#mjuniverse

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

Preferably someone else's glass.

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, she spent half her time hopelessly lost.

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

"Technically proficient," he had called them.

The phrase had landed like a slap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, the city ignored her completely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe she had judged the city too quickly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N hesitated half a second too long.

That was all New York required to punish indecision.

The doors shut directly in front of her face.

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

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

Then the train pulled away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And unexpectedly, the realization comforted her.

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

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

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

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

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

Lately his life sounded like that constantly.

Noise without rest.

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

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

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

Still, New York at least offered distance.

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

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

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

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

Michael remembered nodding automatically.

Arguing with Joseph required energy he no longer possessed.

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

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

Tonight had been particularly unbearable.

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

At some point somebody mentioned sales forecasts again.

Michael stopped listening after that.

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

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

Something inside him ached suddenly for air.

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

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

Nobody paid much attention.

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

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

Michael stepped into the night before anyone could stop him.

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

And God, it felt wonderful.

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

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

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

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

Still, the walk steadied her.

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

Y/N crossed toward it without much thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She lowered the pen against the paper.

Nothing happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The man extended the pen slightly farther toward her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only briefly at first.

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

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

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

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

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

Apparently not discreetly enough.

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

Y/N instantly felt heat crawl into her cheeks.

Great, she was staring.

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

For several seconds she considered apologizing.

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

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

Y/N blinked.

That was ridiculous.

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

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

Beside her, the stranger shifted slightly again.

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

Finally curiosity won.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beside her, Michael stilled almost imperceptibly.

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

Still, he nodded politely. "Sure."

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

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

Michael blinked once.

Y/N continued before nervousness could stop her.

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

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

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

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

"No," Michael interrupted gently.

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

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

Even saying it felt vaguely disappointing.

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

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

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

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

Michael noticed immediately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael glanced sideways at her.

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

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

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

"Listen," he said quietly.

Y/N blinked once.

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

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

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

"Hear that?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To him, it sounded layered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After that, conversation came easily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, almost no one recognized him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is a bad."

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

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

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

It sounded fake.

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

The night kept escalating itself structurally.

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

Beside her, Michael noticed immediately. "What?"

She laughed softly and shook her head.

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

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

"Ridiculous fiction."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael blinked in surprise behind her.

"Hey —"

But she kept walking. Faster now.

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

"Where are you going?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was insane.

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

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

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

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

Y/N slowed immediately, then smiled.

The sight felt almost hilariously perfect.

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

And before Michael could even fully reach the corner —

Y/N ran for it.

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

Outside, Michael finally rounded the corner.

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

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

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

The bus doors finally hissed shut between them.

And still she looked thrilled.

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe she had ruined it.

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

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

The thought tightened unexpectedly around her ribs.

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

She had absolutely no idea where she was going.

Which, oddly enough, felt appropriate.

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

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

Around her, the city had thinned into near stillness.

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

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

An ice rink.

Or rather, the beginning of one.

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

Completely empty.

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

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

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

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

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

She smiled without opening her eyes.

"There you are."

The voice behind her arrived warm with breathlessness and amusement.

Y/N's eyes flew open instantly.

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

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

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

"You found me."

The words came out almost reverent with disbelief.

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

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

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

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

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

"I know."

"You left me standing in the street."

"That was important for the narrative."

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

"And yet," she echoed softly.

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

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

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

"I was testing fate."

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

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

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

"But?"

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

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

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

"I think so."

"Have you thought about this a lot.?"

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

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

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

"How?"

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

Michael nodded once, watching her carefully.

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

"What kind of signs?"

She gestured vaguely toward the city around them.

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

Michael's gaze softened faintly.

"And you think that means something?"

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

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

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

Snowflakes caught briefly in her eyelashes while she spoke.

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

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

"That's sad."

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

"Come with me."

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

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

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

"Just tell me!"

"It's a surprise."

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

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

Eventually she slowed suddenly at the corner of another block.

"There," she announced triumphantly.

Michael followed her gaze.

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

The entire building looked like something invented by a screenwriter.

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

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

Then promptly darted across the street toward the hotel entrance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh no."

"Oh yes."

"You have a plan."

"Think of it as an experiment."

"That's worse."

Y/N practically glowed now with excitement.

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

"You mean the narrative you keep sabotaging?"

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

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

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

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

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

"And?"

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

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

"I think the universe loves drama."

"That sounds exhausting for the universe."

The elevator beside Y/N dinged softly.

The doors slid open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which presumably defeated the entire point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The elevator dinged softly upon reaching the lobby.

And at the exact same moment —

The other elevator opened too.

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

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

For one stunned second they simply stared at each other.

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

Michael just stood there smiling, profoundly, visibly relieved.

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

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

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

Four in the morning approached invisibly now beneath the snowfall.

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

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

So instead they kept walking. And talking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The neon sign buzzed faintly overhead in pink and blue.

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

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

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

"What if you hate it?"

"Then I hate it."

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

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

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

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

Y/N straightened immediately in anticipation.

The old woman placed Michael's milkshake down first.

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

Then the waitress set Y/N's down.

Michael blinked. Because hers looked absolutely insane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sentence settled warmly into the space between them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She swallowed. "So good."

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

He froze almost instantly afterward. "What?"

"This is way better."

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

"It is."

"It's radioactive."

"No, it's good I swear."

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

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

"You absolutely should not have."

"I'm serious."

"You don't mean that."

"I do."

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

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

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

Michael tilted his head slightly. "Why not?"

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

Michael stared at her in mild disbelief.

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

"Our milkshake," she corrected absentmindedly.

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

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

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

Beside her, Michael looked upward toward the sky.

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

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

The city would recognize him eventually.

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

He did not want to go back yet.

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

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

And now morning threatened to take that away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You really see life like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like moments are chapters."

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

"Then why turn them into stories?"

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

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

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

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

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

The sound shattered the fragile stillness instantly.

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

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

Michael visibly froze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know."

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

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

The apology hurt more than she expected.

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

Michael looked like he wanted to argue with that.

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

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

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

And suddenly she realized.

Not once all night had she exchanged her name.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something painful and warm twisted simultaneously through her chest.

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

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

His brows lifted slightly. 

She smiled down toward the snow briefly before continuing.

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

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

Then slowly, gently, she stepped closer toward him.

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

Michael watched her carefully, confused at first.

Then she reached for his hands.

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

Cold air rushed against both their bare hands immediately.

And then finally — Skin against skin.

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

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

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

"To our one and only night together."

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

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

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

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

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

"I spent the whole night talking about myself."

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

Snow drifted quietly around them.

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

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

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

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

Michael inhaled sharply the second she touched him.

Then immediately, impossibly, held her even tighter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She breathed through laughter. "Look at us."

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

"We're a mess."

"Completely."

"We've known each other one night."

The laughter faded slowly afterward into something quieter.

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

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

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

Please do.

Please ruin the ending.

Please find me anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

The moment had finally run out of places to hide.

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

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

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

"You'll freeze," she murmured softly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y/N remained standing there longer than necessary.

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

Only then did he look away.

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

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

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

Then paused. A small crease formed between his brows.

These weren't his.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live beautifully, Michael.

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

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

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

What an utterly, unforgettable goodbye from a beautiful stranger.

Michael Jackson gave fate exactly seven days to do its job before deciding fate was, perhaps, a little too comfortable watching him suffer.

For one week, he obeyed her rules with almost painful sincerity. He returned to California carrying her gloves folded carefully inside his coat pocket, the note tucked between pages of a notebook he had not allowed anyone else to touch. He waited through recording sessions and rehearsals and production meetings, convincing himself every morning that perhaps the universe simply needed time to arrange itself properly. Perhaps fate worked slowly. Perhaps somewhere she was boarding another bus, missing another train, laughing to herself at the absurdity of New York and thinking of him too.

He tried to be patient the way she had been patient with possibility.

But patience had never been Michael's talent.

Music came to him quickly. Feeling came to him violently. Loneliness came to him in tidal waves. Waiting, however, sat inside his body like a splinter.

By the eighth day, fate had begun to feel less mystical and more like negligence.

The problem, Michael realized very quickly, was that he knew almost nothing about her. He knew the shape of her laughter before dawn. He knew the exact expression she made when she was thinking too hard about something whimsical. He knew she preferred chaotic milkshakes over simple ones and that she talked with her hands whenever she forgot herself entirely. He knew she believed cities carried hidden rhythms underneath their noise, even if she had not understood him at first when he explained it. He knew she wanted desperately to become a writer because she wanted people to feel things when they read her words.

But he did not know her last name.

At first the realization arrived almost humorously, while he sat in the backseat of a car staring absently at the blur of Los Angeles through tinted windows. He had smiled to himself while thinking of her, only for the thought to suddenly stop short against the wall of fact.

He did not know her name beyond Y/N.

No last name. No hometown. No address. No phone number.

Nothing.

The entire night suddenly felt impossible in hindsight, like something his exhausted mind had invented during one particularly lonely winter evening in New York. Sometimes, especially late at night, he found himself rereading her note just to reassure himself she had existed physically enough to hold a pen.

Michael started subtly at first. Innocently, he told himself.

He asked around New York publishing houses under the guise of curiosity. He casually questioned receptionists, assistants, musicians, drivers. An aspiring writer visiting New York in December. A girl around his age. Clever eyes. Talkative when nervous. He realized halfway through describing her that he sounded insane.

"Michael," Latoya had interrupted one afternoon while adjusting a tape reel, "you know how many aspiring writers there are in New York?"

Michael did know. That was unfortunately the problem.

Still, he tried.

And perhaps the cruelest part was that he could not even properly explain this grief to anyone around him.

How could he?

He had spent one night with her.

One singular night wandering New York until sunrise.

People fell in love over years. Relationships. Time. History.

Not bus stops and milkshakes and elevator games.

Yet Michael found himself carrying her memory with embarrassing tenderness, protecting it carefully from the machinery of his life. Recording sessions grew longer. Expectations heavier. Everyone around him discussed his future endlessly now with frightening anticipation, speaking of numbers and charts and pressure as though music itself were becoming something mechanical. Michael smiled when appropriate, nodded when necessary, danced when expected.

Three months after New York, Michael stood inside the recording booth with headphones pressed over his curls and forgot the lyrics to his own song.

Only for half a second, but half a second was enough for Quincy Jones to notice.

The music cut abruptly, the tape slowing into silence while Michael lowered his head with visible frustration. Through the thick studio glass, Quincy leaned back in his chair without speaking immediately, one hand rubbing thoughtfully against his chin while engineers shifted awkwardly around expensive equipment pretending not to look directly at the boy unraveling quietly behind the microphone.

Outside, Los Angeles was warm for March. The city carried none of New York's sharpness, none of its winter loneliness. Here, evenings glowed gold instead of silver. Palm trees stood lazily beneath smoggy sunsets. People wore sunglasses in winter and talked too loudly at restaurant tables. The city moved with confidence instead of urgency.

Michael had never hated Los Angeles more. Because snow could not exist here properly, and somehow that mattered.

Inside the booth, Michael sighed softly and pressed both hands against the headphones, eyes squeezing shut as though he could physically force himself back into concentration. Thriller had released weeks ago now and the world was beginning to react exactly the way everyone around him had predicted.

"You wanna run it again?" Quincy asked finally, voice calm through the speaker.

Michael nodded immediately. "Yeah."

But when the music started once more, something still lagged behind him.

His spirit, perhaps.

There was a tiny distance between Michael and the music lately, subtle enough that nobody except Quincy would have recognized it. Michael still hit every note beautifully. Still danced instinctively between rhythms. Still layered harmonies with almost supernatural precision. But the recordings no longer carried that reckless emotional abandon Quincy loved most about him. Somewhere inside the process, Michael had begun holding himself slightly apart.

