softformj

the day runs long for both of you. yours is full of fittings for a red carpet event next week and phone calls, his is full of rehearsals and meetings that go two hours over, and neither of you wants to talk about it when you finally come home. you just take a shower and by ten you're both in the big bed with the lights low and the tape already in the machine. princess bride. one of his favorites. "you're gonna love this," he says. you know he’s tired, but there is still excitement in his voice. "i've seen it probably ten times." "ten times and you're still excited." "i'm serious, it’s so good." he is serious. twenty minutes in you understand that he doesn't just like this movie, he knows it, because his lips keep moving along with the lines. you have a feeling he lied about having watched it only ten times. he speaks the lines without noticing, mouthing the words along with the actors, and when the swordfight towards the end comes on, he sits up against the pillows like something important is happening. "watch this part. watch." you watch him more than the screen. when the spaniard finally gets his revenge speech, michael says it with him, whispering, "my name is inigo montoya. you killed my father. prepare to die," and he tries so hard to look fierce while saying it, but all it does is make him look more adorable. then he turns to you and points his finger at your ribs like a sword. "my name is michael jackson. you stole my heart. prepare for kisses." you make a face. "that's so stupid." "prepare," he says, and pokes you again and again, and you're laughing too hard to fight him off properly. you laugh until your stomach hurts, until he gives up on the sword and just kisses your cheek and settles back down with your head on his chest.

the movie goes on. at some point toward the end he reaches across you, going for the water glass on your side, his arm in the air right past your face. nothing in you moves. you realize what just happened. a year ago your shoulders would have come up on their own. the man before michael made sure of that. all that time watching his hands, learning what a raised arm could turn into, and your body kept the lesson long after you left him. now, michael's arm crosses your face and you don’t even flinch. he gets his water. you lie there with that realization. your hand finds his under the blanket and squeezes. "i feel safe with you," you say. you say it to the tv because it's easier. "loved. all the time. i didn't know it could feel this peaceful. this easy. with you, it does." the room goes quiet even though the movie is still running. you feel your face go hot and pull the blanket up like that will help. "forget it. watch your swordfights." "no, no, no." he shifts so he can see you. "say it again." "no." "one more time, please?" "i can’t." he doesn't push. he shifts down so his face is level with yours, and his hand comes up to your cheek, and when he speaks his voice is softer than ever. that’s how you know he means what he’s about to say.

"you deserve everything. you know that? everything good there is. i want to be the one who gives it to you." you don't have an answer for that. he doesn't seem to need one. he kisses your hairline and pulls you back into his chest, and on screen the last of the movie keeps going, and after a minute his lips start moving with the lines again. by the time the credits roll you're more asleep than awake. "hey. did you like it?" "mm. loved it." "you missed the ending." "i saw enough." he laughs quietly, and then the kisses start. your forehead first, then your temple, your cheekbone, the bridge of your nose, your other cheek, a whole rain of small kisses all over your face, until you're smiling with your eyes closed and swatting at him with no strength at all. "baby." "almost done." two more. your jaw, and finally, your lips. "okay. done." he pulls the blanket up over your shoulder and tucks it under your chin just the way you like, and you feel the bed shift and hear the tv turn off. and then he's behind you, his arm coming around your waist, his knees finding the backs of yours, his mouth at your ear. "i love you," he says into your hair, so soft you almost can’t hear it. "so much." "love you more," you mumble, already fading. "not possible." you feel him smile against the back of your neck, and he presses one last kiss there and pulls you in closer. "goodnight."

you squeeze the arm around your waist because it's all you have left in you, and he squeezes back. he's still holding you when you fall asleep, and he's still holding you in the morning.

Note: The images used above are purely for the aesthetic and mood of the story, or to represent aspects of the reader's role, style, or the chapter itself. They are not intended to depict the reader's physical appearance or ethnicity.

February 1981 When February arrives, something you don't notice at first happens as well: the sun starts giving you more time instead of taking it. Sunset was at around 5:00 in December. And 5:30 in mid-January. Now it’s closer to 6:00. One evening in the second week of February you look up from a contract you've actually finished reading properly instead of rushing it and realize you never once checked the window while you did it. For two months your days have been a countdown you were always losing. Every task was racing against the sunlight, every meeting was a gamble with time, and then the sprint home with your coat half on, having switched permanently to comfortable shoes you could sprint in. You were never just doing something. You were always doing something while racing, and everything and everyone that slowed you down was an obstacle, and you treated obstacles like enemies. But now you have a margin. You notice it first when you have twenty minutes extra after getting home, then it becomes twenty-five and grows by a sliver every day.

