Chapter 9: The Rehearsal
The panic of LA had faded to a dull, persistent throb behind Nathan’s sternum, a souvenir from the hotel. For a week, he’d jumped at shadows, scanning every face in every crowd for a glint of recognition. The promised safe house in the hills had been just that—safe, sterile, and utterly silent. Michael had been subdued, clinging to him at night but drifting through the days in a haze of guilt.
So when Michael suggested Neverland, Nathan’s first instinct was a hard no.
“It’s the most watched private property in America,” Nathan had argued, pacing the sleek, empty living room of the safe house.
“It’s also mine,” Michael had replied, his voice quiet but stubborn. He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, a slight silhouette against the brutal California sun. “And it’s empty. The staff’s rotation is pared down to three I’ve known since I was a boy. They know how to be ghosts. The paparazzi camps are miles down the valley road. Inside the gates… it’s just land. And me.”
He’d turned then, his eyes holding that particular blend of melancholy and hope that always unraveled Nathan’s resistance. “I need to be somewhere that doesn’t feel like a bunker. I need to show you my world. The real one. Not the one in magazines.”
The limousine ride through the gates had felt like passing into another dimension. The scale of it was absurd, a pastoral fantasy carved into the dry hills. But the silence was profound. Not the tense, waiting silence of the hotel or the safe house, but a deep, country quiet broken only by wind in the oaks and the distant whinny of a horse.
They didn’t go to the main house. Michael led him instead to a long, low building tucked behind a stand of trees. He produced an old brass key and unlocked a heavy door.
“My studio,” he said, pushing it open.
The air that washed out was cool, still, and thick with memory. It smelled of resinous wood, dust motes dancing in slanted light from high windows, and the faint, sweet tang of old sweat. Nathan stepped inside, his musician’s soul immediately soothed by the space. It was a cathedral to movement. One wall was entirely mirror, now slightly speckled with age. A smooth, sprung wooden floor stretched out, worn pale in pathways that spoke of infinite repetition. A battered grand piano stood in one corner, a lone ballet barre ran the length of the mirror, and frayed practice mats were stacked neatly against the far wall.
“No one comes in here but me,” Michael said, his voice echoing softly. “It’s… it’s where I remember how to breathe.”
He walked to the center of the floor, his sneakers making no sound. He closed his eyes for a moment, then his body shifted. The slight slouch of his shoulders fell away. His spine straightened, his head lifted. It wasn’t the performance posture, all explosive energy and whipped-cream charm. This was something more fundamental, more private. A grounding.
He began to move. It was a simple series of steps, a slow, languid combination that flowed from one extension into the next. There was no music, just the whisper of his jeans against his legs and the soft creak of the floor. He was talking to himself in a language of muscle and memory.
Nathan leaned against the doorframe, watching. The fear of exposure, the constant calculations, all of it receded. Here, in this dusty, sacred space, Michael was just a man in a room, beautiful and haunted and his.
The urge built slowly, a heat uncoiling in his gut. It wasn’t just lust. It was a need to connect, to brand this moment into both of them, to replace the sterile panic of LA with something visceral and real. To claim this private version of Michael that almost no one ever saw.
He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the floor. Michael saw him coming in the mirror but didn’t stop his movement, his eyes tracking Nathan’s reflection as he approached. Nathan came up behind him, close enough to feel the body heat radiating through his thin t-shirt. He placed his hands on Michael’s hips, stilling him.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Nathan murmured, his lips brushing the shell of Michael’s ear.
Michael’s breath hitched. He resumed the combination, but now his movements were less certain, the flow disrupted by Nathan’s firm grip. Nathan’s hands slid upward, under the t-shirt, mapping the smooth skin of his stomach, the defined ridges of his ribs. He could feel the quickened heartbeat beneath his palms.
“I’m trying to rehearse,” Michael said, but it was a breathless protest, lacking any conviction.
“Rehearse this,” Nathan said, and his voice had gone dark, rough.
He spun Michael around to face him, backed him up until his shoulders hit the cool, unforgiving surface of the mirror. The impact was a soft thud that seemed to echo. Nathan crowded into him, pinning him there with his body. He could see their reflection stretching away into infinity in the speckled glass—a thousand Nathans pressing a thousand Michaels against a thousand walls.
He didn’t kiss him. He just looked at him, his gaze intense, swallowing the faint tremor in Michael’s lower lip. With deliberate, slow movements, Nathan unbuckled his own belt, the rasp of leather loud in the quiet. He unbuttoned his jeans, pushed them and his boxers down just enough to free his cock, already hard and heavy.
