Work Text:
1989
"You'll like her," Janet said, for the fourth time since the car.
"You said that already."
"I'm saying it again because you're making the face."
"I don’t even know what that means," Michael said, continuing to make the face. He pulled the cap lower over the sunglasses he didn't need and slouched deeper into his seat. Janet looked at him with annoyance but also satisfaction, because she had succeeded in talking her big brother into coming to this concert.
She'd been playing your album for weeks, in the car, in the kitchen, humming it throughout the whole house, and when she found out you were touring the US and your last show would be in Los Angeles, she hadn't asked Michael to come. She had just informed him that they were going.
He'd said no, and Janet had looked at him, and he'd said he was busy, and she'd kept looking at him, and now he was sitting in a curtained box on the loge level with Bill standing at the rail with his arms crossed, and one more of the security guys posted by the door.
Nobody had looked at them twice. At least his disguise worked.
"You could at least try enjoying yourself," Janet said while rolling her eyes.
"I am enjoying myself. This is my enjoying face."
He wouldn’t admit this to his sister, but he’d made up his mind about the show before it had even started. He tried not to do that, he genuinely did, because he knew better than most people what it felt like to be summed up by people who'd never really listened.
But he knew your name, everybody knew your name that year, you'd been climbing the charts, you’d been on the radio between his own songs, and the singles were bubblegum pop through and through, bright and sweet and built to dance. Nothing wrong with that. He'd made records just for dancing too.
It was just that he thought he already knew the course of the evening: good hooks, big production, a fun show, the kind you enjoy and forget. You were around his age, which surprised people, since the music sounded younger. He settled in expecting a pleasant next two hours for his sister's sake, nothing more.
But all of those thoughts only lasted about one song.
It wasn't that the songs weren't bubblegum pop. They were (shamelessly), and he could tell the choruses would be stuck in his head tomorrow, which annoyed him. It was what you were doing with the music. You could actually sing, you had a real voice that held pitch through a full-out dance break and you could still hit those high notes, never once losing control of your voice.
And you owned the entire stage. The venue was nothing, he'd played to crowds that were three times this size before he could even drive, but you played it like it was Wembley, pulling the crowd up with your energy. The crowd belonged to you completely. Every person in the building was singing.
He glanced over at Janet some time around the third song and she was on her feet with her hands up singing every word like she was fifteen.
He caught himself leaning forward somewhere in the fourth song. Janet noticed and looked far too pleased about it, so he made himself lean back.
"She's good," Janet said, not even trying to keep the told-you-so face subtle.
"She's fine."
"You're leaning again."
He was. He stopped fighting it sometime ago and just watched. He liked watching people who were good at their job.
He noticed that you didn't do many slow songs, the setlist consisted of mostly upbeat songs, and he was starting to wonder whether you could hold the energy of the crowd without the tempo, whether there was anything under the bubblegum when the beat went away.
Then the band walked off, and someone brought out a single stool and an acoustic guitar and the venue became silent.
You walked to the stool calmly, settled the guitar across your lap, then adjusted the mic on its stand, and for a moment just looked out at the crowd.
"So," you said, and the word came out softer than your show-voice, "Tonight's the last night of the US tour."
The crowd roared and you laughed and ducked your head.
"And I wanted to do something special for it, just for tonight. I want to sing you a cover."
You picked at a string absently, perhaps a a nervous habit.
"But I have to explain it first, so bear with me. There's an artist I've adored for most of my life. And I mean most of my life, since I was small. He's the reason I do this at all. Everything I know about singing, about the stage and about kindness, I learned it from listening to him and watching him and wanting so badly to be able to do what he does.”
You smiled, your eyes looking somewhere far away. “Not just music, honestly. He's shaped how I think about, like, everything. Work and fame. What you owe the people who show up for you."
You paused, and then laughed sheepishly, one hand coming up over your eyes for a second. "Okay, I'm being so embarrassing right now. I promise I'm getting to the song."
The crowd laughed with you and up in the box Michael chuckled quietly too into his fist. Cute, he thought. Whoever the artist was, that was a generous speech, and they should feel lucky for being appreciated this much. He wondered if it was Stevie. It was usually Stevie.