You finish full workdays. You stop for actual groceries instead of grabbing whatever's nearest the register. One Tuesday you actually walk home instead of sprint, and you're still through your door with eleven minutes to spare, and you stand in your kitchen with those eleven spare minutes not knowing what people do with time they aren’t losing. And the thought that arrives in mid-February is one that’s not very welcome because it’s true and exposes your flaws: you realize you’re less angry while you wait patiently at a grocery store checkout like a completely normal human. Every bad feeling that’s been accompanying you since you got cursed feels less now. The irritation of having to rush everywhere. Having to be first in line before everyone. And your pride keeps telling you you should give yourself some credit. You try to make yourself believe that you’ve grown as a person and got accustomed to the curse. But that’s not true. You know you’re less angry now because you have to race time less now. It’s not because you’ve grown. It's easy to be short with the world when the world keeps standing between you and a deadline that would end your life as you know it; but it’s harder to justify when you've got eleven spare minutes and nothing chasing you. Some of the coldness you've been giving to people since December… you don't want to finish the thought. You already know who gets the worst of it. He gets all of it. The coldness toward him is older than the curse. You built that coldness yourself, back when you had all the time in the world. But the rest of it, the snapping and the flat voice… the sun takes those with it, evening by evening, and you let them go without a fight.

You don't wonder why the curse feels lighter lately. You just keep tracking sundown. 5:45 today. 5:48 tomorrow. More time. Less anger. – By now, going to Hayvenhurst has become second nature. You don't decide to go anymore, you just find yourself slipping through the window. Tonight he's in a good mood, humming along to a song he’s playing and when you drop onto the carpet he spins his chair around to look at you. "There she is!" You're in his arms before your paws are ready for it, hoisted against his chest and kissed all over dozens of times. "I got so much done today, Sunny, you have no idea. Wait till you hear the strings, I finally got them right, hold on–" He's still holding you as he’s moving back to the console when the door opens. There’s no knock. The door just opens and a man is standing in it, and you can feel Michael’s whole body going still. Joseph. You know him by sight. You've seen him a handful of times as a human when you visited Hayvenhurst, but you've never heard him speak more than a few words, and the few times Michael has spoken to him in front of you and John, it was hushed and quick and over fast. "You didn't call the coordinator back." No hello. No looking at the cat in his son's arms. "He waited all day. You made me look like a fool."

"I was going to call him tomorrow, Joseph. I told you I needed to–" Joseph. You had always found that odd. His own father, and he calls him Joseph, first name, like a colleague. And something about the careful way he says it tells you it's a rule to call him by name. Somebody made that rule and it wasn't Michael. "Tomorrow." Joseph steps into the room. He's not a giant, but from where you are he looks like one. And you immediately feel it happen: Michael gets smaller. One of the most famous men in the world, in his own studio, in his own house, and he gets smaller in fron tof his father. He gently sets you down on the couch. "The dates work. Everybody's dates work but yours. Your brothers moved things around, no complaints, and you're gonna sit here with your little songs and tell family to wait?" "I'm not telling anybody to wait, I just… this record, I need to finish it. I told everyone in December that I–" "You told." Joseph's voice doesn’t get louder, but somehow it gets heavier with every word he speaks. "Since when do you tell? I tell. That's how this family works, that's how it's always worked, and look where it's gotten you. Look around, boy, look at this room. You think you built this? I built this. I know what's best for you. I knew it when you were five and I know it now, and you don't need to think, I already did your thinking, you need to do." "Joseph–"

"Out there," Joseph’s hand flicks at the window, "Out there they'll smile at you and take everything you have. Managers, lawyers, that Branca, all of them, watch. Family is the only thing that keeps you as you are. The only ones who'll take you as you are. And you spit on the schedule like–" It goes on and on. You stopped listening, because now you just watch Michael. He's looking at a point near his father's slippers. His hands have found each other in front of him. He answers in a small voice you didn't know he had. “Yes... I know... I didn't mean it like that..." And every sentence Joseph talks over before it's finished and Michael lets him and folds under it. Twenty-two years old and shrinking in the one room on earth that's supposed to be his, and this man isn't even his manager anymore. He's been fired. He has no title here. He walked through a door he hasn’t knocked on with nothing but being his father, and it's enough to make Michael feel small. You've been curled on the couch this whole time, and suddenly something in you snaps. You get off the couch as if on autopilot and move slowly toward the doorway, and when you’re close to where Joseph is, you stop and hiss at him. Both men look down. It's not a big hiss. The sound surprises you, because you've never made it before. Your body naturally produces it in the moment. Joseph looks at you as if you’re the dirt on the bottom of his shoe. He scoffs and turns straight back to Michael. "And another thing, the Phoenix dates–"

