Chapter 7: The Morning Ultimatum
The first light was a cold, blue thief. It stole into the cabin not with warmth, but with a sharp, clarifying clarity, picking out the dust motes in the air, the empty wine bottle on its side, the faint smudge of ash on the hearthstone. Nathan woke to the absence of warmth beside him.The space where Michael had been was already cold.
He found him by the wall of windows, already dressed in dark jeans and a simple black sweater, his silhouette a stark cutout against the vast, snow-blanketed world. The storm had passed, leaving a crystalline hush so profound it felt like pressure on the eardrums. Michael stood perfectly still, his arms crossed, watching the untouched expanse.“You’re up,” Nathan said, his voice gravelly with sleep and dread.
“I didn’t sleep.” Michael didn’t turn.“I thought about it. All night.”
Nathan pushed himself up on his elbows.The blanket pooled around his waist. “Thought about what?”
“LA.”
The two letters hung in the chilled air between them. Nathan felt a familiar knot tightening in his stomach.“Michael.”
Finally, Michael turned. His eyes were dark pools, bruised with lack of sleep, but they held a terrifying, flat resolve. “I’m coming with you.”
A cold that had nothing to do with dawn seeped into Nathan’s bones. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not. Are you out of your fucking mind?” Nathan threw the blanket off and stood, the rough wool rug abrasive under his feet. “You can’t just pop into LA with me.You know what happens. The second you’re spotted—”
“I’ll wear a disguise.I’ll stay in the hotel.You’ll go to your meeting. I just… I need to be near you.” His voice cracked on the last word, the resolve giving way to raw, childlike need.It was more frightening than the determination.
“Near me?” Nathan crossed the room, grabbing Michael’s shoulders.He could feel the fine tremor running through him. “They’ll eat you alive out there. The vultures with their long lenses, the ‘friends’ who sell stories for a hit, the label people who would sell their own grandmothers to get a piece of you—they’ll smell you.They always do. You’re not some random guy. You’re you.”
“I know what I am!” Michael shouted, pulling back, his composure shattering.“I know it better than anyone! I’m a prisoner in my own skin every single day! And the one place I’m not… the one person I’m not a prisoner with… is here.Is you. And now you’re leaving to go into the heart of it, and I’m supposed to just… what? Sit here and wait?Watch the snow melt?” His breath hitched. “I can’t do another empty room, Nathan.Not after this. Not knowing you’re out there in that zoo.”
Nathan’s jaw worked.He wanted to shake him.He wanted to hold him. The conflict tore at his ribs.“It’s a business meeting.Two days, tops. I’ll be back before the ice on the road is gone.”
“You don’t know that. ‘Emergency meeting.’ That means fires.That means delays. That means you get sucked back into your world, and I get sucked back into mine, and this…” He gestured wildly between them, at the cabin, at the ghost of their coupling still lingering in the air. “This becomes a memory we visit when we’re high or desperate. I can’t.” A single tear tracked its way down his cheek.He made no move to wipe it away.“I’m coming. You can’t stop me.”
The fury rose in Nathan then, hot and irrational. It was fury at the world, at the cages, but it lashed out at the man in front of him. The man who was asking for the impossible. “You selfish fuck,” he snarled, his voice low and venomous.“You think this is just about you and your loneliness? You think dragging your circus into my life, into my career, won’t blow everything to hell? They’ll see you with me once, just once, and that’s it.My music becomes a footnote. ‘Nathan Feuerstein, protege of Michael Jackson.’ ‘Nathan Feuerstein, rumored lover of—’”
“So that’s it?” Michael’s tears were gone, replaced by a fiery defiance. “Your reputation?Your precious, gritty authenticity? Might get tainted by associating with the pop puppet?”
“You know that’s not what I mean!”
“Then what? You’re ashamed?”
The word hung there, ugly and wrong. Nathan saw the hurt flash in Michael’s eyes the moment he said it, saw him regret it, but it was too late.The damage was done.
Nathan didn’t answer with words.He moved. He closed the distance between them in one swift stride, his hand circling the back of Michael’s neck, fingers tangling in the soft hair at his nape.He didn’t kiss him. He pulled him forward, their foreheads crashing together, a brutal, painful connection. “I have never been ashamed of you,” he growled, each word a pledge punched from his gut.“I am terrified for you. There’s a difference.”
Michael’s breath fanned against his lips. “Then let me be terrified with you.”
The fight left Nathan in a sudden, violent rush. The fear remained, but it morphed, twisting into a different kind of urgency. A need to obliterate the argument, the impending separation, the vast, cold world outside the glass. He walked Michael backwards, not gently, until the small of his back hit the hard, cold edge of the kitchen counter.
Nathan yanked at Michael’s belt, the leather sliding free with a hiss. He unbuttoned his jeans, shoved them down over his hips just enough.He spun him around, bending him forward over the cold granite. The pale skin of Michael’s back, the graceful curve of his spine, was a stark contrast to the dark stone.“You want to come?” Nathan’s voice was raw. He spit into his palm, slicking himself with a crude, hurried motion. “You want to be in that world with me? Then be in this first.”