As though part of him remained elsewhere.

The take ended again, only this time Quincy did not immediately reach for the controls, instead he clicked the microphone button softly.

"Take five."

The engineers dispersed gratefully. One disappeared toward the coffee machine while another pretended sudden fascination with tangled cords near the floor. Quincy waited until the room emptied enough before standing slowly from his chair and walking into the booth itself.

Michael removed the headphones carefully, avoiding eye contact almost guiltily.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I don't know what's wrong with me today."

Quincy shut the booth door behind himself. The studio suddenly became quieter in a different way, insulated from the machinery outside. Warm dim lights reflected softly against the glass while tape reels continued spinning lazily in the background.

"Off day," Quincy said.

Michael finally looked up then.

Quincy leaned casually against the wall, studying him with the kind of patience that only belonged to older men who had already survived themselves once before. Quincy never pushed immediately.

Michael rubbed both hands over his face tiredly. "I'm okay."

"Mm." The sound carried just enough disbelief to make Michael smile weakly despite himself.

For a moment neither spoke. Then Quincy crossed his arms loosely and asked, "Who is she?"

Michael blinked. The question landed so directly Michael almost laughed from shock.

"What?"

"Don't do that," Quincy said gently. "I'm too old for acting." Michael looked away immediately.

Outside the booth window, the studio lights blurred softly against the glass. Somewhere deeper inside the building someone tested piano scales absentmindedly. The notes floated through walls half-muted and distant, unfinished pieces of thought.

Quincy watched Michael's expression shift almost imperceptibly inward.

There she is, he thought. Or rather: there she still is.

"It's nobody," Michael said eventually, though even he heard how unconvincing it sounded.

Quincy smiled faintly. "That's usually how people describe somebody important."

Perhaps it was exhaustion or loneliness had simply swollen too large inside him to continue carrying alone, but something in his posture softened then. He did not collapse emotionally in cinematic bursts. His sadness worked quietly. Elegantly. Like snowfall accumulating unnoticed until suddenly the entire landscape changed shape beneath it.

"She's..." He stopped.

Even now, months later, describing her felt strangely impossible.

How could he explain a person who existed almost entirely in atmosphere?

"She's a writer," he said finally. Quincy waited. Michael laughed softly under his breath, embarrassed already. "Well — not really yet. She wants to be."

"And?"

"And nothing."

"That's a lie."

Michael leaned back against the wall slowly, eyes drifting upward toward the booth ceiling.

"It was just one night," he admitted quietly.

Quincy's eyebrows lifted slightly. "One night got you forgetting lyrics?"

Despite himself, Michael smiled. "She made me feel..." Again he stopped, visibly frustrated by language itself. "I don't know."

Quincy remained silent.

Michael swallowed. "When I'm around people," he said slowly, "it's like everybody already decided who I am before I even speak." His fingers twisted unconsciously together as he talked. "They want things from me all the time. Or they expect things. Even nice people do." He laughed softly without humor. "Especially nice people."

The studio lights hummed quietly overhead.

"But with her..." Michael's voice lowered almost into wonder. "I didn't have to perform so much."

The confession lingered heavily between them. Quincy's expression changed then, something gentler entering it.

"She didn't care about Michael Jackson," he continued softly. "She cared about stories. About feelings." A tiny smile ghosted briefly across his face. "She asked me how songs make people feel alive."

Quincy nodded once. "That's a hell of a question."

Michael laughed again, quieter this time. "I gave her the worst answer too." He shook his head faintly at the memory. "Started talking about producers and rewrites and technical stuff."

"But that wasn't what she meant."

"No." Michael's smile turned fragile. "And she looked so disappointed in me."

The sadness in his voice startled even himself.

For a moment the studio disappeared entirely from his mind. He could practically see her again beneath bus stop lights, snow melting against notebook paper while she stared at him with those impossibly earnest eyes demanding honesty from him as though honesty were simple.

Michael's throat tightened abruptly. "But she listened to me," he whispered.

Quincy did not speak immediately after that. Finally he asked quietly, "So what happened?"

Michael's eyes closed briefly. "I let her leave."

Quincy absorbed that. "And now?"

Michael opened his eyes again slowly, though they looked distant somehow. "Now I keep thinking maybe fate's trying to tell me something," he admitted. "Or maybe I'm just lonely enough to see signs where there aren't any."

The vulnerability in the statement sat raw and unguarded between them.

Quincy tilted his head slightly. "You believe in fate?"

Michael thought about snowy streets. Empty ice rinks. Elevator doors. Milkshakes at four in the morning. Her voice explaining serendipity like it was a real living force threading invisibly through strangers' lives.

Then he thought about the weeks afterward spent searching for someone whose last name he never even learned.

Finally he smiled sadly. "For a moment."

Quincy did not answer immediately after that.

The older man simply studied Michael for a long moment beneath the dim studio lights, his expression unreadable in that particular way older musicians often perfected after decades of watching talented young people slowly destroy themselves trying to survive their own sensitivity. Outside the booth, tape reels continued their endless quiet turning while muffled voices drifted faintly through hallways.

Michael leaned back harder against the wall behind him, exhaustion visible now in the slope of his shoulders. Fame had begun changing the architecture of him lately. Quincy noticed it every day if he looked too closely. The boy still existed, certainly, but the world was already building structures around him. People consumed Michael Jackson with frightening enthusiasm. They wanted access to him constantly while somehow never truly seeing him at all.

And Michael, sensitive to perception in ways that bordered on painful, felt it happening in real time.

"I always thought I was the only real one," Michael said suddenly.

The words emerged so quietly Quincy almost missed them.

Michael stared toward the studio glass while he spoke, not quite looking at his reflection within it. "When I was younger," he continued slowly, "everybody felt..." He struggled briefly for language. "Performed."

Michael swallowed. "It's just..." His fingers twisted unconsciously together again. "People always knew how to act around each other. I never understood that." He shook his head faintly. "At parties or interviews or dinners. Everybody says the right things at the right times. Everybody laughs exactly when they're supposed to." His eyes lowered toward the floor. "Sometimes I'd sit there wondering if anybody actually meant anything they said."

The overhead lights hummed softly above them.

"And music was the only thing that didn't feel fake," Michael admitted. "Music was honest because it couldn't lie properly. Even bad songs tell the truth accidentally."

Quincy's mouth twitched faintly at that.

"At some point," he continued more quietly, "I started wondering if everyone else was real..." He paused then, his expression tightening almost imperceptibly. "And I was the fake one."

The confession settled heavily into the room.

Quincy's gaze softened immediately, though Michael still refused to look directly at him. "Mike —"

"But that night," Michael interrupted softly. "That night," he repeated, "when I was with her... I felt every fiber in my being that we were real."

The studio suddenly felt too small for the enormity of what he meant.

"She talked too much when she was nervous," he said with a tiny smile appearing despite himself. "And sometimes she'd stop in the middle of a sentence because another thought entered her head too fast." His gaze drifted somewhere far beyond the walls now. "She kept testing the world like she wanted proof it was alive."

"She made things matter," he whispered. Michael shook his head once, visibly frustrated by his inability to explain it properly. "It wasn't even romance yet," he admitted. "It was..." Again language failed him briefly. "Recognition."

The word lingered softly in the air.

"For one night," Michael continued, "I stopped feeling like a performance people were watching." His voice lowered further. "I was just a person walking beside another person."

Quincy exhaled slowly through his nose. "You know," he said after a moment, "most people spend their whole lives looking for one real thing."

Michael smiled sadly. "Yeah."

"And some people find it for one night."

The sadness in Michael's expression deepened almost immediately. "That's the problem," he admitted. "I don't know what to do with that."

Michael rubbed tiredly at one eye. "I keep thinking about all the little things," he confessed. "The way she looked at everything like it could become a story if she paid enough attention." He laughed softly again. "She used to stop walking in the middle of sidewalks just because she heard something interesting."

Quincy smiled faintly. "Sounds dangerous in New York."

"It was." Michael's smile widened briefly before fading once more. "But she didn't care." A pause settled. Then Michael spoke again, almost to himself now. "She told me once that fate leaves signs everywhere." His voice turned thoughtful. "And people decide what to do with them."

Quincy nodded slightly. "You believe that?"

Michael considered the question carefully. "I don't know anymore."

Quincy stepped closer then, resting one hand gently against Michael's shoulder. "Listen to me," he said quietly. Michael looked up. "What you felt was real." The certainty in Quincy's voice nearly undid him. "You hear me?" Quincy continued softly. "Don't let this business make you think real things only count if they last forever."

Quincy gave his shoulder one small squeeze. "Some people change your life in an hour," he murmured. "Some don't after twenty years."

The truth of it settled somewhere deep inside Michael's chest with almost painful force.

For a moment he could not speak at all. Then finally, very quietly, he admitted: "I think about her every day."

Quincy smiled sadly, his hand remained resting lightly against Michael's shoulder for a moment longer before he finally stepped away, moving slowly toward the recording console outside the booth. Michael followed after him eventually, quieter now, carrying his exhaustion like wet fabric draped over his body.

Quincy lowered himself carefully into the producer's chair while Michael remained standing nearby, restless energy moving visibly through him. He picked absentmindedly at the rings on his fingers before pacing once toward the window and back again.

Then suddenly he laughed. The sound startled Quincy enough to glance up.

"What?" he asked.

Michael shook his head immediately, smiling to himself in disbelief. "I sound crazy."

"You're an artist," Quincy replied dryly. "Same thing half the time."

That pulled another softer laugh from Michael, though sadness still lingered underneath it stubbornly. He leaned against the edge of the console finally, crossing his arms loosely.

"I gave fate a week," he admitted.

Quincy raised one eyebrow. "A whole week?"

"I was trying to respect her philosophy," Michael murmured, smiling faintly at the memory. "She believed so much in signs and timing and all that." He looked down briefly. "But after seven days I got impatient."

The confession carried almost boyish embarrassment. And then, because the dam had already broken earlier inside the booth and there was no point pretending indifference anymore, Michael simply kept talking.

"I started asking people about her everywhere." He rubbed one hand tiredly over his mouth. "At first casually. Then not casually at all." Another laugh escaped him. "I had people searching publishing offices in New York."

Quincy blinked. "Mike —"

"I know."

"No, you don't."

Michael smiled despite himself. "I had assistants making lists."

"Oh my God."

"She only gave me one name," Michael said helplessly, spreading his hands slightly as though the absurdity of the situation still genuinely stunned him. "Do you know how many women have that name?"

"Enough that you shouldn't have tried all fifty states."

Michael froze. Slowly, guiltily, he looked up.

Quincy stared at him. "You did not."

Michael's silence answered for him.

For a moment Quincy simply leaned back in his chair and laughed outright, deep and disbelieving. "You lost your damn mind."

"I know," Michael repeated, though now he was laughing too. "I know." But the laughter faded quickly. Because beneath the absurdity sat something painfully sincere. "I just..." Michael's smile disappeared entirely. "I thought if I tried hard enough maybe I'd find something." His eyes lowered again. "A university record. A short story publication. Anything."

The room quieted. "She's a writer," he said softly. "I figured maybe if somebody was paying attention somewhere..." His voice trailed off.

But nobody had been. Or perhaps the world had simply hidden her from him deliberately.

Michael stared toward the studio glass again, expression distant now.

"I don't know," he admitted after a long silence. "I feel like I should stop." His fingers tightened unconsciously around each other. "Just stop thinking about it, you know?" Quincy remained quiet. "But I can't."