You take three more steps. You're at his feet now, standing between him and Michael, arch your back, and hiss again, louder and longer this time, giving it everything your small body has, telling him to get out, get out of this room. "Michael." Joseph doesn't step back. "Keep this monster under control." "Her name is Sunny." Michael's voice is still quiet, but it’s more steady now, a layer of anger in it. "She's a cat, Joseph. Not a monster." Joseph scoffs again. And then you leap. You're not proud of what you do, but you’re not sorry for doing it either. With your claws out, you strike the top of his foot where the slipper left it bare and leave a bright red cut, because this is the only thing you feel you can do right now. Several things happen at once. Michael steps forward, "Joseph, don't!", as Joseph yelps a bark of pain, and suddenly his foot swings. He kicks you. The world spins and the edge of the coffee table arrives out of nowhere as you hit your tiny head on it, feeling a stab of pain above your left eye. And then you're on the carpet with your legs under you blinking fast with your ears flat. The room goes silent for one heartbeat. Then Michael loses his mind. "What is wrong with you?!"

You’ve never heard this voice from him. Nobody has ever heard this voice, because this comes from all the way deep down, and suddenly he's between you and Joseph in two strides with his arms out like a wall. "You kicked her! She's this small and you kicked her! Get out! Get out of my studio! You don't walk in here without knocking, you don't talk to me like– and you do NOT put your hands on my– GET OUT!" "It scratched me!" "GOOD!" The word rips out of him and even Joseph's face registers the anger. "Out! Now! I mean it, Joseph, I will call– I don't care, OUT!" And Joseph who talked over every sentence for ten minutes and who did everyone's thinking, looks at his son and looks at the cat behind his son, and shakes his head slowly in disappointment. "Unbelievable," he mutters. "Over an animal." And then he leaves with the door open. Michael slams the door and is on his knees beside you in the same second. "Sunny, hey, I'm here, let me see you, I'm so sorry–" His hands are afraid to touch you at first, but then he gathers you up with a gentleness that's almost worse than the kick, holding you against his chest. He’s shaking, you can feel it through his cardigan. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. He's– I should have– are you hurt? Look at me, let me look at you." He holds you out just far enough, checks you over with trembling thumbs, and finds it: the small, tender spot above your left eye, the fur ruffled a bit over a small bruise. His face crumples.

"Oh, no. No, no, no. Look at you." He pulls you back in and presses his lips to the spot, once, twice, ten times, tiny soft apologies of kisses all around the sore place. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, my love. You were protecting me, huh? That's what that was." He laughs a broken laugh into your fur. "You felt it too. The second he comes in, the whole room goes bad, you feel that, huh? You always know everything." He kisses the bruise again, gentler than anything. "Thank you for protecting me, my beautiful girl. Nobody ever… " his voice catches, and he doesn't finish that sentence. "I love you. You hear me? I love you, my brave, stupid, tiny girl. Don't ever do that again." He examines your left eye closely, checks it against your right eye, looks for tearing, holds up a finger and watches you tracking it, and only when he's satisfied, does he finally set you down. You walk to your basket on steady legs to prove to him you’re alright, and settle into the blanket, and he watches every step. He tries to work after that, but doesn't really make it far. He gets up to check on you four times. He gives you water, repositions the blanket around you and rests two fingers on your back until he's felt you breathe. Somewhere past midnight he gives up trying to work, scoops you up out of the basket carefully and lies back on the couch with you on his chest. "What a night, Sunny," he murmurs. His heartbeat is still faster than usual under your ear. It takes a long time to slow. "What a night." You lie there rising and falling, the sore spot throbbing faintly above your eye. You think about his small voice earlier, and the fact that for the first time in his life somebody physically stood between Michael Jackson and his father. Small as you were, it was still you. – The bruise carries over into your human form.