"The song is a very old one of his," you went on. "He recorded it when he was still in his teens, which is crazy to me, given how emotional it is. It was never a big hit or anything, but it stuck with me. It found me at the right time and it has never once let me go, and I've wanted to sing it to you guys for years and been too chicken. So I’m going to do it tonight and I hope I do it justice."
There was a wave of warm applause for you and then everything went still.
Your fingers started on the strings soft and slow, and the melody lifted into the air before you opened your mouth, and everything in Michael went still.
One Day in Your Life. His song.
His song from 1975, from when he was only a boy of sixteen, maybe seventeen in a booth singing about a loneliness he hadn't even understood yet. A song buried so deep in his music catalog that people were surprised it existed. Nobody ever covered it, because nobody remembered it.
And… even as his chest started squeezing, there was no way he thought. He did the math in his head. There was no way you knew he was here right now. He'd only decided to come that afternoon, two hours before he left for the concert with Janet.
He'd told almost no one. He'd walked in with a cap and sunglasses. There was no way you could’ve changed your setlist on such short notice. You had planned this cover weeks ago and rehearsed it.
Janet leaned in, eyes still on the stage. "Did anyone know you were coming tonight?"
He shook his head. That was all he could manage.
Because you weren't performing the song. That was the thing he couldn't get past.
Every night somewhere in the world somebody covered his songs, imitations and tributes. Those were different.
But you were singing it the way it was meant to. Plain and hurting somewhere just underneath the sweetness of the words and when you sang, he could tell the lyrics were coming from a place full of ache inside you.
Fourteen years since he sang that song and suddenly he was in the booth again, suddenly he was that seventeen year old boy again, singing to a love he hadn't met yet about being remembered.
And there were lighters swaying somewhere below him, thousands of people hearing a sweet ballad, and one person coming quietly apart behind sunglasses he didn't need.
His eyes were burning. He didn't move to do anything against it.
The song came down to its last notes, the melody fading away and you sang the ending beautifully like a promise.
One day in your life
When you find that you’re always lonely
For a love we used to share
Just call my name and I’ll be there
And then your voice faded to almost nothing and the last notes came off the guitar gently and hung in the air.
He didn't think he'd even breathed in over a minute. The crowd was silent for one long second, before everyone applauded you and it was the loudest thing Michael had ever heard.
The venue lights came on and the crowd began its slow move toward the exits. Michael sat for a moment longer in the noise of thousands of people talking at once. Then he leaned over to Janet.
"Do you want to go backstage?"
She turned and looked at him, genuinely surprised. "Are you serious? I wanted to, but you were being such a baby about coming at all, I wasn't going to push my luck."
"I was not being a baby."
"You kept saying no."
He ignored her.
"The least I can do," he said, waving his hands in the air, "after she sang my song, is to thank her."
And before Janet could say anything else, he motioned Bill over from the rail and asked him quietly to arrange it. Bill nodded once and disappeared into the corridor.
They waited near the backstage entrance off to the side, and Michael kept his hands in his pockets. For some confusing reason he was feeling a little nervous. Something was fluttering inside his chest that had no business being there.
He met new people every day of his life. People were nervous meeting him, that was how it had been for twenty years. He couldn't remember the last time it had been the other way around. It’s just that some part of him felt like he was about to walk in and shake hands with someone who already knew him.
Your manager came out to collect them, a short man who could barely contain his excitement, shaking Michael’s hand. "I didn't tell her. She has no idea you're here. She's going to lose her mind, forgive me, but I couldn't ruin it."
The dressing room door was open and bright light was spilling out. The manager knocked twice and pushed it open.
"Sweetheart, you have visitors."
You were on the couch with a towel around your neck and a water bottle in your hand, still glowing from the show. When they stepped in, Michael could see the changes in your reaction one by one: the polite smile you had prepared for whoever it was, the confused pause, and then the recognition arriving on your face. Immediately you were on your feet so fast that you almost dropped the water bottle.
"Oh my God." Both of your hands came up over your mouth. "Oh my God. Hi! You were at my show?"
You were crossing the room towards them in an instant.
"Janet Jackson is in my dressing room. Michael Jackson is in my dressing room. Somebody should have warned me, I might just faint."
Michael chuckled. "Blame Janet. This was all her fault. She's been playing your record for a month. So naturally, I was dragged here."
Janet rolled her eyes. "He resisted the whole time."
