel, where his people were, where Wayne, his assistant was no doubt already trying to work out where his boss had spent the night.

He stood in your doorway in his ruined suit from last night with the buttons missing on the shirt you had just been wearing, and his hair still wild and he looked, somehow, more like Michael Jackson now than he had at any point during the previous twelve hours.

The world was already pulling him back. You could see it in the way he was bracing himself to walk out into it.

You straightened his collar.

"When do you have to leave the city?"

"Friday."

"Will you let me see you tonight? After your show?"

"Of course."

"And tomorrow?"

"And tomorrow."

"And the night after that? And then whenever we possibly can?"

You smiled at him. "Yes, Michael."

He kissed you, hard. He kissed you like he was trying to memorise it, the rhythm and the feeling of it.

He was feverish; a man who had spent the entire morning being given beautiful experiences he had not believed he was allowed to want and was still in disbelief about every single one of them.

He had the domestic bliss he'd always hoped for, from a lover. Finally able to have what most people took for granted on a daily basis. The space to not be the version of himself that was strung along in narrative by the press.

He pulled back.

"I'll call Frank," he said. "I'll have him pick you up at the stage door tonight."

"Okay."

"And Y/N —"

"Yes."

His eyes were so warm, his smile creating squishible cheeks and smile lines.

"Thank you for giving me a second chance," he said.

"I am glad I answered the door."

He kissed your forehead one more time. Then, he went off into the bustling city.

You closed the door behind him and stood with your back against it for a long time.

Your mind was racing a million miles an hour – so much had whizzed right past you.

It was a feeling; an instinctual gut reaction, that this was going to work out and be so worth the agony and all the questioning and the missed opportunities.

The situation before felt like you were both constantly facing each other across a busy road, not able to cross over because there was whizzing traffic; the threat of moving closer was too much.

You knew deep down that you were no longer going to feel alone like you had previously, not with Michael.

You went back to bed for an hour. You curled up on his side of the mattress, where the sheet still smelled faintly of him, and you slept properly for the first time in months, no more residual adrenaline to stop it.

₊˚°⊹˚

Three weeks went past in a blur.

He came to your show on the Wednesday after the morning of the burnt toast. And the Thursday. He flew back to LA on the Friday morning and called you that night, and then he was back in New York the following weekend, and the weekend after that, and at some point in the middle of the second week you stopped counting the flights and just started expecting his presence.

He stayed at your apartment. Not at the hotel anymore. The hotel had become a problem; your address was easier to keep quiet than a known suite at the Pierre — so Wayne quietly cancelled the booking and Michael's overnight bag took up residence in the corner of your bedroom. You found his toothbrush in the cup beside yours one morning and stood staring at it for a full minute. A crazy concept to have moved in with the most prolific person you'd met in your life.

He bought you a coffee machine. A proper one, the kind that ground the beans, because he had decided very seriously that the coffee press was not enough for you, when you worked such irregular hours. He didn't even like coffee.

He installed it himself, on the counter, looking very pleased with himself about the whole project. You came home from a Saturday matinee to find him reading the manual on your kitchen floor in his cute white socks and a Disney World sweater. His hair soft and unstyled.

You did not tell anyone about your relationship thus far. Sandra knew, obviously — Sandra had known the afternoon after you'd slept together for the first time, because Sandra had a good eye and knew when you were hiding something.

You and Michael had agreed that, mutually, nothing about the relationship was going public until you were both ready. Which was fine. It was preferable. You had a Tony nomination to do press for. He had an album to finish off. There was no part of either of you that wanted to poke the bear, but it had to be done at some point.

You wanted it off of your chest, so you could just start living your life. You felt anxiety at the press knowing you were “hiding” it, knowing that they would then make up some sort of elaborate story as to why that was the case.

The Tonys were the first time he was going to be seen in public with you and it made you feel sick with nerves. Mostly for him, as people had been so cruel to him throughout his life for no apparent reason.

It made you sad to read the tabloids on a daily basis extort his name and person for money. It was like vultures sweeping down and ripping more and more from a dead animal.