You notice it while looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror the next morning. A faint scratch above your left eye, exactly where the coffee table caught you. That’s new: apparently what happens to the cat, you keep. You cover it with a small band-aid, barely a stripe, and hope that nobody asks. For the ones who do ask, you prepare the story on the walk to work: you left the kitchen cabinet open, turned around too quickly and walked into it. Clumsy and believable. Michael is coming in today for a signing. You know because you typed the appointment yourself. And around the time he's due, you do something you can’t really explain to yourself. You tell the receptionist you'll cover the front for a bit and that she should go run that errand she mentioned earlier. She thanks you and goes. And then you're standing near the elevators with a folder in your arms waiting, because on the way to work this morning you decided to be nicer to him starting today. You don’t think about the reasoning behind that decision too much. The elevator opens and there he is with Bill behind him. "Hello," you say first before he even opens his mouth. He stops for a second. You watch the greeting register on his face, and then he says, "...Hello," back carefully. "Mr. Branca's just finishing a call. This way." You lead them down the hall as if he doesn't know the way, and Bill takes his usual post outside the door as Michael sits down on the chair by John's office to wait.

It's a thing between him and John by now. John never lets clients wait, especially not Michael, but somewhere along the way the two of them stopped being lawyer and client only, and Michael's told him more than once it's fine, finish your call, I can sit for five minutes like a regular person. So he sits with his hands in his lap. "Can I bring you something to drink?" His head comes up. "Oh… no. No, thank you. I'm okay." He blinks. "Thank you, though." Two thank-yous for a drink he declined. You turn to go back to your desk and that's when his eyes catch on your forehead. "What happened?" He asks carefully. You can see him already bracing himself, his shoulders stiff, ready for the two flat words he's learned to expect from you. "Kitchen cabinet," you say. "I left the door open, turned around and then walked right into the corner of it. Completely my own fault. I stood there afterward holding my head, angry at a piece of furniture." You reach up and pick at the edge of the band-aid, self-conscious, smoothing it back down. "I probably look silly with this thing. It was the smallest one I had." Silence. You look at him and he's staring at you with an expression you've never gotten from him before. It takes you a second to understand: that was the most words you have ever said to him at once. In almost a full year of working together. His mouth is opening to answer– And then John's door swings open. "Michael! Come in, come in, sorry about that." And he's ushered inside without replying to you, and you stand there with your folder, oddly disappointed about a sentence you'll never hear. –

The next time is at Hayvenhurst. John forgot a folder in the studio and you're sent to retrieve it. Michael finds it for you, hands it over with both hands like he always does, and walks you to the door. "Bye," he says. "Thanks for coming all the way out." "Goodbye, Michael." And you walk off without turning around, because you don't need to turn around. You know he still stands in the doorway watching you go. What you don’t know is that there's a smile creeping up his face upon hearing you say his name that he can't explain to anyone, least of all himself. – It takes you looking through four grocery stores to finally find the brand of candy. You heard him tell Sunny about it three nights ago: a specific candy from when he was small, he went on about it for at least five whole minutes, how his mother would buy it, how he hasn't seen it in years, they must not make it anymore… And the next day on your lunch break you found yourself checking the candy aisle at the market by the office. Nothing. Then you checked the drugstore. Nothing. It became a mission after that, which is the most embarrassing part. You took a bus on Saturday and finally found it in the fourth store, on the bottom shelf, and you bought five packs. You carry one pack in your handbag for a week, waiting for the chance to finally give it to him. There’s a signing across town, a promotion deal with a brand, at a long table with long contracts, and you are in the corner taking minutes. When the meeting wraps up and hands are shaken, John pulls the partner aside for a logistics question, waving at you: "Nothing to minute, give us a few."

And then it's you and Michael, standing at the end of a conference table in a strange room, alone. You reach into your handbag, take out the candy, unwrap one, and pop it in your mouth casually. You see it hit him. His eyes go to the wrapper in your hand, and you see the recognition on his face, followed by disbelief. He opens his mouth and then closes it again, because he doesn't dare. He's learned not to dare with you. He looks away, then looks back at the wrapper and says nothing. You reach back into the handbag and hold the second one out to him. "These are really good," you say. "You want one?" He looks at the candy. Then he looks at you. For a second you think you've broken him. "...Yeah," he says, and takes it from your palm carefully. "Thank you. I like them too… Thank you." He unwraps it and pops it in his mouth, and you watch him taste his childhood, a decade falling off his face in one second, and he smiles at you around it, looking almost boyish. And then he does something you almost miss: he folds the wrapper neatly, and puts it in his pocket. When John comes back, the room doesn’t feel so strange anymore. – That night you're barely through the window when you see it. He's at the console, but he's not working. He's got the wrapper out, smoothing it flat on the tabletop with two fingers carefully, working the creases out like it's a document. Then he gets up and places it on the shelf between two tape boxes and steps back to check it won't fall.