Michael exhaled slowly through his nose, exhaustion visible now not only physically but spiritually somehow, as though yearning itself had become tiring to carry.

"Maybe I've seen too many movies," he murmured. "Love at first sight and all that."

Quincy smiled faintly. "I’ll say."

Michael shook his head softly. "But it wasn't even like that." His brow furrowed slightly, frustrated by language once again. "It wasn't just looking at her." He paused. "I felt like I knew her."

Something in Quincy's expression shifted at those words.

Michael stared downward while he spoke, voice quieter now. "When she talked," Michael continued slowly, "it felt familiar somehow. Like hearing a song you forgot you already knew." His eyes drifted shut briefly. "And every time she laughed it was like..." He stopped again, visibly overwhelmed by his own inability to translate feeling into speech. "I don't know."

Quincy watched him carefully.

Michael opened his eyes once more. "What do you think about love at first sight?" he asked quietly.

The question settled into the studio with surprising gravity.

Quincy leaned back further in his chair, considering.

"You think you could love somebody just by looking at them?" Michael continued. He then shook his head faintly. "The thing is," he whispered, "I don't think I fell in love with just her beauty." The room seemed to still itself around the confession. "I think I fell in love with being understood by her."

Michael stared at the floor while continuing quietly, "When she looked at me, it felt like she was trying to figure me out instead of trying to own a piece of me." His throat tightened visibly. "Nobody does that anymore." Michael laughed softly again, though now the sound bordered dangerously close to grief. "She would ask questions and then actually wait for the answer." He shook his head. "Do you know how rare that is?"

Quincy smiled sadly. "Yeah," he murmured. "I do." For a while neither spoke. Then Quincy finally folded his hands together thoughtfully and said, "I don't know about love at first sight."

Michael looked up.

"But I do think souls recognize each other.”

The sentence entered Michael like music.

Quincy shrugged slightly afterward, almost embarrassed by his own sincerity. "Some people," he continued, "you meet them and your spirit goes..." He tapped lightly against the console once. "There you are."

Michael's breath caught almost invisibly.

There you are.

Then finally he looked down again, smiling sadly to himself. "That's exactly what it felt like."

Quincy let the quiet settle naturally before speaking again.

"You know," he said slowly, "the funny thing about fate?" Michael glanced up. "It never likes being rushed."

A faint smile touched Michael's mouth instantly. "That sounds exactly like something she'd say."

"I'm old," Quincy replied dryly. "Old people all end up sounding mystical eventually."

Michael laughed softly beneath his breath, though the ache inside him remained visible.

Quincy folded his hands together loosely. "But listen to me carefully now," he continued, his tone gentler this time. "You can't spend your whole life standing in doorways waiting for destiny to knock again."

Michael's smile faded slightly.

Quincy watched him with careful patience before continuing. "That night mattered because it happened naturally." His eyes drifted briefly toward the studio glass. "From what you told me, none of that was forced." Michael swallowed. "And maybe," Quincy said quietly, "that's why it stayed beautiful."

Michael lowered himself slowly into a chair beside the console, exhaustion settling visibly into his body now. He rubbed both hands over his face before staring tiredly toward the floor. "I just don't wanna lose it," he admitted quietly.

Quincy's expression softened almost unbearably at that. "Mike," he said gently, "you already lived it." The words lingered heavily. "You can't lose something that changed you."

Quincy leaned back in his chair with the calm certainty of someone who had already survived enough heartbreak to understand its shape properly. "People think fate means getting everything you want," he continued. "But sometimes fate just means meeting the person who reminds you who you are." Quincy studied him carefully. "You said yourself," he murmured. "You felt real with her."

Michael nodded once, eyes lowering again.

"Well maybe that's the sign you were actually supposed to pay attention to."

Michael's brow furrowed slightly as he absorbed the thought.

Quincy continued softly, "Maybe the point wasn't to keep her forever." He paused. "Maybe the point was to wake you back up before this business turned you into something hollow."

Michael stared silently ahead for a long moment. Then quietly, almost childishly, he asked: "So what am I supposed to do?"

Quincy smiled faintly. "Live."

Michael blinked.

"I'm serious," Quincy said. "Live enough that if fate brings her back someday, there's still a whole person there for her to meet again." Quincy leaned forward slightly, elbows resting against his knees. "If it takes months," he said softly, "then it takes months."

Michael listened carefully.

"If it takes years, then years."

The overhead lights cast warm gold across the studio now, softening the exhaustion etched beneath Michael's eyes.

"And if it never happens again," Quincy continued gently, "that doesn't make it any less real."

Michael looked away quickly, jaw tightening as emotion rose unexpectedly into his throat once more. He laughed quietly at himself under his breath, embarrassed by the intensity of his own feelings.

Then Quincy smiled slightly to himself before adding: "And between you and me?" His eyes flicked toward Michael knowingly. "A woman who believes in signs that much probably ain't done with you either."

Michael let out a breath that sounded almost painfully hopeful.

Quincy pointed at him immediately. "Don't make that face."

"What face?"

"That hopeless romantic face."

Michael laughed then, genuinely this time, though sadness still threaded through the sound beautifully. "I can't help it."

"Yeah," Quincy muttered fondly. "I noticed."

Michael leaned back in the chair, staring upward toward the ceiling lights while thoughts of snow-covered streets drifted quietly through him once more. He pictured her somewhere out there living her life beyond his reach entirely. Writing perhaps. Traveling maybe. Still testing fate in small playful ways against the universe.

The image hurt, but strangely, it comforted him too.

Because for the first time in months, he understood something important:

Love did not become less meaningful simply because it remained unfinished.

Some stories were powerful precisely because they continued living quietly inside people afterward.

Quincy stood slowly, stretching his back with a small groan before reaching toward the recording controls again. "Alright," he announced. "Enough existential suffering."

Michael smiled softly. Then, after one final lingering moment with his thoughts, he rose too.

And somewhere deep inside himself, hidden carefully beneath grief and longing and impossible hope, Michael made a quiet decision:

He would stop chasing fate now. But he would not stop believing in it.

❛ By the time Eydis realized love could not save them, half her body had already begun dissolving.

Not enough to terrify her immediately, only enough to haunt her in fragments. Fingertips disappearing briefly beneath seawater before reforming hours later. Strands of hair whitening into sea foam when he kissed her forehead too tenderly. Skin turning translucent beneath moonlight after nights spent beside him. The ocean reclaiming her piece by piece with horrifying patience.

Meanwhile, the shaman burned.

Ash gathered constantly beneath his sleeves now. His lungs carried smoke when he laughed too hard. Embers glowed faintly beneath the cracks spreading slowly across his hands. Sometimes, while sleeping beside her, parts of him smoldered quietly enough to wake her in terror.

And still they loved each other.

Nature simply reclaimed what belonged to it with the same quiet inevitability winter reclaimed warmth from the earth each year. There was no malice in the tide curling around Eydis's dissolving body as she sat beside the shaman in the mouth of the cave. No anger in the foam gathering pale and trembling at the edges of her skin. The ocean loved her too. That was the tragedy of it.

To be loved by two things at once, and survive neither.

The sea cave where they hid from the world smelled permanently now of saltwater and ash. Winter storms battered violently against the cliffs outside while candles flickered weakly around them, illuminating the slow ruin of two people who continued reaching for each other despite witnessing exactly what love was doing to their bodies.

Eydis sat beside him trembling. The shaman's head rested in her lap while she combed her fingers carefully through his dark hair, trying not to notice how much of it remained scattered like soot across the blankets already.

"You're disappearing again," he murmured quietly.

Eydis looked down instantly. Her wrist had dissolved nearly translucent beneath his cheek and she pulled away instinctively.

The shaman caught her hand before she could fully retreat. "No," he whispered, his voice sounded weaker lately, like fire running out of wood.

Eydis stared at him helplessly while seawater slipped silently from her fingertips onto the stone floor below.

"You should hate me by now," she whispered.

The shaman smiled faintly despite the exhaustion hollowing visibly through his face. "How could I hate the sea for being the sea?"

Her expression shattered immediately. Neither of them were cruel enough to blame the other for what they were becoming.

The shaman slowly lifted her dissolving hand toward his mouth and kissed the center of her palm with unbearable gentleness.

Ash spread softly across her skin afterward.

"You mustn't look at me like that," she whispered.

The shaman's thumb brushed carefully beneath her eye, gathering seawater there before it could fall. "How else should I look at you?"

Eydis could not answer fast enough. Because there was no defense against being loved gently while dying. She closed her eyes. "I cannot survive you," she admitted finally. The words entered the cave like a confession already mourning itself. "I am ruining you," she whispered.

"No."

"You are turning to ash."

"And you," he replied softly, "are becoming the sea."

Eydis had spent centuries believing love stories became tragic because humans refused truth. Because they chose fantasy over reality. Because they mistook devotion for permanence. But this was infinitely worse.

To understand fully. To know exactly how it would end. And still love each other anyway.

The shaman shifted carefully until he was sitting upright beside her now, exhaustion visible in every movement. Ash drifted softly from his robes when he breathed too deeply. His once dark skin now carried delicate fractures glowing ember-red beneath candlelight, like a body struggling desperately not to become wildfire.

Still, when he looked at her, tenderness remained untouched. "How much time?" he asked quietly.

Eydis could not answer immediately. Beyond the cave entrance, snow spiraled violently into the sea. Finally she whispered, "not enough."

The shaman nodded once. As though he had expected nothing else. The shaman shifted closer despite the pain visible in every movement now. Ash spilled gently from the fractures spreading along his hands as he reached for her again.

"Look at me," he whispered. Eydis shook her head once. "Please."

Slowly, reluctantly, she turned back toward him. For a moment neither breathed.

The shaman stared at her with such devastating tenderness it almost felt holy. Then quietly, like a confession spoken to prayer instead of person, he said: "I think the gods made you too beautiful for this world."

Eydis's face crumpled instantly. "Don't."

"They did." His voice weakened further. "Nothing this beautiful was ever meant to stay."

Silence settled between them afterward, though not empty silence. This silence carried the unbearable weight of two people trying desperately to memorize each other before disappearance made memory all that remained.

The shaman studied her face carefully. "You know what frightens me most?" he asked after a while.

Eydis shook her head faintly.

His smile turned impossibly sad. "That someday the world will continue existing like you were never here at all."

The sentence hollowed her instantly. Because immortality had once belonged to her kind. Mermaids survived through story. Through song. Through sailors whispering their names long after oceans swallowed them whole.

But love had stripped even immortality from her. Now she would vanish completely.

Foam carried no history.

Eydis looked away quickly, eyes burning. "You must let me go," she whispered.

The shaman laughed softly then, the sound carried exhaustion so profound it bordered on grief itself. "I would've loved you forever," he whispered

Tears slipped down Eydis's face immediately. Only they were not tears anymore. Seafoam gathered against her cheeks instead.

The shaman stared at this transformation silently before reaching toward her with visibly trembling hands.

Every movement left faint ash drifting through the candlelight between them.

"You know," he murmured softly, "when I first saw you..." Eydis closed her eyes. "...I thought the sea had finally decided to answer me." The shaman smiled faintly through the sorrow consuming him. "I spent my whole life praying to gods that never spoke back." His fingers brushed carefully against her jaw. "Then suddenly there you were."

Eydis leaned into his touch desperately now, terrified suddenly by how little time remained for tenderness. "You cannot say things like that now," she whispered brokenly.

"Why?"

"Because I will remember them."

The shaman's expression shattered. Inside, he leaned his forehead carefully against hers.

