Chapter Text
December 1990
You get to the studio a full hour before anyone else does, because you like the quiet moments before the room fills with voices and cigarette smoke and the humming of sound equipment. You go through the same routine you've built for yourself over the past years working as a sound engineer.
Music charts pulled and stacked in the order he likes them. His notepad set exactly where his hand will land when he sits. You put the kettle on too, just in case, because his throat had sounded a bit rough yesterday, especially when he was trying out some higher notes, and you know from experience that he won't say anything about it until someone notices it for him.
Record One as a studio is still pretty new to you and you catch yourself looking for the old Westlake studio’s layout out of habit, like reaching for a light switch that isn't where it used to be. The whole team moved studios at the start of the year, and even now, in December, after almost a full year, it still feels new to you. But you don't mind it. You like this building. It lets in the sunlight the way Westlake never did, and when everything is bathed in golden light, every moment here almost feels sacred.
You’re too self-aware to lie about why you notice the light like you do.
Over the past two years, your feelings had crept up on you slowly, so slowly you almost missed the exact moment it stopped being simple admiration and became something heavier and more real…
When you first started this job some years ago, you were impressed by Michael Jackson the way anyone would be. His reputation, his voice, the unimaginable scale of what he'd already built by the time you even met him for the first time.
But it wasn’t how grand he was as an artist. In the end, it was how small he actually was. The small parts of him that nobody outside this building gets to see. How he would stop a whole session because a backing vocalist looked tired and he wanted to know if she's eaten. The way he'll spend an hour on a single word in a lyric because the wrong word would sit crooked against the melody, and how he explains why in a patient, careful manner to anyone who asks. And especially the way he's shy in rooms that are full of people who love him, and goes out of his shell when he’s in a room with almost no one in it.
In this studio, he shows the rawest version of himself. Outside these walls he has an image to manage and he has to be careful. In here he just makes music, and something in him becomes comfortable and loose when he does and he becomes soft.
You've been in love with him for most of the years you've worked for him. You've never told anyone that, least of all him.
You hear the group before you see them, their voices carrying down the hall, and you recognize Michael's voice easily even through the loud noise, though today his voice has an angry edge to it that you don't usually hear from him. Teddy Riley's voice comes right behind it, and Bill Bottrell's a second after that, and by the time the three of them walk in along with the rest of the team, it's clear the argument didn't start in this building. It just followed them in from wherever it started, probably the car.
"I'm telling you, these songs need to be on this album." Michael's hands are moving as he talks, which is how you always know he's really worked up and getting more irritated by the second. "People are hurting out there. Kids in this country are growing up in places falling apart around them, and I have a voice bigger than almost anyone, and you want me to sit on that because it makes people uncomfortable?"
"It's not about comfort, Michael, it's about what sells and what doesn't get you dragged through the press for weeks." Teddy doesn’t sound unkind, just tired. Like this is a conversation they've had more than once already. "We're not saying don't ever do it. We're saying maybe not all of it, not right now, and not on an album that's supposed to bring you back after Bad."
"After Bad." Michael scoffs. "Like Bad wasn't already me trying to say something and everybody just hearing a beat they liked."
Bill tries a gentler angle. "We just think there's a way to say what you want to say without every song on the record being a headline waiting to happen."
"So water it down." Michael's voice cracks a little as he speaks, his frustration clear as day. "That's what you're telling me. Water it down so it's safe?"
"Please try to understand. Adding songs that aren’t light and catchy is a risk to your numbers," Bill says firmly. "Radio's not gonna know what to do with half of this as they probably won’t play those songs. We're trying to protect you here."
"I don't need protecting from my own album." Michael runs a hand through his hair. "I need people around me who trust where I'm trying to take this. People who support my vision."
The room has gone quiet now. Denise, over by the mixing board, keeps her eyes down on the levels in front of her. The other engineer, a woman who handles most of the outboard gear, busies herself checking cables that don't need checking. You do the same with the charts in your hands, because it isn't your place to have an opinion out loud in this room, especially not on this topic.
Michael exhales hard and drops his shoulders, looking more tired than ever. "I need some air," he says into the room and then he's out the side door before Teddy can get another word in.
The room stays quiet for a moment after he's gone and then everyone goes back to their work at hand. Teddy says something to Bill about giving him a minute and the room is filled with the usual sounds of a busy studio.
You feel an idea arrive in your head. It’s the kind of thing that would embarrass you if you thought about it too long. So you don't think about it too long.
You pull a scrap of paper from your bag instead of the studio's own notepads, because it feels less traceable somehow, and you write quickly, before your nerves have time to catch up with your hand.
Whatever they say in here, don't let anyone talk you out of using your voice for the things that actually matter. The world needs your version of brave more than it needs another version of safe.
You don't sign it. You fold it twice and, in a moment when no one is around you, slide it under the edge of his notepad, exactly where he will be able to find it when he sits back down, then you go back to the charts like nothing happened at all.
He comes back a few minutes later, calmer than when he left, and drops into his seat, clearly tired. His hand finds the notepad out of habit, and you watch as his fingers catch the folded edge of paper underneath it.
He opens it without much thought at first, and then you see the moment his eyes actually register the words, the way his whole face changes, how soft his features become and how some of the tension from a minute ago drains out all at once. He reads it once, twice, slower the second time, as if he's making sure he didn't imagine the words that are written out. Then he folds it back along the same creases, neatly and carefully, and tucks it into his jacket pocket instead of leaving it on the table.
He looks up.
His eyes move around the room slowly. Denise, still at the board. Teddy and Bill, deep back into their own conversation, clearly not people who would write a message like that anyway. The woman at the outboard gear, focused completely on her cables. You, careful to look busy with the charts in your lap, though you feel his gaze pass over you and you try not to flinch.
He doesn't look at anyone long enough to think they might have done it. There are too many of you in the room, too many hands that could have written those soft words and slipped them under his notepad. He just sits there a moment longer, his jacket pocket feeling a little heavier than it was ten minutes ago, something almost pleased sitting in his heart. And then Teddy calls his name to settle something about the arrangement of a song, and the moment folds itself away the same way the note did, tucked out of sight but not gone.
You go back to your charts. Your hands are steady. Your heart is not.