You sit by the window watching Michael Jackson archive a candy wrapper, and something in your chest does the squeezing thing so hard you nearly make a sound. "Sunny! Hey, you." He scoops you up on his way to the couch and settles you on his chest as usual, and tonight he's warm all over, and loose and talkative. "You will not believe the day I had." You believe the day he had, because you were there. "She had my candy. The one I told you about, the one from when I was little, you remember? Nobody ever has that candy. And she just… takes it out of her bag like it's nothing. What are the odds of that? Out of every candy in the world?" His hand runs down your back absent-mindedly, his eyes somewhere in the distance. "And she gave me one. She said these are really good, you want one?, like… like we do that. Like we're people who share things." He shakes his head slowly. "Something's changed. I don't know what. She said hello to me at the office first, before I even– and she told me a whole story about her cabinet, did I tell you that part? A story. With details. She was embarrassed about her band-aid." He lets out a soft laugh. "She looked so– She picks at it when she's self-conscious, did you know that? Of course you don't know that. Why would you know that." You know that, because again, you were there. "I keep trying to figure out what I did right," he murmurs quietly and you can see the exhaustion catching up to him. "So I can keep doing it. That's crazy, right? People don't just change like that. Something happened. Maybe…" a yawn takes the middle out of the sentence, "Maybe nothing happened. Maybe she just decided to be nice. Like how I decided to like her a long time ago, despite her being mean…" His hand slows on your back. When he speaks again it's half gone, the words already moving toward sleep. "You know what I keep thinking though… never seen her smile… in almost a year… wonder what it would look like… I bet she looks even more..." He never finishes it. His breathing goes long and even, his hand settles heavy and warm over your back, and the sentence just stays there openly. You lie on his chest, deciding something like you do every night. –

You know he's coming in around lunch. You typed that appointment too. So when you're standing in the elevator at five past twelve and see him crossing the lobby toward the closing doors, your hand is already out, holding them open. He does a little half-jog the way people do for held elevators (even famous people, apparently) and steps in beside you with a quick "thank you," and then he sees who held the door, and you can pinpoint the exact moment, because his whole body goes still. "Hello," you say. And you smile at him. It’s not a polite, professional smile. You give him your real smile, the one your friends get. Bright, open, and aimed directly at him from two feet away, and you watch it hit him. He freezes completely. And what finally comes out of him several floors too late is a small, shy, "...Hello.” The elevator goes upward while neither of you speaks. But it's a different silence than the one from the last elevator, the one with Bill and the cold nod. This one is warm, and he keeps giving you quick little side glances, you can feel it, and you keep your eyes forward and let him have them. The doors open and you step out first. "Have a good meeting," you say, and walk off, and you don't need to turn around anymore. You know exactly what his face is doing. – That night he doesn't even say hello to you first. You're barely through the window and he's already talking, standing up from the chair and pacing in the studio: "She smiled at me, Sunny. Today. She smiled at me. She held the elevator and she said hello and she smiled a real smile." He stops pacing in the middle of the room with his hands in his hair. "It multiplied everything. I always thought she was– I mean, anybody can see she's… but when she smiled it just, everything multiplied. I knew it would. I told you, I said I bet she looks even more–" He can't finish it. The word is on the tip of his tongue and he swallows it instead of saying it out loud, and then he shakes his head at himself, embarrassed in an empty room at midnight. But you know the word. You've known it for a while now. And your body, your ridiculous small body starts purring before you've even allowed it. You cross the couch and push your nose up under his chin as he sits, nuzzling into the warm skin there, and he laughs and gathers you in. "Yeah," he murmurs into your fur, like you'd said something. "Exactly. You get it.” You do get it. Better than he knows. Because lying there against his stubble, looking up at him in the lamplight, you're swallowing a word of your own.