"And what is so terrible about being remembered?"

Eydis began crying harder then, seafoam slipping soundlessly down her throat while her body dissolved further beneath his hands.

"I would do it again," she confessed through trembling breaths. "Even knowing this."

The shaman's eyes filled immediately.

"I do not regret you," he whispered fiercely into her hair. "You hear me?" His voice cracked apart entirely now. "I would choose this again."

The storm raged louder outside now, waves crashing violently enough to sound almost alive. Somewhere beyond the cave, dawn threatened slowly at the horizon.

Eydis felt herself unraveling faster.

The shaman noticed too. Panic flickered across his face for the first time. "No," he breathed suddenly, pulling her toward him desperately. "No, no —"

But foam had already begun gathering where her legs should have been. The sea was calling her home.

And ash was spreading rapidly now across the shaman's throat as though grief itself had accelerated the curse living inside him.

Eydis wrapped both arms around him anyway.

He held her impossibly tightly in return.

Neither cared anymore what love was doing to them. Only that it was ending.

Panic entered his expression immediately. "No," he whispered.

Eydis grabbed his face with both hands. "You must let me go."

"No."

"You must."

"No!" The word came sharper this time. "I searched for you my entire life," he whispered brokenly.

And as dawn slowly began bleeding pale silver across the horizon beyond the cave, she realized with sudden terrible clarity that love was not kind.

Love did not save people.

Love simply made losing them hurt enough to matter forever. ❜

Y/N sat beneath the warm bookstore lights with the open novel resting carefully in her hands, her thumb still tucked absentmindedly between pages as though she had forgotten where she was entirely. Beyond the windows behind her, snow drifted softly through the dark evening streets in pale spirals, collecting against parked cars and glowing gold beneath streetlamps.

Rows of strangers filled the folding chairs before her, though at that moment they no longer felt like strangers exactly. Some looked downward quietly into their laps. One woman near the back held a hand against her mouth. A man in a wool coat blinked repeatedly toward the floor as though embarrassed by the emotion that had unexpectedly reached him.

Books did that sometimes. They slipped quietly beneath the skin before people realized they had been wounded.

Beside Y/N, the event moderator finally exhaled softly, almost reverently, before adjusting the stack of papers resting in her lap.

"Well," she murmured with a faint laugh, visibly emotional herself now, "that certainly explains why people haven't stopped talking about this novel."

Gentle laughter rippled through the room, though even that laughter sounded softer now, touched by the sadness lingering behind the excerpt.

Y/N smiled faintly. She still had not grown accustomed to moments like this.

The moderator glanced down toward the reviews printed across her pages. "Let's see," she said, clearing her throat lightly. "'A devastating meditation on love, transformation, and the violence of being truly known.'"

Another page turned. "'What A Life feels less like a novel and more like remembering a dream you once had about grief.'"

"'Y/N writes longing with frightening intimacy.'"

The moderator continued warmly, "'An instant classic of modern fantasy literature. Ruthlessly tender. Hauntingly alive.'"

Applause rose softly throughout the bookstore afterward.

Y/N smiled politely while heat crept faintly beneath her skin, though internally the entire experience still felt deeply unreal to her somehow. Even now, months after publication, success continued arriving with a strange dreamlike quality she could not fully trust. Interviews, reviews, signings. Seeing her name displayed in bookstore windows. Watching strangers carry her thoughts home beneath their arms without realizing those thoughts had once existed only inside the privacy of her own lonely mind.

It frightened her sometimes, because writing a book meant allowing pieces of yourself to survive in rooms you would never enter.

The moderator leaned toward her slightly with a smile. "How does it feel?" she asked gently. "Seeing this story belong to the world now?”

The question settled softly into Y/N's chest. For a moment she did not answer immediately. Because truthfully? She still remembered being twenty-two years old and crying underground in a New York subway station because the city had frightened her so badly she nearly boarded the next train home.

She remembered believing her life had not yet properly begun.

And now here she was, an author.

Y/N looked down briefly at the novel resting in her hands. The cover glimmered softly beneath bookstore lighting: What A Life embossed carefully in silver lettering against deep ocean-blue fabric.

When she was younger, writing had felt less like ambition and more like survival. She wrote because the world moved through her too loudly otherwise. Because she noticed things other people discarded. The rhythm of strangers speaking. The loneliness inside crowded rooms. The sound snow made against coat sleeves at three in the morning.

She had once feared sensitivity would ruin her life, instead it built one.

Y/N lifted her gaze again finally, expression quieter now. "It feels..." She laughed softly beneath her breath. "Strange." The audience smiled warmly. "No, I mean truly strange," she continued gently. "I spent most of my life wanting this so badly that I never really imagined what happened afterward."

The moderator nodded thoughtfully.

Y/N turned the book carefully in her hands. "When you're young," she said softly, "you think becoming successful means becoming complete somehow." Her smile grew smaller then. Sadder around the edges. "But mostly it just means more people can suddenly see all the lonely parts of you at once."

The room quieted again and outside the windows, snow continued falling steadily through the city night. Y/N looked toward it briefly, distracted by the movement.

Five winters had passed since New York.

Five winters since she learned some nights altered the architecture of a person permanently.

The moderator studied her carefully. "There's so much yearning in this novel," she observed gently. "It feels deeply lived-in emotionally." She hesitated slightly before asking, "Did something specific inspire it?"

Y/N smiled softly before lowering her gaze toward the novel once more. "I think..." she began carefully, "I became interested in the ways people change each other accidentally." Y/N's thumb brushed slowly across the edge of the pages. "I don't think most people realize how much of themselves they leave behind in others," she continued quietly. "A conversation. a nught, a kindness." Her smile flickered faintly. "Sometimes someone enters your life very briefly and still rearranges the entire way you understand being alive."

By the time the signing ended, the bookstore had grown quieter in that deeply specific way places do after too much emotion has passed through them.

Chairs sat slightly crooked now from where people had risen hours earlier. Half-empty paper coffee cups remained abandoned beside stacks of novels. Snowmelt darkened the entrance rugs near the front door where readers had tracked winter inside with them all evening long. Somewhere near the back shelves, an employee quietly reorganized books while jazz drifted softly through hidden speakers overhead, warm and distant and impossibly gentle against the hush settling across the store.

Y/N sat alone at the signing table for a moment longer after the final reader left.

The event moderator had already disappeared somewhere toward the office with leftover programs tucked beneath one arm while bookstore employees slowly dimmed sections of lighting throughout the building one by one. Outside the windows, snow continued falling steadily across the city streets in pale silver sheets.

Y/N carefully closed the fountain pen resting between her fingers before sliding it into her bag alongside scattered notes and folded receipts and the half-finished draft of something she had been trying unsuccessfully to write for weeks now. Success, she had learned, did not make writing easier. It only made failure more public.

She stood slowly afterward, exhaustion settling warmly through her bones and for a moment she simply lingered there quietly, glancing across the bookstore one last time before leaving. There was always something heartbreaking to her about bookstores after closing. They felt strangely abandoned in those final moments, like theaters after audiences departed. Hundreds of stories remained waiting silently in the dark after everyone else went home.

Y/N adjusted her coat around herself before beginning toward the exit.

Then she heard laughter, soft laughter. The sound pulled her attention instinctively toward one of the fiction aisles near the front windows where a young couple stood browsing together beneath hanging golden lights. They looked barely twenty. Maybe younger. Snow clung still to the shoulders of the man's coat while the woman beside him absentmindedly rubbed warmth back into her hands between conversations.

They were beautiful together in the ordinary way real people sometimes accidentally became.

The man held a paperback loosely in one hand while speaking animatedly about something Y/N could not fully hear at first. Then: "I'm serious," he insisted, laughing. "That whole thing was insane."

The woman rolled her eyes affectionately. "Shut up," she laughed, "it was ridiculous."

"That's what I said."

"You said romantic."

"It was romantic."

"It was manipulative," she argued immediately, smiling despite herself. "Imagine leaving your entire love life up to coincidence."

The man laughed softly beneath his breath. "Yeah," he admitted after a moment. "Maybe it is stupid." Y/N slowed unconsciously near the shelves. The young man turned the paperback over thoughtfully in his hands,, "but I don't know," he murmured. "Part of me likes it."

The woman looked up at him curiously, "likes what?"

He shrugged slightly. "The idea that some people find each other more than once."

Something tightened quietly inside Y/N's chest.

The woman smiled then, softer now. "You're such a romantic."

"Whatever."

She laughed again. The sound echoed warmly through the nearly empty bookstore.

Then the young man glanced down toward the paperback again before sliding it carefully back into place on the shelf between dozens of others.

Something about that interaction entered Y/N like memory itself. Suddenly, violently, she was twenty-two again standing beneath hotel lights in New York while elevator doors slid shut between her and a boy with impossible eyes.

The memory no longer hurt in the sharp unbearable way it once had during those first years after New York. Time had softened the wound carefully around the edges until longing became something quieter. Warmer. Like touching an old scar absentmindedly in the dark.

The young couple continued speaking quietly together near the shelves, unaware entirely of the woman standing several feet away unraveling gently inside her own nostalgia.

For a while after New York, Y/N believed the signs were everywhere. At first it felt almost thrilling, like fate had accepted her challenge and now continued speaking back through the ordinary machinery of the world.

The first sign arrived three days after she returned home.

She had been standing inside a grocery store absentmindedly comparing soup cans when his voice suddenly spilled through the overhead speakers without warning, soft static crackling beneath the music. Y/N froze instantly in the middle of the aisle, heart lurching so hard it physically hurt. Around her, people continued shopping normally, pushing carts past displays of oranges and bread while she stood completely motionless beneath fluorescent lights listening to him sing as though the universe itself had reached down specifically to tap her shoulder.

After that, the signs multiplied almost aggressively.

His face appeared from magazine stands while she waited for buses, his songs drifted from passing cars at stoplights, teenage girls spoke about him breathlessly in diners and laundromats and bookstores as though he no longer belonged entirely to himself but instead to culture itself now.

Suddenly he was everywhere at once. Music stores plastered his face across enormous posters in their front windows. Department store televisions replayed interviews endlessly while crowds gathered around glowing screens. Newspaper headlines praised him with the strange feverish language people reserved for phenomena rather than people.

Y/N would pause sometimes outside storefronts just long enough to hear his laugh through television speakers before continuing on with her day pretending her chest had not just tightened painfully around the sound.

At first she tried reading meaning into all of it. Of course she did.

She still believed in fate then with the earnest fragile devotion only young people truly possessed. She believed the universe behaved like narrative. That patterns meant something. That coincidence carried intention if observed carefully enough.

So she searched. Not for him, but for signs. There was a difference.

Or at least there had been initially.

If his song played somewhere unexpected, her pulse quickened instantly, if she overheard strangers mention him in conversation, she paused, if she turned a corner and saw his face staring back at her from magazine covers, something inside her stirred alive all over again.

The problem was that eventually Michael Jackson stopped being a sign at all.

He became environment. How could fate use him symbolically when the entire world suddenly revolved around him constantly?

That was the cruel irony of celebrity, she realized.

The more famous he became, the less personal her memories of him felt.

Girls screamed his name from passing cars now. Women taped his posters above their beds. Talk show hosts analyzed him. Critics dissected him. The world consumed him in endless glittering pieces.

Meanwhile Y/N still remembered the sound of him humming quietly beside her at three in the morning.

The disconnect unsettled her deeply.

Because the Michael belonging to the world and the Michael she met that night felt like two entirely different people somehow.

And gradually, painfully, the signs stopped feeling romantic. They became exhausting instead. There were simply too many of them.

