Chapter 2: The Afterglow and the Aftermath
The roar of the crowd was a physical thing, a vibration in the floorboards that had finally, mercifully, ceased. It left a ringing silence in its wake, thick and velvety in the plush dressing room. Michael could still feel it in his teeth, in the tremble of his thighs as he pushed the door shut, leaning against it for a second.
He was poured out, empty. And deliciously alive.
The room smelled of him—sweat, the faint ozone of pyrotechnics, the particular waxy scent of his stage makeup. A single spotlight, left on by a flustered assistant, cut a white column through the dim, illuminating galaxies of dust motes. And Jacob.
He was sitting in the large velvet chair by the vanity, one leg crossed over the other, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. He hadn’t been at the show. They’d agreed it was safer, with too many cameras, too many eyes. Seeing him here now, lying in wait, sent a contradictory thrill and chill through Michael’s exhaustion.
“You were watching the monitor,” Michael said, his voice raspy from two hours of singing. It wasn’t a question.
Jacob took a slow sip. The ice clinked. “Every second.”
He stood up, unfolding his height. He was still in his street clothes—dark jeans, a simple black t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders. He looked like a shadow that had gained substance. He picked up a second glass, filled with champagne, and held it out.
Michael pushed off from the door and took it. Their fingers brushed. Jacob’s were cold. “Thank you.”
“To the King,” Jacob said, his tone unreadable. He tapped his whiskey glass against the flute. The crystal ping was sharp, final.
Michael drank, the bubbles a bright, painful fizz on his raw throat. He watched Jacob’s eyes track the line of his throat as he swallowed. The gaze felt like hands.
“You had them in the palm of your hand,” Jacob murmured. He set his glass down and stepped closer. “Sixty thousand people. And you owned every single one.”
“It’s the music that owns them,” Michael corrected softly, but the compliment warmed him, seeped into the aching places.
“No.” Jacob was in front of him now, close enough for Michael to smell the whiskey on his breath, to see the dark, possessive hunger that had replaced the petulance from the studio. “It’s you.”
His hand came up, not to Michael’s face, but to his sequined jacket. His fingers traced the hot, bedazzled curve of his shoulder, then gripped the lapel. The touch was electric, a live wire on Michael’s over-sensitized skin.
“You’re still shaking,” Jacob observed, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“Adrenaline.”
“Is that all?”
Jacob’s other hand slid around his waist, pulling him in until their bodies aligned. Michael could feel the hard line of Jacob’s belt, the frantic, elevated beat of his own heart. The cool champagne glass was trapped between them. He was still in his full performance skin, glitter and greasepaint, a character. And Jacob was trying to strip it all away, right here, right now.
“Jake…” The name was a sigh, a warning, a plea.
“I saw how you looked at that guitarist during the solo. Leaned right into his space.”
“It’s called staging,” Michael said, but the fight was leaching out of him, replaced by a heavy, sinking familiarity. The studio, the producer, now a guitarist on a monitor screen. The pattern was a closed loop.
“Looked like more than staging.” Jacob’s mouth was at his ear, his words hot and low. “Looked like you were having the time of your fucking life.”
He kissed him then. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming. A mouth of whiskey and want, insistent, pushing Michael’s head back against the mirrored wall of the vanity. The glass in Michael’s hand tipped, champagne splashing cold onto his wrist and the floor. He didn’t let go. He kissed back, because part of him was still soaring from the lights, the noise, the godlike power of the stage, and this felt like a logical, grounding continuation. A different kind of frenzy.
Jacob’s hands were everywhere, mapping the geography of the intricate jacket, fumbling with the fastenings. The sequins scraped against the mirror with a sound like falling pins. Michael broke the kiss, gasping for air that smelled of Jacob and his own drying sweat.
“You’re messing up the costume,” he breathed, but it was weak.
“Good.” Jacob got the jacket open, shoved it back over Michael’s shoulders. His hands slid under the damp satin of his undershirt, palms hot and rough against the smooth skin of his waist. “I want you out of it. I want you just like this. Just for me.”
He spun Michael around to face the mirror. The sight was a jolt: Michael, face flushed under the smeared makeup, lips parted and wet, the glittering jacket hanging off his shoulders like shed wings. And behind him, Jacob, taller, broader, his face buried in the crook of Michael’s neck, his eyes dark and furious with need in the reflection.
“See?” Jacob whispered, biting gently at the tendon there. A proprietary mark. “This is who you are with me. Not the King. Just Michael. Sweaty and real and mine.”
The words, and mine, hit a nerve that the studio argument had exposed. The fatigue from that night, from tonight, from a lifetime of being seen as property—by fans, by the industry, and now by this beautiful, tortured boy—congealed into something cold.
Michael’s eyes in the mirror met Jacob’s. The playfulness, the post-show glow, was gone. Replaced by a flat, deep weariness.
“You don’t own the furniture, Jacob,” he said, echoing his own words from the garage. His voice was quiet, final. “And you don’t own the ghost in the mirror, either.”
He felt Jacob stiffen against his back. The hungry hands on his waist went still.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing, the distant hum of the arena’s generators. The spotlight felt clinical now, exposing the scene for what it was: a beautiful boy trying to cage a feeling he couldn’t understand.
Slowly, Michael shrugged the heavy jacket the rest of the way off. It slithered to the floor in a heap of useless sparkle. He stepped away from the mirror, from Jacob’s heat, the sudden cool air raising goosebumps on his damp skin.
He didn’t look angry. He looked drained. He picked up the fallen champagne flute, set it carefully on the vanity next to Jacob’s half-finished whiskey.
“I need a shower,” he said. It was the most mundane sentence in the world. It sounded like a verdict.
He walked towards the small adjoining bathroom, leaving Jacob standing alone in the cone of light, surrounded by velvet and chrome and the lingering, taunting scent of a performance that belonged to everyone but him. The door clicked shut, not quite a slam, but with a terrible, quiet finality.
A second later, the sound of water hitting tile hissed through the door. A private rain.
Jacob stared at their reflection in the mirror—himself, alone now, his own expression hollowed out by a hunger that had just turned to ash in his mouth. He looked at the two glasses side-by-side: the champagne, flat and spilled; the whiskey, waiting.
He picked up his glass and drained it, the burn doing nothing to warm the cold void that had opened up in his chest. The ghost was gone, and all that was left was the man, behind a locked door, washing him away.