He pushed inside him in one brutal, unyielding thrust. Michael cried out, a sharp, pained sound that echoed off the cabin walls, his hands splaying flat against the counter for balance. It was too dry, too fast, a punishment and a claim all at once.Nathan didn’t wait for him to adjust. He set a ruthless, pounding rhythm, each drive of his hips slamming Michael’s body into the unforgiving edge of the counter.
“This what you want?” Nathan gritted out, gripping his hips hard enough to bruise. “To be fucked raw in a kitchen because we’re too scared to say goodbye properly?”
“Yes!” Michael gasped, pushing back against him, his body yielding, accepting, welcoming the assault.“Fuck yes!Don’t stop! Just… don’t…” His words dissolved into ragged moans.
The anger wasn’t gone, but it was fusing with a desperate, aching love. Nathan fucked him with a focused intensity, a physical manifesto of all the things they couldn’t say.That he was scared. That he didn’t want to go.That the thought of Michael in the LA glare made him sick. Each snap of his hips was a vow, a curse, a prayer.The counter rattled with their movement. A ceramic mug toppled over and shattered on the floor.Neither of them noticed.
Nathan reached around, his hand finding Michael’s cock, hard and leaking. He stroked him in time with his thrusts, his grip tight, almost cruel. Michael’s moans became higher, tighter, teetering on the edge of sobs. “Nathan… I’m gonna…”
“Come,” Nathan ordered, his own climax coiling, unstoppable, in the base of his spine. “Come for me.Show me you’re mine in this. That this is real.”
With a shattered cry, Michael came, his release spurting over Nathan’s fist and onto the cabinet below. The violent clenching of his body pulled Nathan over the edge immediately after. He drove in deep, burying himself as deep as he could go, and roared as he emptied himself inside him, a hot, pulsing surrender.
For a long moment, the only sound was their heaving breaths, steaming in the cold morning air. Nathan leaned over him, his weight pressing Michael into the counter, his face buried in the sweater between Michael’s shoulder blades.The cold granite bit into his forearms.
Slowly, he softened, slipped out. He rested his forehead between Michael’s shoulder blades, utterly spent.“Okay,” Nathan whispered, the word barely audible.“Okay. You can come.”
Michael shuddered beneath him, a full-body tremor of relief and exhaustion.He didn’t speak.
They cleaned up in silence.They packed in silence. Nathan called Leo back, his voice toneless, and arranged for a car to navigate the plowed mountain road. He didn’t mention a guest.The flight was a study in contained panic. Michael, in a heavy coat, hat, and large sunglasses, was a portrait of tense invisibility in the first-class cabin. He stared out the window at the shrinking, wrinkled landscape of snow below. Nathan’s knee bounced incessantly, a nervous tic he couldn’t control.He counted the rows of seats ahead of him. One, two, three.He counted the steps the flight attendant took.Seven, eight, nine.
They landed in LAX under a bleached, merciless sky. The humidity was a physical slap after the mountain dry cold. The noise was an assault—a ceaseless roar of engines, sirens, chatter, and rolling luggage. Nathan saw Michael flinch as they walked through the terminal, his shoulders hunching instinctively, even beneath the disguise.The hotel was a monument of glass and chilled air. Their room was on a high floor, sleek and impersonal. A fruit basket sat on the table with a note from the label: “Welcome back, Nathan! Knock ‘em dead tomorrow!” The sight of it made Nathan’s skin crawl.
Michael went straight to the window, looking down at the gridlocked streets, the tiny, frantic people.“It’s so loud,” he said quietly. “Even up here.”
Nathan came up behind him, wrapped his arms around his waist, and rested his chin on his shoulder. They stood like that, watching the city swarm below, a kingdom of ants neither of them wanted to rule.
“I’m here,” Nathan said, though the words felt inadequate.Michael placed his hand over Nathan’s on his stomach.His touch was cold.
Later, in the vast, too-soft bed, they held each other. The sex this time was slow, almost mournful, a tender mapping of skin under the alien glow of city lights bleeding through the blinds. Nathan took his time, worshipping every inch of him with his mouth and hands before finally sliding inside, moving with a deep, rocking gentleness that felt like a requiem for their mountain sanctuary. Michael came quietly, his face pressed into the pillow, and Nathan followed, spilling into him with a soft groan, clinging to him as if he could physically fuse them together.
They lay entwined in the aftermath, the silence of the room now feeling like a vacuum, waiting to be filled by the demands of tomorrow.A sharp knock at the hotel room door shattered the fragile peace.They froze.
Nathan’s heart slammed against his ribs.Michael’s breath stopped.
The knock came again, louder, more insistent.It wasn’t room service.They hadn’t ordered anything.
Nathan looked at Michael, whose eyes were wide with a familiar, hunted fear. The world, it seemed, had found its way in already.