Chapter Text
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The gates to Neverland open the way they always do when it's you: without question, without the intercom crackle and the long pause and the distant consultation you've watched other visitors endure. Someone in the booth waves you through without a word, and through the window you catch a glimpse of Bill leaning against the counter with a paper cup, mid-conversation. He glances over and lifts his coffee in a small salute as you pass.
You follow the winding driveway past the carousel that stands still in the sun, its painted horses mid-gallop and going nowhere.
You've been coming here since February, when Michael played his last night in Los Angeles and the Bad tour finally came to an end.
Before Neverland it was Hayvenhurst, back when the whole Jackson family still lived under its roof.
Your father came on as production coordinator for the Jacksons in 1976, when you were seventeen and old enough to be left home alone but young enough that your overprotective mother didn't trust it, so you went where he went.
You'd spent enough afternoons after school in the front room of that house to have developed opinions about the furniture. You'd been dragged along to enough rehearsals, enough logistics calls, enough of your father's schedules to understand that the business of keeping a family like that on the road was its own full-time world, and that you were always on the edge of it, neither inside nor out.
Michael was eighteen then and already had people's attention whenever he walked into a room, though he seemed not to notice or maybe he didn't want to. You'd noticed him first because he was doing exactly what you were doing: finding a corner, opening a book, going somewhere else in his mind while everyone else continued with their business around him.
You'd been seventeen years old and had already developed the habit of being quiet in most situations, and here was someone who appeared to have developed the same habit as you.
You hadn't planned to actually speak to him. That changed one afternoon when your father was running late on a call and you'd been waiting in the hallway for almost an hour with nothing left to read, and Michael had appeared from somewhere in the house, looked over at you, and said: "I finished that one you had last week. The ending was… interesting."
You had argued about it for forty minutes before your father came out of the office and found the two of you sitting on the floor of the hallway, which was not where either of you had started.
After that it was easy, because the friendship had already been most of the way there.
Your father quit his job in 1980, not long after the divorce. He remarried quickly and moved to Oregon, becoming someone else's version of a good man and leaving you and your mother in California with a forwarding address and not much else.
You were twenty-one. Michael and Katherine had shown up at your mother's door two days after your father left, Michael carrying a big bouquet of flowers and Katherine holding containers of food she'd prepared, both of them not really knowing what to say. They had decided that showing up is the only thing they could do for you. You'd eaten at your mother's kitchen table and talked about anything other than the divorce.
After that the friendship needed no reasons. You lived close enough to Encino that proximity was easy, and by then you didn't need proximity as an excuse anyway. You'd been best friends for years by the time your father left, long enough that the friendship had its own history that didn't need explaining to anyone.
You park near the fountain and gather the things you brought: a bag of takeout you'd picked up on impulse on the way over, because you'd been passing the restaurant anyway and thought why not, and a folder of paperwork from his production company that you'd offered to bring by in person rather than send over.
It's a thin excuse and you both know it. You come to Neverland the way water finds low ground: naturally and without much need for explanation.
You enter through the front door and follow the sound of music down the main hallway.
Michael is in the sitting room off the east wing, standing at the window with his back to you and marking something on a sheet of choreography notes. The music that's playing is one of his own demos which you recognize from a cassette he'd played for you months ago in the car.
He doesn't turn when you come in, but you know he heard you. He's just pretending he didn't. You know he does that when he's in the middle of something and doesn't want to stop.
"I brought food," you say, setting the bag on the table.
"I have food."
"I brought better food." You pull your jacket off and drape it over the chair near the door. "How was rehearsal?"
"Good."
"How long did you go today?"
He pauses for a moment. "Few hours."
"Michael."
"It was fine." He sets the paper down and turns, and you see his face for the first time. You immediately notice something's wrong.
He looks tired, but it's not like his normal tired. There's a flatness behind his eyes, and you recognize it as effort. He's trying hard to look fine. His movements as he crosses the room toward you look calculated.
"You look terrible," you say.
"Good evening to you too."
"I'm serious. Are you–"
"I'm great." He drops onto the sofa with a carefulness that he's trying to disguise as casualness, but you notice immediately. "What's in the bag?"
You watch him. He looks at you with a steadiness that would convince almost anyone, but you have been paying attention to this person for thirteen years, and you know the difference between his tired and his fine, and right now those two things are not the same.
"Takeout," you say. "I stopped on the way. Are you hungry?"
"I ate."