Michal always said he’d fine love in his heart to forgive them one day, but you could not find that grace deep down.

Your life had been sheltered for the most part — your parents had normal 9-5 jobs in the city, as you grew up there. You were the anomaly of the family, but it was nothing like the fishbowl Michael endured.

You wanted him to be able to feel validation from whatever the press were going to run the next day after the announcement.

You wanted them to see you weren’t just another girl he was closely associated.

Not as a friend. As his, loving and genuinely adoring date. You’d show them by just being in his presence how much you cared for him. and secretly you hoped that they’d just back off, understanding how that there is limited stories they could run now about Michael fathering 15 different children to 15 different mothers; or that he was gay, or even that he was an asexual aliens. It was foul what they did do him.

You'd had the conversation about it on a Tuesday, lying in bed at six in the morning before he had to leave for his car to the airport. He had said

“I want to come with you. I want to be there with you. I don't care what the papers do”

You had said “are you sure about this?”

He had said “I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”

So Michael's team briefed yours, and the publicists on either team briefed each other. It was all a bit overwhelming, all just to get fitted for outfits that sort of matched.

Michael hired a designer you had never even heard of, to pick out your looks. You'd been in the limelight, in the acting world for quite a few years, but had never had the opportunity to delve into high fashion.

You did three fittings. You went with the baby blue one in the end. Floor length, slim, structured at the shoulders. Michael's stylist had brought it as a backup to the first that the designer had chosen that you were not entirely sold on, and knowing your feelings on it; then quietly moved it to the front of the rail.

The morning of the Tony's had you viciously anxious. You had about 3 espresso's using the new coffee machine, and once again found yourself staring at the kitchen wall. You were trying to make sense of your brain  wrestling with the thought that you might not win this award, and it could be utterly devastating considering how much blood, sweat and tears went into Blanche daily.

Michael had been at the studio early morning, to lay down vocals on a new song he was very excited about. He couldn't sleep the whole previous night, as he said he'd lose the beat if he didn't get it on tape, you didn't have a tape recorder laying around, so he flew out the door toward the nearest studio his assistant could find that would let him in for a session.

He came back after it in a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses, the way he travelled when he didn't want to be photographed, and he kissed you in the hallway in your apartment on the way to the shower and told you he was sorry he left you so abruptly

"You're nervous, Y/N."

"I'm so nervous."

"Never seen you like this. Just pretend everyone is naked, like I do."

"Michael. You perform in stadiums. That's literally thousands and thousands of naked people, and honestly quite disturbing."

"MM yeah, maybe not the greatest thing to say aloud. This is —" he gestured vaguely at the air around the two of you "this feels so good. To support each other. I am going to be there to hold your hand and dissipate the nerves."

You just smiled shyly, thinking yeah, this is so very real now.

You spent the morning together. You ate eggs that he made after he showered — he had graduated from toast — and you switched from coffee to fresh orange juice, and you ran through the order of the night with him at the table. The carpet. The seating. The category. The afterparty. He listened to all of it with the slightly a slightly nervous attention. He wanted to do everything right for you.

At one in the afternoon, Wayne came with the clothes, the stylist by his side.

You spent the next four hours getting ready.

₊˚°⊹˚

Sandra came over at three. Hair and makeup were in your living room by four. By five you were in the dress and your hair was up and your makeup was done and you were standing in front of the long mirror in your bedroom looking at a version of yourself you almost didn't recognise.

Sandra came to stand behind you. She put her hands on your shoulders.

"Baby."

"Mm."

"You're going to win."

"Sandra, don't jinx it"

"I'm saying it, because I can see it."

"Ughh." You covered your face with your hands in anxious agony.

"I'm not going to jinx anything. You're going to win and you're going to walk up there in that dress and you're going to thank me by name of course." She squeezed your shoulders, jokingly, looking at you through the mirror at the vanity.

"And then you're going to come down off that stage and find your boy and you're going to kiss him on national television."