Fate, she thought eventually, should feel intimate.

But there was nothing intimate about seeing someone's face twenty-seven times a day because the entire planet had collectively fallen in love with them.

At some point during that first year, she stopped pausing when his songs played publicly, stopped lingering near magazine stands, stopped reading interviews, stopped treating every accidental glimpse of him like a coded message from the universe.

There was an emotional pattern forming around her life that no longer resembled fate at all. Fate felt precise. Gentle. Strange in its timing. But this? This felt like grief disguised as coincidence.

And Y/N understood something quietly devastating then:

If she continued trying to interpret every appearance of him as meaningful, she would lose herself entirely.

So she stopped reading the signs. At least consciously. Outwardly, life continued.

She wrote constantly afterward. Terribly at first. Then less terribly.

She moved apartments twice. Learned how loneliness changed shape with age. Learned how ambition could consume entire years before you noticed time passing at all.

But underneath everything, Michael remained threaded quietly through the architecture of her life regardless.

Years continued moving whether hearts cooperated or not, and eventually people around her began expecting normal things again. Dating. Relationships. The careful construction of adulthood. Friends invited her to dinners where husbands reached automatically for wives' hands across tables. Coworkers asked gentle questions about whether she was seeing anyone.

Her mother once looked at her and sighed softly, saying, "You know, sweetheart, love isn't always supposed to feel like poetry."

Y/N never answered that comment aloud.

The truth was she did fall halfway in love once or twice afterward. Or at least she tried to.

There was a man who wore wool sweaters and worked in publishing and kissed her forehead gently while reading manuscripts beside her on Sunday afternoons. He was kind in the stable dependable way adulthood encouraged people to seek. He remembered birthdays. He called when he said he would. He listened carefully while she spoke.

Y/N wanted desperately to love him completely.

But one evening during spring rain, they exited a restaurant together while water poured heavily down city sidewalks in silver sheets. Cars hissed through puddles nearby. Neon signs reflected beautifully against soaked pavement.

Y/N paused instinctively beneath the awning. The rain smelled alive. Like the world exhaling.

He unlocked the car hurriedly while shielding himself with one arm. "Come on," he called over the rain. "You're gonna get soaked."

Y/N looked outward toward the street instead. "I think I wanna walk," she murmured.

He blinked at her. "In this?"

She smiled faintly. The rain had already begun misting lightly across her cheeks now. "I like the rain."

He laughed once beneath his breath. "No one likes walking in rain."

The sentence landed strangely inside her.

She remembered Michael walking beside her through snow-covered streets with flakes collecting thickly in his curls and scarf while he tilted his face briefly toward the sky like someone greeting weather personally.

"It feels kinda magic, doesn't it?" he had murmured softly then.

Y/N remembered laughing. "What does?"

"This." He gestured loosely toward the snow falling around them. "The way it melts when it lands on you." Snow had gathered across his eyelashes while he spoke. "It's almost..." He searched for the word carefully before smiling. "Childlike."

Y/N remembered staring at him then.

Back beneath the restaurant awning years later, rain continued pouring steadily while the man she was with watched her with mild confusion. "You seriously wanna walk?"

Y/N looked at him for a long moment. Then quietly: "Yeah."

He sighed affectionately before climbing into the car alone.

The relationship ended three months later.

Then there was another man later.

He worked in architecture and possessed beautiful hands and once told her he loved the way she spoke about books because it sounded like she physically lived inside them. Y/N thought perhaps that observation meant something hopeful initially.

It did not.

One evening they sat together inside a crowded diner after seeing a late film downtown. The place smelled like coffee and syrup and fried butter. Neon lights buzzed faintly overhead while exhausted waitresses drifted between tables carrying steaming plates through clouds of conversation.

He ordered black coffee and pie.

Y/N ordered something absurdly overdecorated because she always did when menus allowed her the opportunity. A milkshake arrived towering impossibly above the glass itself, layered with whipped cream and crushed candy and bright ridiculous syrup dripping down the sides.

He laughed immediately. "What is that?"

Y/N grinned. "I don't know."

"That can't be real food."

"That's what makes it exciting!"

She took a sip first and nearly laughed aloud at the overwhelming sweetness of it. Then instinctively — without thinking, without hesitation, because some parts of a person became automatic after enough remembering — she slid the glass gently toward him.

"Try it."

He looked mildly horrified. "No, thanks."

"Come on."

"You ordered that."

Y/N blinked faintly. "What?"

"You ordered yours," he said lightly. "I ordered mine."

The sentence was harmless. Completely harmless. And still something inside her heart quietly folded inward.

The relationship lasted four months.

The worst part was that none of these men were bad men.

That would have been easier.

None of them betrayed her, none of them lied spectacularly, none of them shattered her heart dramatically enough to become stories worth telling.

They simply failed to reach her completely. Or perhaps she failed to let them.

Y/N wondered sometimes whether Michael had unknowingly ruined ordinary love for her forever.

The snow had thickened by the time Y/N finally left the bookstore.

The storm moved with strange tenderness tonight, soft flakes drifting lazily beneath streetlights as though the entire city had been placed underwater. Cars rolled slowly through silvered streets. Storefront windows glowed gold against the dark. Somewhere far behind her, the bookstore door shut quietly with the muted finality of an ending.

Y/N pulled her coat tighter around herself as she descended the steps onto the sidewalk, her signed copies and notes tucked safely into the leather satchel hanging against her side. The cold bit immediately at her cheeks, though not unpleasantly. New York winters still carried the same peculiar feeling they had five years ago. Beautiful from a distance. Brutal up close.

She should have gone home, instead she walked. not toward anywhere specific, just forward.

Her boots pressed softly into fresh snow while crowds moved around her in uneven currents, strangers hurrying beneath umbrellas and scarves and newspaper hats against the cold. Taxi lights streaked through intersections like blurred stars. Steam curled upward from sewer grates in ghostly ribbons. The city breathed around her endlessly.

And beneath it all — rhythm.

Even now she heard it. Five years later and she still could not walk through cities normally anymore.

She rounded another corner slowly, distracted entirely by thought, before a sound drifted softly through the snowfall.

Humming.

Y/N slowed instinctively.

Near the mouth of an alleyway sat an old man bundled beneath layers of worn coats and blankets, his gray beard dusted lightly with snow while gloved fingers tapped steadily against an overturned tin can beside him. Not random tapping either. A quiet little beat carried carefully beneath his humming.

People passed him without looking. Most did. But Y/N lingered.

The old man's eyes remained closed while he hummed softly into the cold air, head swaying faintly with the rhythm only he seemed fully able to hear.

There was something almost peaceful about him. As though the world had already taken enough from him that embarrassment no longer survived in his body.

Y/N reached quietly into her coat pocket before stepping closer and dropping folded bills carefully into the can beside him.

The old man opened one eye immediately. Then the other. "Well now," he murmured softly. His voice sounded weathered in the beautiful way old jazz records sounded weathered. "An angel with cold hands."

Y/N laughed lightly despite herself. "I think angels probably dress warmer than this."

The old man grinned. "Then they ain't angels from New York."

Snow gathered steadily across his shoulders while Y/N stood smiling awkwardly beside him, suddenly unsure why she had stopped walking entirely.

Then she gestured gently toward him. "You hum beautifully."

The compliment seemed to genuinely surprise him. Most people probably handed him money to avoid guilt. Not conversation.

The old man tilted his head thoughtfully. "You listen beautifully," he replied.

The old man suddenly pushed himself upward with visible effort, joints protesting loudly beneath layers of fabric before he extended one gloved hand dramatically toward her.

"Well," he announced softly, "it'd be rude not to dance with the lady after a compliment like that."

Y/N blinked, then laughed. "What?"

"C'mon."

Before she could protest properly, the old man gently grabbed her hand and spun her once beneath the snowfall right there on the sidewalk.

Not gracefully or elegantly.

Childishly.

The movement startled a laugh out of her so sudden and genuine it almost embarrassed her afterward. Snow swirled around them beneath glowing storefront lights while the old man continued humming softly, boots sliding against slush-covered pavement in uneven rhythm.

People glanced briefly while passing. Neither cared.

The old man pointed dramatically toward the sky while continuing his little melody.

"You hear that?" he asked.

Y/N smiled. "The snow?"

"No." He tapped gently against her chest instead. "That."

The old man continued humming absentmindedly while tapping the rhythm lightly against the tin can again.

Her entire body went still.

The old man noticed her expression instantly. "What?" he asked lightly.

Y/N swallowed. "That song."

"Hm?"

"What's that song?"

The old man chuckled softly. "C'mon, now. Everybody knows that song."

The old man studied her carefully now. Snow drifted between them in soft white spirals. "That tune belong to somebody?" he asked knowingly.

Y/N laughed weakly beneath her breath. "Just someone who used to love it." She lied.

The old man smiled then. "Funny thing about certain people," he murmured softly while settling himself slowly back onto his crate. "Sometimes the world keeps repeating them to you until you answer properly."

She looked away toward the street. "That sounds unhealthy."

The old man barked out a laugh. "Probably is." Then quieter now: "But some souls got rhythm together." He tapped twice against the tin can thoughtfully. "And rhythm don't forget easy."

The old man resumed humming afterward as though nothing significant had occurred at all.

But before she finally turned to leave, he called softly after her: "Hey." She glanced back and the old man smiled gently. "Don't spend too much time pretending not to hear the music, sweetheart."

Then he closed his eyes again. And continued humming into the snowfall.

Y/N continued and pushed open the door of a small coffee shop mostly because her hands had begun aching from the cold.

The place was narrow and crowded in the comfortable way only city cafés managed to be, every small table occupied by students or exhausted couples or solitary people pretending not to observe each other. Lamps glowed amber against brick walls lined with crooked bookshelves. Someone laughed softly near the back.

For one brief moment, the world felt ordinary again. Because after the old man outside, Y/N genuinely needed ordinary.

She stepped toward the register slowly, brushing melted snow from her coat sleeves while scanning the menu overhead without truly reading it.

"What can I get started for you?" the cashier asked brightly.

Y/N blinked back toward reality. "Uh." She glanced upward again. "Just a coffee. And..." Her eyes landed randomly on a pastry behind the glass. "Two of those danishes."

The cashier nodded. "Cherry or cheese?"

Y/N stared blankly for half a second. "Whichever one's better."

The girl behind the counter grinned. "Cheese. Definitely."

"Then that one."

The cashier tapped rapidly against the register while Y/N reached absently into her bag for her wallet.

"That'll be nineteen eighty-two."

Y/N froze. Her fingers remained curled around her wallet while the number hung weightlessly in the air between them.

19.82

The cashier looked up after a second. "You okay?"

Y/N blinked hard. "What?"

"The total?"

Y/N stared at the little glowing screen. A laugh escaped her suddenly. "Sorry," she murmured quickly while pulling out cash. "It's just..."

Coincidence. Pure coincidence.

The cashier smiled politely in the way workers did when customers became strange unexpectedly. "Long day?"

"You have no idea."

The girl handed her the receipt carefully. Y/N glanced at it once more despite herself before immediately folding it and stuffing it into her coat pocket like hiding the number might somehow lessen its effect.

This is ridiculous, she thought firmly.

The universe is not writing poetry specifically for you.

Still — her pulse had not settled by the time she collected her drink.

Y/N moved toward the back corner of the café afterward searching for someplace quiet to sit, though most tables were already occupied. She passed clusters of conversation and open laptops and half-finished coffees before noticing one small table near the window occupied by a young man surrounded almost entirely by paper. And — God.

Was he crying?

He was sitting there with one hand pressed hard against his mouth while staring hopelessly at the pages in front of him.