Understanding flashed in Michael’s dark eyes, followed by a flicker of apprehension that only sharpened the heat in Nathan’s blood. This wasn’t about comfort. This was about ownership, about truth.
“Turn around,” Nathan commanded, his voice low.
Michael obeyed, turning to face the mirror, his palms flat against the glass. Nathan pressed close against his back, his cock nestled between Michael’s ass cheeks. He reached around and fumbled with Michael’s belt, undoing the button and fly of his jeans, pushing them down over his slender hips. He didn’t use his hand to prepare him. He didn’t reach for spit or lotion. There was none.
He just guided himself with one hand, positioned the thick head at Michael’s tight entrance, and pushed.
It was a brutal, unforgiving breach. Michael gasped, a sharp, shocked sound that bounced off the walls and mirrors. His head dropped forward, his knuckles white against the glass. Nathan held there, buried in that impossible, clenching heat, letting the pain and the stretching burn for them both. He watched their reflection—his own face a mask of fierce concentration, Michael’s eyes wide, his mouth open in a silent ‘O’.
“Fuck,” Michael whimpered, but he pushed back, taking him deeper.
That was all the permission Nathan needed. He pulled back and drove in again, setting a punishing, shallow rhythm. The dry drag was exquisite agony, a raw, scraping friction that made his vision blur. Each thrust was a statement. This is real. This is ugly. This is ours.
“Harder,” Michael begged, his voice broken, echoing in the cavernous room. “God, Nathan, fuck me harder. Make me feel it tomorrow.”
Nathan snarled, an animal sound torn from his throat. He obeyed, snapping his hips forward, the force slamming Michael’s body into the mirror. The glass shuddered. The slap of skin, the ragged grunts of their breathing, filled the silent studio. Nathan watched, mesmerized, as a thousand versions of himself plowed into a thousand versions of Michael, a dizzying, infinite loop of desperate coupling.
He felt the coil of his orgasm tighten, a wire about to snap. With a final, deep thrust, he buried himself to the root and stayed there, pulsing. He didn’t come. Not yet. He fought it back, gritting his teeth.
He pulled out, making Michael gasp again at the sudden emptiness. He turned him roughly, spun him around to face him. Michael’s eyes were glazed, his lips swollen. Without a word, Nathan dropped to his knees.
He took Michael’s cock into his mouth in one swift, deep motion, swallowing him whole. Michael cried out, his hands flying to Nathan’s hair, tangling in the short blonde strands. Nathan worked him ruthlessly, using his tongue, his throat, applying suction that bordered on painful. He could taste the salt of his own skin, the unique, musky essence of Michael. He hollowed his cheeks and sucked, hard.
“I’m gonna… Nathan, I’m gonna come…” Michael’s warning was a strangled sob.
Nathan just looked up, meeting his eyes in the mirror as he sucked him deeper. He gave a slight, deliberate nod.
That was all it took. Michael’s body stiffened. A hot, salty flood hit the back of Nathan’s throat. He swallowed convulsively, taking every pulse, every drop, until Michael was spent and shuddering, his grip in Nathan’s hair going slack.
Nathan rose, his own need a screaming imperative now. He kissed Michael, deep and filthy, letting him taste himself. Michael moaned into his mouth, pliant and wrecked.
“On the floor,” Nathan growled against his lips.
They sank down together onto the smooth, cool wood, their discarded clothes a scant pillow. Nathan rolled on top, pushing Michael’s legs apart. He was wet now from Michael’s release, slick enough. He drove into him in one smooth, claiming stroke. This time, the rhythm was frantic, frenzied. He fucked him with short, brutal plunges, chasing his own release. Michael wrapped his legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, meeting every drive with a broken whimper.
It was fast and violent. Nathan’s climax tore through him with a force that blinded him. He came with a shout that was swallowed by the soundproofed walls, collapsing onto Michael, spent and shaking.
For a long time, they just lay there on the floor of the empty studio, a tangled heap of limbs and cooling sweat. The dust motes settled around them. Nathan’s heart hammered against Michael’s, a syncopated drum slowly finding the same beat.
Michael traced a finger along Nathan’s spine. “So much for rehearsing,” he whispered, a faint, hoarse laugh in his voice.
Nathan didn’t answer. He just held on, listening to the quiet of Neverland. Through the high windows, he saw the sky beginning to bruise with twilight. For the first time in weeks, the knot of anxiety in his chest felt loose, almost gone. They had defiled a sanctuary and in doing so, had made it more sacred.
But as he closed his eyes, the last thing he saw was their reflection in the darkened mirror—two figures collapsed on the floor, tiny and vulnerable in the vast, echoing space. A secret held, for now, in a house of glass and ghosts.