"I am not kissing him on national television, he might freak out"

"I have a good read on Michael, and I think he'd welcome it."

"Sandra."

She grinned at you in the mirror. "I'm just saying."

You laughed. You couldn't help it. You felt your nerves crack open slightly under the weight of her looking at you like that.

She straightened the strap on your dress. She picked an invisible piece of fluff off your shoulder. She kissed the back of your hair very gently and then she left to get herself ready, and you stood alone in the bedroom for a moment, looking at the woman in the mirror.

You had spent eighteen months becoming Blanche. You knew in your bones that the performance and the wider team around it, deserved the win of this award.

₊˚°⊹˚

Frank pulled up at the kerb of Radio City at six twenty.

You could hear the carpet before you could see it. The roar of the crowd. The bursts of sound when a famous name was announced down the line. The high whine of camera flashes somewhere further up the street.

Michael looked over at you, fondly.

"Ready?"

"As I will ever be. Are you?" You asked, you whole body vibrating with nerves.

"No. I always get nervous at these things, even if I have been doing it for 20 odd years,"

"Let's go anyway." He said with finality.

He squeezed your hand. He let it go. He got out of the car first.

The crowd at the far end of the carpet noticed him before the photographers did. A wave of sound moved down the line as people clocked who had just stepped onto the kerb — a low rolling oh that broke into a proper roar by the time the photographers caught up and the flashes started.

He did not look at the cameras.

He turned. He held his hand out for you.

You took it.

You stepped out of the car in the baby blue dress with your hand in his, and the entire press line completely lost their minds.

The flashes were physical. You felt them in your chest. You smiled — the trained smile, the one you had been practising in fittings — and you let him guide you into the position the publicist had marked for you, and you stood with him at the start of the carpet and let them take their first photograph.

Then he leaned in slightly, very close, his lips almost at your ear, and said — you are doing so well, my love.

You felt every muscle in your shoulders drop an inch.

You walked the carpet with shaking, aching legs.

He kept hold of your hand the entire way. He did not let go. Even thought the press were shouting at him 'Michael turn to us, look over here', even when the designer's lead talent escort tried to gently separate you for the solo shots the team had requested — you shook your head at her, smiling, and she got the message in about half a second and waved the photographers off, and the two of you walked the rest of the carpet with your hands locked together.

A reporter shouted from the line — how long have you two been together?

You felt Michael glance at you. You answered for him.

"None of your business." You laughed nervously, your eyes trying to adjust to how bright it had been.

The reporter laughed. Several reporters laughed. Michael leaned in slightly, under the noise, his mouth right at your ear again, and said — that's my girl.

Goosebumps raised on your skin, his voice had been sultry.

You did not know your face was capable of going as warm as it went in that second.

Another reporter, further down the line — Michael, can we get a comment from you?

He turned. He didn't let go of your hand. He gave a toothy smile  genuinely seeming happy and content.

"She's extraordinary," he said. "She was extraordinary the first night I saw her on stage and she has been extraordinary every day since. I'm just glad I get to walk in with her tonight."

The press line went silent for a half second. You felt it. The collective intake of breath at his brutally honest statement.

Then the flashes started up twice as fast.

He squeezed your hand 3 times and started leading you to the entrance.

₊˚°⊹˚

The ceremony went past in a blur.

You sat with Michael's hand on your thigh under the table for the first five categories. The weight of it was the only thing keeping you grounded on earth and breathing.

When your category came up, you stopped being able to hear properly.

The whole room went slightly underwater. You watched the presenter walk out and you watched her open the envelope and you felt Michael's hand tighten around yours and you knew, in the half second before she said it, that you were not going to remember this moment afterward except in pieces.

She said your name.

The room exploded.

You turned to Michael first  He was beaming, so earnestly proud of you, his eyes a little wet. He'd truly believed in your performance and you were so grateful it brought you together.

He nodded at you, frantically, and pushed you very gently toward the aisle.

"Go, baby. Go."

You don't remember the walk.

You remember the lights, though and squinting to make your way through the sea of tables to try to get to the stage.