"When?"
He pauses. "Earlier."
You cross your arms and keep looking at him.
"I'm fine," he says with a bit more edge, then he shifts against the sofa cushions and recrosses his arms as if to mock you. "I just said I'm fine."
"I heard you." You pick up the bag and head toward the kitchen. "I brought soup. I'm going to heat it up because I'm hungry, and you can watch."
He doesn't watch, but he does follow you, because he always follows when you go somewhere in his house, and he sits at the kitchen island while you find a pot and pour the soup in to reheat, turning the burner on low.
At first, Michael talks a lot. He tells you about rehearsal, about a section of the upcoming show he's been working on, and his voice sounds fine, and you are only half listening because you're busy heating the soup and he's filling the kitchen with sound just like he always does.
But then he's telling you something about a part of the show he's stuck on and his voice dips out on a word just briefly, and he tries to hide it with a cough and reaches for a glass of water and keeps going as if nothing happened.
You stir the soup.
After that he goes quieter. Not completely silent, but definitely careful, speaking with less words, and when you ask him something he answers in the shortest form possible.
You ask him how the new choreography is going and he says good.
You ask him if he's heard from his former manager Frank lately, whom he parted ways with recently, and his expression changes slightly, and he says no and leaves it there. You don't push.
You ask him how Bubbles has been and he says fine and then adds nothing, which is so unlike Michael because he can normally talk about Bubbles for hours.
You look at him.
He looks back at you with an expression of innocence that looks so painfully acted that you almost roll your eyes.
"Say something else," you say.
"What?"
The word comes out rough and he knows immediately that it's given him away because he closes his mouth and sets the glass down and looks somewhere to the left of your face, determined to not acknowledge what just happened.
"Michael."
He looks at the counter.
"How long has your voice been doing that?"
Silence. You try again.
"How long have you been sick?”
He picks up the glass of water again, takes a sip and sets it down. Then, as if choosing the word that will cost him the least effort, he says quietly, "I’m fine."
"That's not an answer."
He looks at you. You look at him. The soup begins to bubble at the edges of the pot.
"Okay," you say, and turn back to the stove. "Sit there, then."
You ladle soup into two bowls and carry them to the island and sit across from him. He looks at the bowl in front of him with an expression he's clearly trying hard to make out to be neutral.
"Eat," you say.
He picks up the spoon and takes one careful sip, and then another, and you watch his eyes soften slightly as he eats, but you also see how stubborn he is.
"I'm not sick," he says, and his voice scrapes on the last word, proving him wrong.
"Okay," you say, clearly unconvinced.
"I'm just–"
"Tired. You said."
He looks at you. You look at your soup.
"Eat," you say again.
He eats. You eat. The kitchen is warm and the spring evening is settling softly, the last of the light going pale over the Neverland hills.
This ordinary peaceful time with him is what you've kept quietly for yourself, in the years since you understood what you were keeping: the way he follows you from room to room without thinking about it, his attention when he's listening to you, the fact that you know where he keeps things and he knows where you keep things and neither of you has ever had to explain it.
All the magazine covers show him surrounded by women who are beautiful and you have read the columns and seen the photographs and understood what they mean and that you are not what they are.
You have watched him fall in and out of love over the thirteen years you have known each other, heard about the ones he liked and the ones he didn't, sat across from him at kitchen tables just like right now while he talked to you about his feelings for those women.
You have always listened and you have always been glad to do it. You don't let yourself think about that too much.
And still you come here, because this is the shape your life has taken and you think you'd choose it every time.
You don't let yourself think about what you want. It isn't useful.
–
By nine o'clock he has completely lost his voice.
One moment he is trying to argue with you about whether he needs to call his doctor ("I am telling you I’m fine") and the next the sentence stops, and there is only air where the words were supposed to be. He closes his mouth and tries again and gets nothing.
You watch him.
He opens his mouth a third time and produces a sound that is barely a whisper.
"Okay," you say.
He points at you accusingly.
"I know," you say. "You're not sick."
He does something with his hands that looks like that's not what I was going to say.
"What were you going to say?”
He points at the folder of paperwork on the counter, then at the kitchen table, then at himself. Then he mimes writing. He makes a therefore gesture.
"You were going to say we still have things to go through."
He nods.
"Michael." You come around the island and before he can lean back you press the back of your hand to his forehead and he goes very still. His skin is warm and you move your hand to his cheek and then to the side of his neck the way your mother used to do to you, checking for fever, and he lets you, which tells you more about his health than anything else has tonight.