"Although," he added, and he meant for it to come out in a joking way, but it came out sincere instead, "I'm glad I let her persuade me. I'd have missed an incredible show. You had that whole crowd in your hand." He paused for a second and smiled. "Thank you for singing my song."
You went still.
"You did an amazing job with it," he said softly. "That song is very close to my heart, and almost nobody remembers it, and you sang it like," he shook his head, searching for the right words, "like you knew every second of it from the inside. I felt every word. It touched me very much. I wanted you to know that."
You felt a blush creeping up your neck and you pressed the towel briefly over your whole face as you swallowed hard. "Thank you, that means more to me than I can say without crying,” you said, your eyes bright.
“And I’m a little embarrassed now because I gave that entire speech about you, while you were sitting there. I bared my whole soul in front of thousands of people and the one person I was baring it about was secretly in the venue.” You both laughed at that.
“But I meant every word. I've been a very big fan my whole life."
Janet clapped delightedly and that broke the room into laughter and made it easy.
Janet got her ticket signed and then she took polaroid photos with you (twice because the first ones were blurry), and by the end Janet and you were trading numbers and promising to get lunch together sometime, and Michael stood back and watched you laugh at something his sister said.
It was hard to fit the two halves of you together. This bright, bubbly girl with the towel around her neck, and the voice that had opened him up like a tin can. Same person.
When it was time to go, Janet hugged you, and he moved to do the same, and his nervousness spiked. He hugged you carefully and briefly, and you came up on your toes a little and squeezed him for a second. When you parted the tips of his ears were warm.
"Thank you again," he said. "For the song."
"Thank you for coming to hear it," you said. "Even though you were dragged."
He was quiet most of the ride home, which Janet did not comment on as she was getting tired herself.
And that night he didn't sleep. This wasn’t unusual. He had a complicated relationship with sleep, but this was different, this wasn't his mind that couldn’t shut off.
He lay in the dark feeling ridiculous. He was seventeen years old again.
I meant every word.
The feeling in his chest wasn't restlessness at all. His heart was simply too full to fall asleep.
–
And when he still couldn't shake you days later, when you kept arriving in the middle of his thoughts like a song he couldn't stop humming, he finally went and asked Janet for your number. She wrote it out slowly, watching him the whole time with a knowing look and said nothing, which from Janet was the loudest thing she could possibly have said. He called you that same evening, and you picked up on the third ring, and by the time you both noticed the time, three hours had gone by.
And when he took you on your first date, a drive up the coast and dinner somewhere small where nobody thought to look for either of you, he reached across the table somewhere in the middle of a story you were telling and took your hand quietly. You didn't stop the story. You just laced your fingers through his and kept going, and he didn't hear anything you said after that. Later he walked you to your door with your hand still in his because neither of you had wanted to let go first.
And when he kissed you for the first time it was at the end of an evening that neither of you wanted to end, the two of you lingering by your car. You had just laughed at something he said with your head tipped back, and he leaned in and kissed you softly, and when he pulled back you stood there with your eyes still closed and whispered okay, wow, and he laughed so hard he had to kiss you again just to stop.
And when he told you he loved you for the first time, it slipped out on an ordinary and quiet night, the two of you standing outside on a cool evening with your arms wrapped around yourself. He just looked at you and said I love you, and you went pink instantly, and hid your face behind your hands. He laughed delightedly, and reached up to pry your hands gently away, then opened his coat and wrapped both sides of it around you, pulling you into his chest. You tucked yourself against him and mumbled I love you too into his shirt, muffled and shy, and he smiled into your hair.
And when he asked you to record a duet with him one night, you went still and quiet, and then you asked if he meant it, and he nodded, and you let out an incredibly loud squeal that was sure to wake up all the animals at the ranch. He picked you up and spun you once around the room while you laughed and swore at him to put you down, and neither of you could stop grinning through a single take that whole first week.
And when the world got loud, because his world always did, you'd disappear together up to the ranch, just the two of you. And somewhere in those slow afternoons he'd hand you the guitar, and ask you to sing it. His song. Your song. And you'd roll your eyes and blush, and sing to an audience of one man sitting cross-legged on the floor like a boy, watching you like you'd hung the moon in the sky. And when you reached the ending, he'd lean over and kiss the last line right out of your mouth, because it wasn't a promise anymore. He was already there.