You remember the weight of the trophy once they put it in your hand.

the presenter kissing your cheek and whispering I am so proud of you like she had been waiting all night to say it.

You stepped up to the microphone.

You looked out into the dark room, a lump in your throat and finally thought, despite all of your insane insecurity; tears shed after shows, the nightmares you would wake from that were centered around fumbling lines and misrepresenting a dear to all character, your lack of sleep, your borderline unhealthy relationship to food, it was all just worth it. All in that one moment your name had been uttered.

You had written a speech three different times. You had folded the most recent version into the small clutch at your table, but in the midst of the frenzy. You did not, in this moment, remember a single word of it and maybe talking more from the heart was better, anyway.

You thanked Greg. You thanked the production. You thanked your director, who you could just make out in the third row, and who had taught you that Blanche was not a tragedy but a woman of multitudes, a groundbreaking look into mental health and playing it had been a great honour. You thanked Daniel by name, properly, generously, for however many weeks of carrying you across a stage, or screaming and shouting at you with the kind of trust most actors never got to have with a scene partner. You watched him stand up in the audience and put his hand over his heart.

You thanked Sandra. You thanked her by name like you had promised her you would. You said she had been the woman behind every single show of yours for the last six years and that no version of you on any stage in any city existed without her. Your hair would simply not survive without her and neither would your heart.

The camera cut to her in the audience. She was already weeping into her napkin.

And then you paused.

You looked into the dark.

You looked toward where you knew he was sitting.

"And to a special man, who knows exactly who he is" you said. "Who has fueled my passion tenfold. Thank you. I turned a corner with my character 'Blanche' when I met you. I was a more, fully realised version of myself the moment you appeared. I love you."

The audience had been so still, hanging onto every single word you articulated, just like in the play. You could hear, somewhere in the dark, a woman saying oh very softly into her hand.

The camera cut to him, it seemed everyone had followed your eyeline.

You did not see it at the time. He had both hands over his mouth, hiding his gorgeous smile, like he did when he was nervous. Tears brimming in his eyes at the thought of being loved on this scale.

You stepped back from the microphone.

You held the trophy up.

The audience rose to cheer you on.

₊˚°⊹˚

Backstage was chaos.

Press. Photographers. Producers. A woman with a clipboard and headset trying to walk you to the official photography room. Sandra somewhere behind you, still buzzing, holding your clutch like a small animal she was responsible for.

You just wanted Michael.

The clipboard woman walked you through the photo line. She walked you through each of your marks, the press shot you on backdrops with the trophy heavy in your small hands.

After, she walked you toward the press room and you scanned every corridor as you went, because you wanted him, you wanted him, you wanted to see his face.

You came around a corner and he was there.

He was standing in a quiet area between the press room and the green room. Bill at the far end lingering, clearly concerned that Michael would be swarmed at some point. The clipboard woman, to her credit, took one look at his face and quietly disappeared.

He pushed off the wall and you ran to him, to completely surrender.

He caught you. He picked you up off the floor, both his arms under yours, and he spun you once and set you down and pressed his forehead against yours and he was shaking.

"I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. I am so proud of you, baby —"

You couldn't speak.

He pulled back to look at you. His eyes were red. His mouth was open slightly.

"You said it."

"I said it."

"On national television," He said, "what a way to tell the world."

He laughed — a surprised, completely unhinged laugh — and then he kissed you. There, in the corridor backstage at Radio City, with the trophy still in your hand and the press room thirty feet away and the entirety of the Broadway industry about to come looking for you.

He kissed you, strong hands on either side of your cheeks. Strong, true and so honest.

When he pulled back, his thumb brushed the tear that had finally escaped onto all your makeup artist's hard work.

"I love you too," he said. "I know I don't say it too often due to my nerves. But, I think I have since I saw the curtain come up on that third performance of Streetcar."

₊˚°⊹˚

Streetcar closed in the September. You did not extend.