Y/N slowed instinctively. She recognized that posture immediately.

Creative despair had a physical shape to it.

Carefully, she settled herself at the neighboring table instead.

The young man didn't notice her at first. He continued glaring at the pages like they had personally betrayed him.

Then under his breath: "This is terrible."

The young man aggressively crossed out an entire paragraph afterward before groaning quietly and dropping his forehead against the table.

Y/N tried very hard not to laugh. Then accidentally did.

The guy looked up immediately, startled. "Oh my God," he blurted suddenly.

Y/N blinked. "What?"

"You're —" He sat upright so quickly papers slid everywhere. "You wrote What A Life."

Y/N physically recoiled a little at hearing the title aloud. "Oh," she laughed awkwardly. "Yeah."

The young man stared at her in genuine disbelief. "I just bought your book today."

"That's either exciting or unfortunate depending on your taste."

"No, seriously." He gestured helplessly toward her. "Your writing is insane." Y/N nearly choked on her coffee. The young man ran frustrated fingers through his hair before looking down toward his pages again. "I just..." He laughed weakly. "I don't understand how people write like that."

"Like what?" Y/N tilted her head slightly.

He gestured toward her vaguely as though language itself had failed him. "Like you can actually feel it." His voice softened now. "The way you describe things. It feels..." He searched helplessly. "Alive."

The words struck somewhere frighteningly familiar inside her.

The young man mistook her silence for discomfort immediately. "Sorry," he blurted quickly. "That sounded creepy."

"No," Y/N murmured softly. "No, it's okay."

The boy looked exhausted. Young. The kind of young where ambition still hurt visibly. He glanced hopelessly back toward his marked-up pages. "I just don't know how to make people feel things when they read my work."

The same impossible question she once carried through New York hoping Michael Jackson somehow possessed the answer to.

Y/N stared quietly into her coffee for a long moment. Then softly: "Listen." The word left her mouth before she even realized she'd chosen it.

The young man blinked.

Y/N slowly lifted her gaze toward the café around them. "The espresso machine," she murmured. "Hear that?" Steam hissed loudly behind the counter. "The cups." Ceramic clinking. "People shifting in their chairs, th girl laughing over there trying not to snort into her drink."

The young man looked around slowly now. Confused but listening.

"The guy near the door keeps tapping his foot because he wants to leave but doesn't wanna interrupt the conversation he's trapped in."

The young man actually laughed softly at that.

Y/N continued quietly. "People think emotion comes from dramatic things. Tragedy. Big speeches. But most feeling lives in tiny sounds." Her fingers tapped unconsciously against the coffee cup now. "Rhythm. Hesitation. The way somebody says one word softer than the others."

Her breath caught suddenly.

She sounded exactly like him.

Like somewhere across five years she had unknowingly carried his way of understanding the world inside herself until it became inseparable from her own.

Y/N stopped mid-sentence.

The young man waited quietly.

But her chest had gone tight.

Holy shit.

Outside, snow continued falling softly against the café windows while the city breathed endlessly beyond the glass.

And for the first time that night — for the first time in years — Y/N genuinely wondered if fate might actually be trying to speak to her.

By the time she finally stepped back outside the coffee shop, the snow had become serious. Y/N pulled her coat tighter as cold air immediately wrapped around her again.

The warmth of the café faded quickly behind her. And with it, unfortunately, her ability to rationalize the night.

Because now she was walking through New York genuinely wondering whether fate was attempting to psychologically torture her.

She walked without direction for several minutes, boots crunching softly through fresh snow while her mind replayed the coffee shop conversation over and over again.

Y/N exhaled shakily into the cold. She needed to stop thinking. Writers spent too much time turning ordinary life into symbolism until eventually symbolism began retaliating. Still — the city tonight felt unbearably alive. Like New York itself had lifted its enormous head slightly and begun watching her move through it.

Y/N shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets while turning another corner, only to realize immediately she had no idea where she was anymore.

Buildings looked unfamiliar now. Storefronts less recognizable. Even the street names meant nothing to her at this point. Somewhere nearby, a cab horn echoed loudly before vanishing into the storm.

Wonderful. Lost again. Some things, apparently, never changed.

The thought had barely crossed her mind before a sudden gust of wind rushed violently down the street.

And something smacked directly into her legs.

Y/N startled, looking downward immediately.

A map.

One of those enormous fold-out tourist maps impossible to close correctly once opened. The paper fluttered wildly against her boots while snow collected rapidly along its edges.

"Oh no!" A little girl's voice rang out somewhere nearby.

Y/N bent quickly, grabbing the map before it could slide farther into the street.

A child no older than eight came barreling toward her through the snow in a bright red coat, boots slipping recklessly against the pavement. Right behind her came an exhausted-looking woman struggling to catch up while simultaneously attempting to wave down a taxi.

"Hey!" the woman called breathlessly. "Slow down before you crack your head open!"

The little girl ignored this entirely, naturally. She skidded to a stop directly in front of Y/N, slightly out of breath but smiling with the fearless openness children still possessed before adulthood taught them caution.

"My map!" she announced dramatically.

The mother finally caught up seconds later, snow dusting heavily across her hair and shoulders while she grabbed the girl gently by the hood before she could launch herself into traffic.

"I am so sorry," the woman sighed immediately. "She thinks New York is a scavenger hunt."

"It is a scavenger hunt," the little girl argued.

Y/N smiled faintly while carefully folding the map inward enough to hand it back. "It's okay."

The mother accepted it gratefully before groaning at the sight of the half-destroyed folds. "Oh, we're never getting this closed again."

"It's okay, there's plenty of those maps scattered around here," Y/N replied lightly.

The woman barked out a tired laugh. "That's reassuring."

The little girl meanwhile pointed accusingly toward the street. "We're lost because Mom missed the train."

"I missed the train by half a second," the mother corrected defensively.

"You said one second."

"Emotionally, it felt longer."

Y/N laughed again before she could stop herself. The interaction between them carried such warm chaotic affection that something inside her chest softened instinctively.

The little girl suddenly pointed toward the map still dangling from her mother's hands. "We're trying to go there."

Y/N glanced absentmindedly toward the paper. A thick red circle had been drawn around a location several neighborhoods away. A diner, apparently. She frowned slightly. "That's pretty far from here."

"I know," the mother groaned. "At this point I think we've accidentally crossed into another dimension."

"Mom doesn't know how to read maps."

"I know exactly how to read maps," the woman argued. "New York just bends space-time."

The little girl rolled her eyes with shocking theatrical exhaustion.

Y/N smiled despite herself. "So why are you trying to get there?"

The little girl gasped dramatically as though the answer should have been obvious to everyone alive. "Because it's called Serendipity."

The word hit Y/N so suddenly she physically stilled.

The mother noticed immediately. "Oh God," she laughed tiredly. "Don't tell me you're one of those people too."

"One of what people?"

"The fate people." She gestured vaguely into the snowy air. "The romantics. The weird destiny crowd."

"I am not weird," the little girl protested.

"You made us come to New York because a movie told you soulmates eat frozen hot chocolate."

"That's not weird!."

Y/N stared at them. The mother continued rambling while adjusting her daughter's scarf. "She saw the place in a movie and now apparently our entire trip depends on finding it before we leave tomorrow morning."

The little girl crossed her arms. "Because if we don't go, then maybe we miss the sign."

The mother sighed dramatically toward the heavens. "You see what I'm dealing with?"

Snow drifted heavily between them now while taxis rolled past glowing gold beneath streetlights. "Wait," Y/N said quietly.

The mother blinked. "Hm?"

"Can I see that map again?"

The little girl immediately held it out proudly.

Y/N unfolded it carefully this time, eyes scanning the red-circled location.

The little girl tilted her head curiously. "You know where it is?"

Y/N looked up slowly. Snow melted softly against her lashes while something terrifyingly close to awe spread through her chest. "Yes," she whispered.

The mother laughed tiredly beneath her breath. "Well thank God someone does."

A taxi rushed past them immediately afterward, tires hissing violently through slush. The mother raised her arm halfheartedly. The cab ignored her entirely.

Another taxi approached farther down the street. The mother didn't even bother trying this time.

Y/N folded the map carefully before handing it back. Then suddenly: "Have you ever actually called one over?"

The mother blinked. "A taxi?"

Y/N nodded.

The woman laughed immediately. "Clearly not successfully."

Something playful stirred unexpectedly inside Y/N then. Perhaps it was the little girl, or maybe it was the snow, perhaps it was the growing absurdity of the entire evening. Or maybe some buried reckless part of herself had fully awakened tonight after years asleep.

Without another word, Y/N stepped boldly off the curb. Directly into traffic.

"Jesus Christ," the mother gasped.

A horn blared instantly. Y/N ignored it completely. She lifted one arm sharply into the snowfall with surprising confidence.

The taxi screeched to a stop inches away from her. For one heartbeat, the entire street seemed stunned. Then Y/N turned toward them calmly and opened the door.

The little girl lost her mind immediately. "No way!"

The mother stared at her in disbelief. "How did you just do that?"

Y/N smiled faintly. "You have to act like the city already belongs to you."

The taxi driver leaned halfway out the window. "You gettin' in or what?"

Y/N gestured toward the mother and daughter instead. "After you."

The little girl practically launched herself into the cab while laughing. The mother followed behind her still visibly bewildered. "Oh my God," she muttered while climbing inside. "You're like some kind of taxi witch."

Y/N laughed softly before sliding in after them and pulling the door shut behind her. The windows fogged almost immediately from the sudden heat while snow continued falling thickly outside. The city blurred gold and silver beyond the glass as the cab slowly pulled back into traffic.

"Where to?" the driver grunted.

The little girl held the map upward proudly. "Serendipity!"

The driver barked out a laugh. "Course it is."

Y/N settled quietly against the seat afterward while the little girl continued vibrating with excitement beside her. Her cheeks glowed pink from cold and enthusiasm. "I've wanted to go there forever," she announced.

"Forever?" her mother repeated dryly. "You're eight."

"Anyways," Y/N smiled toward the window. The child continued rambling anyway. "It's from my favorite movie." She gasped suddenly before grabbing her mother's arm dramatically. "Mom, tell her who my favorite actress is."

"I don't know," the mother deadpanned. "You change every day."

"It's Goldie Hawn right now."

"Right now," the mother echoed.

The little girl ignored this entirely. "She falls in love because of fate."

Y/N looked down toward her gloves quietly.

The little girl leaned closer now conspiratorially. "And they almost don't meet again."

"That's generally how tension works," the mother muttered.

"But they DO." The girl smiled dreamily out the fogged window. "Because they were supposed to."

The mother sighed affectionately beside them. "She watched that movie once and suddenly decided destiny was a personality trait."

The little girl turned dramatically toward Y/N instead. "Do YOU believe in fate?"

The question arrived so suddenly that Y/N almost laughed. What a dangerous question for a child to ask a stranger in New York during snowfall. "I think..." She paused carefully, "people notice certain moments more than others."

"That's not an answer."

Her mother groaned softly. "Stop interrogating the poor woman."

"No, it's okay."

The little girl narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "So that means yes."

Y/N smiled faintly despite herself. "Ask me again after tonight."

The child seemed deeply satisfied by this.

Outside the cab, the city shifted gradually as they traveled farther downtown. Buildings changed shape. Streets narrowed. Neon signs glowed brighter against accumulating snow.

Then the mother suddenly spoke again. "Apparently the diner's become impossible lately."

Y/N glanced toward her. "What do you mean?"