"You're burning up," you say quietly.
He doesn't answer. His jaw is set but you can see he doesn't have another argument left in him.
"Your ears are red. You've been like this for a while, haven't you?" It isn't really a question.
You step back and look at him. He's been careful to hold himself upright all evening, each of his movements with too much effort.
"I am going to make you honey and tea and you are going to drink it, and then you are going to go upstairs, and whatever else we were going to work on tonight is going to wait."
He is quiet for a moment. His jaw is set because he knows he's losing the argument and he's deciding whether to accept it graciously or pretend the argument wasn't happening.
Then he swallows, and you see the wince he can't hide, and you feel an uncomfortable feeling in your chest.
"Okay," you say, more gently. "Come on."
–
You get him to go upstairs. Somewhere in the hallway closets you find extra blankets and a basin and a cloth that will do for compresses, and you carry everything into his bedroom.
The room is enormous and full of the things that he loves: the books stacked on almost every flat surface, some have slips of paper sticking out where he marked pages, the drawing things on the desk, the framed photographs that aren't of famous people but of his animals and his family and, you notice as you always notice without meaning to, one of the two of you from four years ago, laughing at something you don't remember.
You help him into bed with luckily no fuss, because he has stopped arguing, and you can tell from that that he feels worse than he's been letting on all evening. You make him drink the tea with honey, holding the mug for him when his hands are tired.
You dampen the cloth and lay it across his forehead and watch some of the tension go out of his face.
"Okay?" you say.
He makes a sound that might be okay but his eyes are still open, looking at the ceiling. He's restless and unfocused.
You know that he has never fallen asleep easily. His mind doesn't let go without a fight.
You look around the room and soon you find what you're looking for on the nightstand, closest to him, which is where he keeps the things he comes back to. The cover is worn at the corners.
You pull your chair closer and open it and begin to read.
He doesn't say anything. He turns his head slightly on the pillow to look at you without the wet cloth falling off, and you don't look up, just keep your eyes on the page and your voice low and even, the way you'd read to a child.
Peter Pan leaving the nursery window. The Darling children lifting into the night.
After a while you feel his restlessness slowly disappearing, and when you glance up his eyes are half closed, watching you with an expression that is too soft and too tired for you to look at directly, so you look back at the page.
You read until his breathing has gone slow and his eyes have closed and stayed closed, and then you read one more page after that, just to be sure.
Then you sit with him.
The room is quiet. Outside the window the Neverland grounds are dark and enormous and still, and inside there is only the soft sound of his breathing and the occasional shift of the cloth on his forehead when you reach out to re-dampen it.
He looks different this way, somehow younger. He is thirty-one years old and has been on a stage in some form or another long before you met him, and even in his own house, even with only you, he carries himself as if he's being seen. Now he doesn't. Now he is just a person who is tired and sick, sleeping.
You reach out and take his hand.
It isn't something you plan. His hand is lying open at his side, fingers loosely curled, and you put yours into it without thinking, and then you sit very still with the warmth of it against your palm and feel, for just a moment, everything you don't let yourself feel.
You love him.
You have loved him for a long time, through all the versions of him that have existed since you were seventeen years old and arguing about books in the hallway of Hayvenhurst, through the years of his rising and the years of his changing and everything that has happened in between.
You have loved him through Off The Wall and through Thriller and through Bad, through every reinvention, through the person he was at eighteen and the person he has become at thirty-one.
You have loved him through the girlfriends he brought around over the years, the ones he was serious about and the ones he wasn't, the ones he told you about first and the ones you found out about from other people. You have sat across from him and listened and smiled, because his happiness has always been a thing you wanted for him, even when it had nothing to do with you.
He doesn't know, you think. You have been careful. You have built your friendship into something sturdy, something that doesn't require him to feel any particular way, and you have kept this one thing for yourself, quiet as still water.
You will not do anything with it because it would change the way things are, and the way things are is the thing you love most about your life.
You sit in the chair in the dark and hold his hand and let yourself have it, just for tonight, just while he's sleeping.
–
When you wake up, your neck is stiff from the chair and early morning light is coming in around the curtains.
Michael is awake.
He's looking at you. He's been looking at you for a while, you think.
"Hey," you say, voice rough.
He doesn't say anything. You’re still holding his hand.