You signed on for a new play in October — a small, hard, brilliant thing at the Public, written by a woman you had admired since drama school. Rehearsals started in November. You found yourself, for the first time in your career, in a production where the press junket was kind to you. nobody asked you about what you were eating, or who you were dating, or your work out routine to stay skinny. It was a relief like no other to focus on the art, and only the art

He went back on tour in January.

Europe. South America. Then Asia. You knew the schedule by heart because Wayne had given you a printed copy and because Michael had pinned it to the inside of your kitchen cabinet so you could see it every time you went to get sugar for a coffee, which was a lot, admittedly.

You spoke every day. You spoke twice a day on the good days. He flew you out to Berlin for a long weekend in February for a date night at a premiere of an indie movie he’d been invited to and to Paris for two nights in March to just celebrate your relationship. How in love you were. Michael liked very much to be out of the limelight when he could, to keep some semblance of normalcy in his private life, but sometimes he would just become Michael Jackson in order to get something for you. And in the Paris situation - he was able to shut down the entire Eiffel Tower for you during the day, so you both could have a picnic at the top of it. Picnics were his favorite.

There were so many moments that you started to see the want to be a pop star diminish and unfurl. Like it just wasn’t worth it to him anymore. The arguments in the press with his siblings, the accusations, the settlements for large sums of money. It continued to greedily steel from his life force. You stuck around regardless, fighting every battle you could for him.

You stood in the wings of his stadium shows in a small private viewing area and watched him become the other version of himself time after time, despite illness or fatigue and you understood, properly, for the first time, what he had been protecting you from for so long.

He was tired. Oh so tired. A life of trauma and extreme wear on the body was showing. Maybe not to fans but…

You could see it. He hid it well — he hid most things well — but you had been watching him for nearly a year now and you knew his face better than anyone alive except his mother, and you knew, in a matter of months, that he was going to be running on fumes, and not enjoying it as he couldn’t be “perfect” anymore.

You told him to take a break.

He told you he was fine and that he needed to change the world.

You told him to take a break anyway.

₊˚°⊹˚

The London leg of the Dangerous tour started in July '93.

It was the eightweek leg. Two stadium shows at Wembley, then a break, then a press cycle for the album, then more shows. You'd ironically seen photos of him sold to the New York times, on the stands in the streets as you walked to the theatre you worked at daily; he looked very slim, his skin very pale and he just looked unbelievably over it.

He had been in London for ten days before it happened.

The call came at five past 3 in the morning, your time.

You picked up on the second ring. You had trained yourself – out of panic mostly – to not let the phone ring out, because when it rung, it was usually him.

"Baby."

His voice was wrong.

You sat up in bed.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry."

"What's wrong, Michael."

"I'm sorry I'm calling you. I promised to myself I wouldn't let you see me falter, so you'd think I was strong for the both of us. I —"

He was crying.

He was crying a lot. You could hear it through the line, the unsteady catch of his breath, the small choked sound at the end of every word.

You turned the lamp on. You put your feet on the floor.

"Hey. Hey. Baby. I'm here. Just talk to me."

"I haven't slept."

"For how long, my love."

"I don't know. Four nights. Maybe five. I keep — I keep getting into the bed and I lie there and the second I close my eyes my brain just starts. It just starts and it doesn't stop. I can't get it to stop."

"What's it doing? Tell me what it's doing."

He took a ragged breath.

"The British papers have been awful. The whole week. There's a piece in one of them today about — about my face. Again. About the way I look. They've put it on the front. There's a doctor they've interviewed. He's never met me. He's never been in a room with me. He's making things up about me and they printed it like it's news."

You closed your eyes.

"Oh, baby."

"I shouldn't have read it. I know I shouldn't have. Bill told me not to. Wayne told me not to. They keep the papers out of my room every morning but somebody left it in the green room before the radio thing and I just — I saw it. I picked it up. I read the whole thing."

"Michael —"

"They do this every couple of years. I know. I know they do. I know it's a cycle. I know to expect it. It's just — this week it has been every single day. There's been something every single day. And I cannot — I cannot get my brain to stop reading it back to me when I try to sleep. It just plays. Over and over. Like a record."