"Tourists." The woman rolled her eyes affectionately. "Ever since the movie came out everybody suddenly thinks diners are romantic." The mother laughed before looking back toward Y/N. "Some celebrity bought the place a few years back."

Y/N barely registered the statement. "Hm?"

"The diner." The woman shrugged. "I guess somebody famous owns it. That's what the concierge said."

"Who?"

"No idea."

The girl gasped dramatically again. "What if it's Cher?"

"It's not Cher."

The little girl looked devastated.

Y/N smiled absently at their conversation, though her attention had already drifted elsewhere. Y/N pressed her forehead lightly against the cold taxi window afterward.

The little girl continued talking enough for all three of them combined, happily narrating every glowing storefront and snow-covered tree they passed while her mother nodded along with the exhausted patience of someone who had accepted long ago that silence simply was not part of her child's personality.

The city outside the glass no longer felt random now. Street corners tugged at her memory unexpectedly. Certain buildings looked familiar in fleeting painful flashes. A flower shop she vaguely remembered passing once at two in the morning. A narrow alleyway where Michael had nearly slipped laughing through slush while insisting he was graceful.

The taxi slowed finally near a glowing intersection washed gold beneath Christmas lights. "We're here," the driver announced.

The girl gasped so loudly it startled everyone. "Oh my God!" The little girl practically climbed over the seat trying to peer through the windshield. "There it is!"

The diner looked almost unreal against the storm. Like somewhere memory itself would live.

"C'mon, Mom!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming —" The mother paused halfway out before glancing back toward Y/N. "You joining us?"

Before Y/N could answer, the girl leaned back into the cab dramatically. "You HAVE to."

Y/N laughed softly despite the strange pressure building in her chest. "I'll be right there."

The girl narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Promise?"

Something about the question hurt unexpectedly. Still — Y/N smiled gently. "Promise."

The little girl seemed satisfied enough by this. Then she grabbed her mother's hand and dragged her eagerly through the snowfall toward the glowing entrance.

Halfway there, the mother glanced back one final time. "Thank you," she mouthed softly.

Y/N nodded once.

Then they disappeared inside together beneath warmth and light and laughter.

The taxi suddenly felt very quiet afterward. Y/N remained motionless in the backseat. Snow drifted steadily outside the windows while the driver adjusted something softly on the radio up front.

"You gettin' out?" he finally asked.

Y/N blinked. "Oh, right."

She reached shakily into her bag for cash, fingers suddenly clumsy now. Her pulse had become unbearable.

Because something about this place felt dangerously familiar now.

The driver accepted the money with a nod while Y/N slowly pushed open the cab door.

Her breath caught so hard it physically hurt. The diner stood glowing before her exactly as it had five years ago. The same windows. The same polished entrance. The same ridiculous warmth spilling out onto snowy sidewalks.

The place where she and Michael had sat at four in the morning sharing milkshakes and fries and ridiculous conversation while the entire world still felt young enough to become anything.

The place where he stole sips from her drink without asking. The place where she forgot he belonged to the world. The place where she laughed so hard her stomach hurt. The place where sunrise began ending them.

Tears welled instantly into her eyes before she could stop them and snow landed softly against her lashes while she stared upward at the glowing sign hanging above the entrance.

Serendipity.

Her brows furrowed shakily. Because she could have sworn — Five years ago, she could have sworn this place had a different name. Not Serendipity. Something else. Something ordinary.

Was that why she never found it afterward?

How many times had she wandered Manhattan months after that night trying desperately to retrace their steps only to fail every single time?

How many diners had she searched?

How many streets?

And all along — the place itself had changed names.

Y/N wiped quickly beneath her eyes before finally forcing herself forward through the snowfall and warmth engulfed her the moment she stepped inside.

The diner glowed amber beneath hanging lights and polished brass fixtures, every surface reflecting winter gold softly against the storm outside. Laughter drifted low between booths. Ceramic plates clinked somewhere near the kitchen. The smell of coffee and sugar and syrup hung thickly in the air, impossibly familiar.

Y/N stopped just inside the doorway, snow melting slowly into her hair while the entire room tilted faintly around her beneath the weight of recognition.

Nothing had changed.

The little girl spotted her immediately from a booth near the window. "You came!"

Her voice rang brightly through the diner. Several people glanced up briefly.

The mother immediately touched her daughter's arm. "Indoor voice,."

"But she actually came."

"I know. Miracles happen."

Y/N laughed softly despite the overwhelming ache building steadily in her chest. "I said I would."

The girl beamed triumphantly while her mother mouthed another thank you from across the room.

Y/N nodded gently. Then wandered farther inside like someone entering sacred ground.

The diner buzzed softly around her with life and conversation and clattering silverware, but it all felt strangely distant now beneath the roar of memory unfolding inside her. Every booth looked familiar. Every polished edge of the counter. Even the floor tiles triggered flashes of that impossible night she had spent here with Michael until sunrise stole him away again.

Near the far wall hung an enormous collage of framed photographs and memorabilia stretching almost the entire length of the diner. Newspaper clippings. Signed napkins. Celebrity visits. Old photographs faded softly with time.

The kind of wall restaurants built when they accidentally became part of culture. Y/N drifted toward it instinctively. She barely noticed herself moving.

A framed picture of musicians, actors, broadway stars.

And then near the center of the wall sat a photograph taken from afar. The lighting grainy and imperfect.

A man and woman sitting across from each other in a booth at four in the morning beneath dim diner lights.

One milkshake simple: chocolate, whipped cream, cherry on top .

The other absolute chaos: sprinkles, towering cream, a sparkler exploding bright above it.

Her eyes widened slowly while recognition crashed through her all at once.

The photograph had captured the exact moment she leaned halfway across the table laughing at something he said, one hand pressed against her chest while he stared back at her openly smiling, cheeks lifted high enough beneath the low light that even from a distance his happiness looked unmistakable.

Two people entirely unaware they were standing inside the center of their own future grief.

Y/N lifted trembling fingers unconsciously toward the frame.

"You know," a voice said softly behind her, "I almost didn't take that picture."

Y/N froze instantly. Then turned, and immediately her chest tightened all over again.

The waitress, older now, but unmistakably her.

The same woman who had once smiled at them over milkshakes and called their spark beautiful.

The woman held a coffee pot loosely in one hand now while studying the photograph with obvious fondness. "You remember me," she said gently.

Y/N nodded slowly.

The woman smiled. "I thought so." the waitress sighed softly. "You two were impossible not to notice."

Y/N laughed weakly beneath her breath. "We thought we were being subtle."

"Oh honey." The woman smiled knowingly. "Absolutely not." Her gaze drifted back toward the photograph again. "You looked at each other like the world had just invented romance specifically for you."

Y/N lowered her eyes immediately. The waitress continued softly: "I wasn't even supposed to be working that late. My shift had ended hours before." She chuckled faintly. "But I remember watching you two run in covered in snow looking half-frozen and completely enchanted with each other."

The waitress pointed lightly toward the photograph. "I took that from behind the counter."

"You did?"

"Mhm."

The woman smiled warmly now. "I know it's probably strange, but..." She shrugged softly. "You two just felt important somehow."

Y/N stared at the image again.

The waitress continued rambling gently beside her, voice slipping easily into memory. "The boy kept staring at you every time you talked." She laughed quietly. "Not in that arrogant way famous men usually stare either."

Y/N's head lifted sharply.

The waitress noticed immediately. "Oh, I knew who he was." Of course she did. "He just looked..." She paused thoughtfully. "Enchanted." The waitress smiled softly to herself. "And you," she added gently, "looked like someone who finally found the exact sentence she'd been trying to write."

Tears welled instantly in Y/N's eyes again and the waitress noticed but pretended not to.

"I remember thinking," the woman murmured, "if those two don't see each other again after tonight, it'll be the saddest thing New York's ever done."

Y/N stared silently at the photograph while emotion rose violently inside her chest. Then quietly: "We didn't."

The waitress looked at her carefully then and stood quietly beside her for a moment longer before finally speaking again. “You know,” she murmured softly, “I used to wonder about you two.” The woman leaned one shoulder lightly against the wall beneath the collage of photographs, coffee pot still dangling loosely from her fingers. “Not because of him being famous.” She waved the thought away almost dismissively. “You work in Manhattan long enough, celebrities stop feeling magical.”

Her eyes drifted toward the photograph again. “But you two…” She smiled faintly. “That was different.”

Y/N laughed weakly through the ache in her chest. “You only saw us for one night.”

“Sometimes one night tells you everything.” The waitress sighed softly. “I kept waiting for you to come back.” Y/N looked toward her. “But you never did.”

The guilt of that hit irrationally hard. As though she had somehow abandoned the diner too. “I tried finding this place afterward,” Y/N admitted quietly. “For months.”

The woman’s brows lifted slightly. “Did you?”

“I couldn’t.” A sad smile touched her mouth. “I thought maybe I imagined it.”

The waitress laughed gently beneath her breath. “Oh honey.” She glanced around the diner warmly. “This place has always existed for people exactly like you two.”

Y/N frowned slightly. “What does that mean?”

The woman looked thoughtful for a moment. “Some people walk into a diner because they’re hungry.” She gestured vaguely toward the booths around them. “Some because they’re lonely. Some because it’s three in the morning and nowhere else is open.” Her gaze softened again. “And some people arrive here standing exactly one inch away from becoming who they’re supposed to be.”

The waitress continued softly: “You both walked in here like the universe had been pushing you toward each other all night.”

Y/N lowered her eyes. “That sounds dramatic.”

“Darlin’.” The woman smiled knowingly. “You wrote a book about lovers turning into ashes and sea foam. I think we passed dramatic hours ago.”

A startled laugh escaped Y/N before she could stop it.

The waitress grinned triumphantly. “There she is.”

Y/N wiped quickly beneath one eye, embarrassed by how emotional she’d become standing beside a diner wall.

But the waitress suddenly reached out gently, touching the frame of the photograph. “You’ll find each other soon enough.”

The certainty in her voice startled Y/N immediately.

The woman shrugged softly. “Actually,” she corrected herself, “I think maybe you already have. You’re both just moving slower than fate expected.”

Y/N stared at her. “What do you mean?”

The waitress looked almost amused now. “Oh sweetheart.” Her eyes flicked toward the diner around them. “You don’t think this all happened by accident, do you?”

Y/N’s chest tightened faintly. “What are you talking about?”

The waitress blinked at her. Then slowly: “He bought this place for you.”

The world went silent. Of course, not literally. The diner still buzzed warmly around them. But Y/N heard nothing.

“He…” Her voice nearly failed entirely. “What?”

The waitress looked genuinely confused now. “You didn’t know?” The woman softened immediately. “Oh.” She lowered her voice instinctively now. “A few months after that night, he bought the diner.”

Y/N physically shook her head once. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It surprised all of us too.” The waitress laughed softly. “One day management tells us ownership changed hands and suddenly Michael Jackson’s quietly renovating the place at three in the morning.”

Y/N stared at her speechlessly.

The waitress smiled fondly at the memory. “He kept asking strange little questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

The woman’s expression warmed further. “Which booth you sat at.” She pointed lightly toward the diner floor. “Whether we remembered your order. Whether the sparkler frightened you the first time.” The waitress continued gently now, voice full of something heartbreakingly tender. “He comes in late sometimes. Usually when it snows.”

The sentence nearly knocked the air from Y/N’s lungs.

“Late enough that crowds don’t bother him.” The woman smiled softly. “Always right before dawn.” Always the exact same time. “And every single visit,” the waitress continued quietly, “he orders the special.”

Y/N blinked slowly. “The special?”

The waitress laughed faintly. “Oh honey.”