Then he tugs it gently. He's not pulling you toward him or asking you for anything. It's just a quiet pressure on your hand.
You sit forward and remove the cloth from his forehead with your free hand, then press the back of your hand to his skin. Still warm, but different. The feverish feeling is gone. He's now just a person with morning temperature, coming back to himself.
"Better," you say.
He nods.
"Good." You straighten up and let go of his hand and reach for the basin and cloth with your practical hands, buying yourself a second. "You need dry pyjamas. Where do you keep–"
He points at the dresser in the way that means second drawer.
You find him a soft t-shirt and a clean pair of loose pants and bring them to the bed, and then you find something to do on the other side of the room while he changes out of his sweaty clothes. You adjust the curtains and open them a little to let the morning in. When you turn back, he's sitting up against the headboard, looking exhausted but better, watching you the way he was watching you when you woke up.
"How do you feel?" you say.
He thinks about it for a moment. Then, barely with a whisper he says, "Tired."
"Yeah." You sit on the edge of the bed. "You'll feel better after you sleep some more. Real sleep, not fever sleep."
He looks at you for a moment, and then his eyes move to the chair you've spent the night in, the awkward angle of it, the way you're holding your neck without seeming to realize you're doing it.
Something in his expression shifts.
It isn't pity, but more a kind of tenderness he doesn't try to hide because he's too tired and too grateful to bother.
He reaches out and tugs your hand gently.
"Michael, I'm fine."
He tugs again, and tilts his head toward the empty space beside him.
"I can't sleep in your bed, you need the space and you’re gonna get all sweaty again–"
He tugs again. Then he shifts slowly, making room for yoiu, and looks at you with an expression that says I know what I'm doing and I've already decided.
"You are so stubborn when you're sick," you say.
He raises an eyebrow that looks like Only when sick?
You look at him. Then you look at the chair. You reach up and press your fingers to the side of your neck without thinking, and he watches you do it with mild concern.
"Just for a bit," you say.
You pull your shoes off and lie down on top of the covers on the far edge of the king sized bed, leaving as much space as possible between you, and he settles back against the pillows slowly, and within a few minutes his breathing has gone even and slow.
You lie awake for a little while longer, looking at the ceiling, listening to the stillness around you.
When you wake up again, the light is different. It's late morning.
You're alone in the bed.
You sit up and push your hair out of your face and after a moment you hear water running in the bathroom. You get up and smooth the bedcovers and go downstairs to the kitchen.
You know where things are, because Michael is particular about it in a way that extends to every room he actually lives in: he tells the staff how he wants things arranged rather than leaving it to them, and once something is where he's decided it should be, it stays there.
You move through it the way you move through your own space, reaching for things without looking. You find the pan and the bread and the eggs, and by the time you hear his footsteps on the stairs you have made toast and scrambled eggs and you are pouring tea with slightly unsteady hands, which you force yourself to not think about too much.
He comes into the kitchen looking human again, still tired but more alive and dressed properly, hair still damp from the shower, moving with something closer to energy than before. He watches you set the tray: the plate, the mug, the little jar of honey you've put out because his throat will still be raw.
"Eat," you say.
He sits at the island. He looks at the food, then he looks at you.
"I should go," you say. "You're better, and I have things–"
His hand wraps around your wrist gently, and it stops you mid-sentence.
You look at him.
He looks at you. He is thinking about saying something. You know the way he gets when he is choosing his words. Or, in this case, when he has almost no voice left and has to choose carefully.
"Thank you," he says. Just that, barely above a whisper, but with a weight behind it that you feel through your whole chest.
"You don't have to–"
He rises, and before you can finish the sentence or move, he tips his head down and presses a kiss to the top of your hair quietly.
You're sure your face does something you can't control.
"Okay," you say, to somewhere just past his shoulder, because you cannot look him in the eye right now. "Eat the eggs. They'll get cold."
He makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be agreement and lets your wrist go.
You gather your jacket from the chair in the hallway and your bag from the table and your keys, and you don't let yourself look back as you go.
He stands at the kitchen island and watches the front door close.
Then he sits back down, pulls the tray toward him, and picks up the fork.
Soon, he thinks.
Not today. Not while his voice is barely there and you're being careful not to look at him and he can still feel the warmth of your hand in his from the night before.
He knows what you've been carrying, and he knows you'd never say it first.
But soon. He'll tell you soon.
He takes a bite of the eggs.
They're good. You always know how he takes them.