You stood up.

You walked to the window in your bare feet. You pulled the curtain back. Manhattan was asleep beneath you. The lights of the Empire State Building were off for the night. The sky over the river was the early kind of dark that was already thinking about morning.

"How long since you slept properly?" you asked. Voice barely above a whisper.

"Properly?"

"Properly, Michael."

A long pause.

"I don't know. A while."

"Before the tour?"

"Maybe."

"Baby."

"I know."

"You have been running on nothing for four months."

"I know. I know I have."

You pressed your forehead against the cold glass of the window.

"What does your body feel like right now?" you asked.

A small, surprised laugh through the tears.

"Why."

"Because I want to know. Tell me."

"My hands keep going numb. The last show, the third song, I couldn't feel my hands properly for about a minute and a half. I played the rest of the show worrying I was going to drop the mic. My — my chest feels strange. It has done for a few days. Not bad. Just — present. Like I can feel my heart all the time. I cannot get warm. The hotel is warm. The bath is warm. I cannot get warm."

"Michael."

"I know."

"You need a doctor."

"I have a doctor."

"You need to call him."

"I'll see how I feel tomorrow morning."

"Now."

"Y/N —"

"Tonight, or this morning, or whatever fucking time it is there Michael. Whatever time it is there. Call him. Wake him up. I don't care."

"Y/N. I cannot — I cannot do that to him, he may be with other clie—"

"Then I will call him."

There was a small silence.

"You don't have his number," he said.

"Wayne has his number. Wayne will give it to me."

"Y/N."

"Michael."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"I love you," he said. Quiet. Wrecked.

"I love you too. Now stay on the phone with me while I figure this out."

So he stayed on the phone.

You did not call the doctor. You called Wayne. Wayne called the doctor. The doctor was at the Dorchester within forty minutes — a man Michael had known for years, who was used to being called in the small hours. He asked all the right questions and gave Michael something mild to help him sleep and told him, very firmly, that the next two days were going to be rest, full stop, no negotiation.

You stayed on the phone for the whole thing.

"Are you still there?" he asked quietly.

"I'm still here."

"Of course I am."

"I'm sorry I'm a mess."

"Stop apologising."

"I —"

"Michael. Stop."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Tell me something normal," he said. "Tell me about today. Tell me about anything that isn't this."

So you did.

You sat on the floor by the window with the phone in your hand as you'd yanked it off of the nightstand and were tangled in the wires trying to take it around the room with you. you talked to him about nothing in particular.

You told him about the second act of the play you were working on, one of the scenes was physically demanding.

You told him about the woman in the bakery downstairs who had started giving you extra helpings of the sourdough bread for free, because she knew you liked it. You told him about a dream you had three nights ago about a house with a yellow door that you couldn't remember the rest of, just the door, which had bothered you for two days because you thought you recognised it from somewhere but couldn't for the life of you figure out where from.

You heard his breathing change.

You kept talking, quieter, because you knew he was right at the edge of sleep and you did not want to startle him out of it. You told him about a song you had heard on the radio that had reminded you of him. You told him you had passed a bookshop in the Village yesterday and seen a book in the window he would have liked about claymation film techniques. You told him you loved him.

He made a small sound. Almost a word.

You waited.

His breathing slowed properly.

You listened to him sleep on the phone for almost twenty minutes before you allowed yourself to hang up.

You did not go back to bed.

You stayed where you were on the floor by the window. You let the light come up over the river. You watched the sky turn from dark blue to grey to the soft pink of an early summer morning in Manhattan, and somewhere in there, you made the decision.

You called Wayne again at 5am.

"Wayne."

"Miss."

"I need a flight to London. As soon as possible. Today."

There was a beat.

"What time, miss?"

"Whenever you can get me on something. Heathrow. First class, economy, the airline doesn't matter."

"Understood, Miss. And to speak plainly, he really needs you."

You couldn't even muster a response to that as it broke your heart.