She motioned gently toward a nearby menu resting atop the counter.

Y/N moved toward it almost mechanically now, fingers trembling as she picked it up.

At first everything blurred together.

Coffee. Desserts. Milkshakes.

Then — near the bottom — a section titled: Winter Specials.

And directly beneath it: Y/N’s Special

A classic chocolate shake served alongside our house Starlight Shake: vanilla ice cream, birthday cake syrup, whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles, crushed candy, and a sparkler on top.

Recommended for two people who accidentally change each other’s lives.

Y/N stopped breathing and her vision blurred violently.

The waitress watched her carefully from nearby. “He named it himself,” she said softly.

Y/N stared down at the menu while tears slipped silently onto the page.

The waitress smiled sadly. “Never changed it either.”

The ache inside Y/N became unbearable now. Because suddenly every year between them collapsed entirely beneath the realization that somewhere in this enormous impossible world — Michael had remembered too.

Like their one night together had remained alive inside him all this time exactly the same way it had remained alive inside her.

It felt impossible suddenly to remain standing.

The waitress watched her quietly from nearby with the kind of patience only older women seemed capable of carrying. Like she had lived long enough to know certain moments required silence more than comfort.

“He remembered,” she whispered.

The waitress smiled gently. “Oh sweetheart,” she murmured, “I don’t think that man forgot you for a single day.”

The sentence moved through Y/N slowly, painfully, beautifully. Five years. Five years of convincing herself that maybe she had romanticized the entire night because she was young and lonely and wanted desperately to believe in something cinematic.

Five years of hearing his music in grocery stores and department shops and passing cars while pretending the ache in her chest was ordinary nostalgia.

Five years of carefully not searching.

And all this time — he had been here.

The waitress reached out softly then, touching Y/N’s arm. “Sit,” she said kindly. “Wait a little longer.” Y/N looked at her immediately. The woman smiled knowingly. “He’s late sometimes.”

Y/N nodded slowly and the waitress took the menu gently from her hands before leading her deeper into the diner toward the booth that sherecognized it instantly. 

The waitress set a glass of water carefully in front of her. “You okay?”

Y/N looked up slowly. “No,” she admitted honestly.

The woman smiled warmly. “Good.”

Y/N laughed weakly through another tear.

Then the waitress disappeared again, leaving her alone with memory.

At first, waiting felt beautiful. Snow drifted endlessly beyond the windows while soft jazz played low throughout the diner. Customers continued filtering in and out beneath bursts of cold air every time the entrance opened. Silverware clinked softly somewhere near the kitchen. Coffee steamed from nearby tables.

Y/N sat perfectly still through all of it and every time the bell above the diner entrance rang, her head snapped upward instantly, but it was never him. 

The waitress passed by occasionally offering gentle reassuring smiles that somehow made the waiting worse.

Y/N glanced toward the windows repeatedly, watching blurred figures move through the snowfall outside. The city had deepened fully into night again now, streetlights glowing soft gold against white-covered sidewalks while steam curled upward from underground grates in ghostly ribbons.

Time became strange. The clock above the counter moved forward painfully slowly.

At some point the little girl and her mother waved goodbye while leaving, the little girl dramatically insisting: “You better stay.”

Y/N had smiled faintly. “I think I will.”

And afterward the diner slowly emptied further. One booth cleared, then another. Conversations dwindled softer. The cook disappeared briefly into the back kitchen. Chairs began turning upside down atop empty tables near the far wall. Still — no Michael.

Y/N’s chest tightened more painfully with every passing minute, because now doubt had begun slipping carefully through the cracks of hope.

Maybe he wasn’t coming tonight.

Maybe the waitress had assumed. Maybe fate had simply brought her here to show her that once, long ago, she had been loved deeply and quietly and impossibly. 

She looked back toward the entrance again just as the bell rang. An older couple entered instead, laughing softly beneath umbrellas dusted white with snow. Y/N lowered her gaze immediately afterward. Embarrassed by herself.

She felt ridiculous. Like some tragic heroine inside one of the novels she used to mock gently for their devotion to impossible romance.

Y/N rested her chin quietly against her hand while staring absently out the window. The city moved endlessly around her while she remained suspended completely still.

She finally closed her eyes.

The diner had emptied into near silence around her now, the kind of silence that only existed in cities after midnight, when even New York finally softened enough to breathe between heartbeats. Somewhere near the counter, dishes clinked quietly while the waitress wiped down tables with slow patient movements. Snow continued brushing itself endlessly against the windows in silver-white currents.

Still no Michael.

The bell above the diner entrance rang again softly. Y/N did not look up this time. She couldn’t, because if she turned her head one more time only to discover another stranger stepping through the door — she thought something inside her might finally break completely.

So instead she kept her eyes closed.

The warm light above the booth glowed faintly through her eyelids while exhaustion settled deep into her bones.

She could hear footsteps. The sound grew closer against the checkered floor. Closer. Closer. Then silence. Right beside the booth.

And finally — a voice. Soft. Older. Achingly familiar.

“Do you still hate ordering the same thing twice?”

Y/N’s eyes opened instantly.

And there he was. Michael. Standing beside the booth beneath golden diner light with snow still melting slowly into the shoulders of his dark coat.

Five years vanished violently all at once.

There was softness carved carefully into him now where youth once lived recklessly. His curls slightly longer. His face sharper somehow. Beautiful in the quiet devastating way winter trees were beautiful.

But his eyes — his eyes were exactly the same. Still holding too much feeling all at once. Still looking at her like finding her had hurt him.

Y/N stared at him speechlessly and Michael looked like he had stopped breathing entirely.

She stood so abruptly the booth shifted loudly against the floor. Then suddenly they were moving toward each other at the exact same time. The collision of them felt desperate.

Michael wrapped both arms around her instantly with a sound that almost resembled pain leaving the body while Y/N buried herself against him so tightly it felt like she was trying to return to somewhere she belonged.

Y/N’s hands clutched desperately against the back of his coat while his arms tightened around her impossibly further, pulling her fully against his chest as though terrified she might disappear again if he loosened even slightly.

Michael was shaking. Like someone who had spent years holding grief perfectly still and could no longer manage it.

Y/N closed her eyes immediately as tears spilled freely down her face into the fabric of his coat.

The hug became painful with how tightly they held each other.

Around them, the diner seemed to dissolve quietly into the background entirely. The waitress turned away discreetly near the counter. Snow continued falling beyond the windows. Somewhere distant, coffee brewed softly.

But inside the booth beneath the hanging light only they existed.

Michael buried his face against the side of her neck then inhaled shakily, almost like he needed proof she was physically real.

When he finally spoke, his voice broke immediately. “I missed you.” His arms tightened harder. “I missed you so much.” And then softly, trembling violently now: “So much it almost killed me.”

Y/N’s fingers curled tighter into his coat while tears slipped endlessly down her face.

Michael laughed shakily against her shoulder then, but it sounded ruined by emotion. “I tried so hard not to look for you,” he whispered. “I really did.”

She pulled back just enough to see him.

Michael Jackson stood beneath diner light crying softly like someone who had finally reached shore after years drowning quietly at sea.

“You were everywhere,” he confessed shakily. “Every song. Every winter. Every time it snowed.” He swallowed hard. “I’d hear somebody laughing somewhere and my whole body would turn around hoping —” His voice failed completely. Y/N touched his face immediately, both hands trembling against his cheeks. Michael closed his eyes the second she touched him.

“I thought fate hated me,” Y/N whispered through tears.

His eyes opened slowly. “No,” he breathed. One hand rose carefully to hold hers against his face. “No, baby.” His voice cracked softly around the words. “I think it was just trying to make sure we’d understand what losing each other felt like first.”

A sob escaped her before she could stop it and suddenly Michael pulled her against him again instantly, holding her so carefully now it almost hurt worse than the desperation before.

For a long while, neither of them moved very far from the other.

Even after the first crushing collision of reunion softened enough for breathing again, they remained standing close beside the booth, hands still holding onto sleeves and wrists and fingers as though separation itself had become something dangerous. Michael kept looking at her with this quiet disbelief that made Y/N’s chest ache unbearably, like some part of him still expected the moment to disappear if he blinked too hard.

Michael laughed softly first. A beautiful sound,small, almost embarrassed. He rubbed once beneath his eyes before shaking his head faintly to himself. “I can’t believe you’re real.”

Y/N let out a watery laugh. “That’s funny,” she whispered. “I was just thinking the same thing.”

His smile widened immediately at that. Then suddenly, almost boyishly: “You still owe me answers, though.” Michael tilted his head slightly, eyes warm now with something lighter beneath all the emotion. “I’ve had five years worth of questions waiting.”

Y/N smiled softly. “How much of them do you remember?”

Michael looked at her like the question itself was absurd. “Are you kidding?” A quiet laugh escaped him then. He glanced briefly toward the ceiling like he was sorting through years of wondering. “I still wanna know what kind of flower you stop to look at.” His eyes flicked back to hers. “And whether you read the last page of books first.” A grin touched the corner of his mouth. “And if you still walk in bad weather on purpose.”

Y/N laughed through the tears still lingering in her voice. “I do.”

“I knew it.” Michael continued softly now: “And I wanna know what kind of music makes you cry unexpectedly.” His fingers brushed carefully against hers. “And if you still write in the margins of things.”

But Y/N shook her head gently after a moment. Michael paused immediately. “What?”

Her smile softened. “No,” she murmured.

A small confused crease appeared between his brows.

Y/N stepped closer again then, both hands moving instinctively toward his coat as though she needed grounding while she spoke.

“I don’t want us to start there.” Michael stayed very still now. Y/N exhaled softly. “I don’t want us to sit here and exchange favorite colors like strangers trying to survive an awkward conversation.”

His expression changed immediately at that.

“I want…” She paused, searching carefully. “I want to know the things people only learn accidentally. I want to know what your bad days feel like,” Y/N whispered. “I want to know what kind of mornings make you stay in bed too long.” Her fingers curled gently into the fabric of his sleeves. “I want to know what scares you enough to keep you awake.”

Michael’s eyes did not leave her face once.

“I wanna know how you take your coffee when nobody’s watching.” A faint emotional laugh escaped her. “And what season makes you loneliest.” She looked down briefly before meeting his eyes again. “And whether you still believe people can truly know each other.”

Michael looked breathless now. Actually breathless.

“And I wanna know what you search for in people,” she continued softly. “Not what you admire. What you need.” Her voice lowered further. “I want to know what makes you stay.”

Y/N smiled faintly then. “And if, after all of that…” Her thumb brushed lightly against his wrist. “You still wanna know my favorite flower —” Her voice nearly disappeared. “Then I’ll tell you.”

Michael stared at her for several long seconds. Then suddenly he laughed softly again. But this time the sound cracked halfway through from emotion.

His smile afterward looked almost unbearably young. Like joy had reached somewhere untouched inside him.

“Okay,” he whispered. Then more quietly: “Whatever it takes to learn you.”

Y/N felt her chest cave inward beautifully.

And then, naturally — as though there had never been another option — they slid into the booth together. Shoulders touching immediately beneath the warm amber diner light.

Michael leaned back first with a disbelieving shake of his head while Y/N laughed quietly beside him, both of them still emotionally dazed by the fact that after years of almosts and signs and near misses they had somehow made it back here.

The waitress approached a moment later carrying a tray balanced carefully in both hands. She smiled knowingly to herself before setting the drinks down gently onto the table.

Michael and Y/N looked down at the drinks, then slowly toward each other.

And somewhere beyond the windows, snow continued falling softly through New York while dawn waited patiently for them both this time instead of stealing one away.