"And Wayne – ."

"Yes, Miss."

"Don't tell him. Please. Don't tell anyone in his camp other than Bill. I want to surprise him."

"Understood, Miss."

"Thank you."

You hung up. You sat on the floor for another minute. You looked at the sky over the river.

Then you got up. You went to the closet. You started to pack.

₊˚°⊹˚

You landed at Heathrow at twenty past ten in the evening, London time.

You had slept on the plane in short pockets. You had spent most of the flight reading but you weren't really absorbing, you probably read the same paragraph of a novel over and over.

You gave up halfway and instead just stared out at the dark Atlantic for the rest of the flight, thinking of him. Thinking of how mad the director of your play was going to be when he realised that you were going to be out and that the star of his show was replaced by an understudy for however long it took to get Michael better.

A driver was waiting at the gate. Wayne had arranged it without Michael knowing. The driver took your bag. He drove you into the city. The Dorchester was on Park Lane and the trees in Hyde Park were full and dark against the streetlights as you came up Knightsbridge in the back of the car.

The doorman knew who you were. He had clearly been briefed. He nodded at you and waved you through without making a fuss, and the night manager met you in the lobby and walked you to the lift personally, and you went up to the top floor of the Dorchester at half past eleven at night with a small bag in your hand and your heart in your throat.

The lift opened.

The Harlequin Suite was at the end of the corridor.

You walked toward the door.

You knocked.

There was a pause. A long one. You could hear footsteps inside.

The door opened.

Michael was in pyjama bottoms and an old white tshirt. His hair was loose. His face was pale, blotchy and tired. His brown eyes were puffy and he was holding a book in one hand, his finger marking the page, and when he saw you standing in the corridor at the door of his hotel suite, his face contorted into joy, whatever of it he had left.

He did not speak. He could not.

You set your bag down on the carpet.

He pulled you into him by the front of your coat. He buried his face in your shoulder. He made a sound that was barely a sound at all — a small, broken release of breath, the sound a person made when something they had been holding for too long and their body could not hold it anymore.

He cried into your neck. The book fell out of his hand and onto the carpet behind him.

You let him cry. You stroked the back of his hair, waiting patiently for him to release you.

When he could speak, he pulled back. He looked at you. His eyes were filled to the brim with sorrow. His eyes never lied to you.

He looked at you like he could not believe you were standing there. Like he had not allowed himself to even consider that you might come.

"How are you here?"

"Frank booked the flight at like six this morning, my time."

"Y/N —"

"You needed me here."

"You crossed an ocean – what about your play?"

"I would cross a hundred of them, Michael if it meant I could make sure you were okay."

He just looked at you. You reached up. You put your hand on the side of his face. You held it there.

"I'm here," you said. "I am here. We are going to figure this out. We are going to figure out how to do this — all of it. The tabloid stuff and the tour. We are going to figure it out together – how to get you into a good mental place. I am not going anywhere. Not now, not ever. I don't care if I need to quit the play – I want you to be okay."

He nodded solemnly.

You pulled him back in. You held him in the doorway of his suite at the Dorchester until he stopped shaking.

₊˚°⊹˚

You did not leave the suite for two days.

Wayne quietly moved the album press around. Bill kept people away so that he could rest. The London leg paused for fortyeight hours and nobody in the press caught wind of why, because Frank, Wayne, Bill and Michael's team were good at what they did, and because Michael had spent twenty years building this team that knew him intrinsically. He rarely took time for himself and so when he did, they honoured it completely.

You ordered room service. You watched television with him. You sat on the balcony of the suite and looked out over Hyde Park in the rain and held his hand. You went for a walk together very late at night, around two in the morning, when there was nobody about, and he wore a baseball cap pulled low and you walked the length of Park Lane in silence with your arm through his. You spoke of cartoons, and dreams of his that weren't fully realised yet. You told him you'd been scribbling ideas down for a new play.

He apologised, on and off, for the first few days you were there. You told him to stop apologising. He apologised for apologising. You hated how broken he looked. How much the external teams pushed him, just complete disregard to his health.

The doctor came back on the third morning. He sat with Michael in the suite for an hour. He spoke to him gently. You couldn't make out a lot of it, but you hoped it would be okay.

He spoke to you afterward. He told you, very plainly, what you already knew — that Michael had been running on empty for a long time, that the sleep was the urgent thing, that the tour management was going to have to be looked at properly to figure out why this kept happening. Why the scheduling was so tight.

It was not normal for a person to travel and exert themselves so much as he did.

The doctor left a prescription and his number written down. He shook your hand at the door and said thank you for being here.

You closed the door and you cried for a few minutes in the bathroom and then you went back out and got into bed beside Michael and watched a film with him until he fell asleep on your shoulder.

By the fifth evening together, he was sleeping properly.

He fell asleep with his head on your stomach on the sofa in the suite, with a movie playing on the television neither of you were watching. You read a book over the top of his head and you ran your fingers through his hair and you felt him breathing slow and steady against your ribs.

You looked at him there.

This was what mine, properly meant. Caring even when things felt like they were never looking up. Even when it affected your life.

You leaned down. You kissed the top of his head, willing all of his pain to diminish.

₊˚°⊹˚

Day six was different.

Michael slept for fourteen hours. You woke at some point in the middle of it and watched him for a long minute, struck by the way grown men only really look like boys again when they are properly asleep — face turned into the pillow, one hand curled loosely against his jaw, the line between his eyebrows finally smooth.

The room was full of the grey light a London morning could offer. It could not decide whether to rain or not, and somewhere in the city a church bell was ringing the hour.

You let him sleep, ordered tea and read for two hours by the window.

When he finally stirred, just past eleven, the first thing he said was —

"I am extremely hungry."

You laughed.

"What do you want?"

"Everything."

"Be specific."

He rolled onto his back and considered the ceiling.

"Pancakes. The tallest pancakes they have. And toast with jam, please"

You picked up the phone on the nightstand and ordered the kind of breakfast that would have fed a small wedding. Pancakes, bacon, eggs, fruit, two pots of coffee in case one of them was wrong, a stack of toast, a small pot of marmalade because he had once mentioned, in passing, that he liked English marmalade and of course, the Jam.

The man on the other end of the line did not flinch.

A waiter arrived twenty minutes later with a trolley so elaborate it had its own subtle suspension system. He set the table by the window with the practised, eyesdown discretion of a man who had served stranger people in this suite than the two of you, and he was gone before you had finished saying thank you.

Michael came out of the bathroom in his red plaid pyjama bottoms and the same old white tshirt, his hair damp at the temples where he had splashed his face. He took one look at the trolley and stopped.

"Y/N."

"Mm."

"This is a lot of food."

"You gave a long list."

"I underestimated the amount, I think."

You watched him approach the trolley the way a person approaches something at a museum. He lifted the silver cover off the pancakes. He looked at them for a long moment.

Then he turned to you with his face completely serious and said —

"This is the best day of my life," his smile was reaching his eyes again.

"My sweet girl, and all these sweet foods"

You spent breakfast on the carpet by the window in the end. He insisted. He said the chairs were too formal for the magnitude of the meal, which made you laugh so hard you choked on your tea you had been nursing that whole time, and you ended up sitting crosslegged on the floor with the plates between you.

Hyde Park beyond the glass and the soft, even patter of London rain just starting against the window.

He cut his pancakes into perfect triangles, which you found a little neurotic but very endearing.

He poured maple syrup with the slow ceremony of a priest performing communion.

You watched him from across the makeshift picnic and felt something burn in your stomach. He was letting himself be a bit more free again – released from the prison of his mind. The prison of his job.

He looked up halfway through munching on the toast.

"You are staring at me."

"You are very entertaining to watch. You look at everything with such wonder"

He raised an eyebrow.

The rain picked up against the window in a soft, even rush, and for a moment neither of you spoke, it felt like a small holiday from the rest of complicated adult life.

₊˚°⊹˚