#but once every century isn’t a good therapy track record | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quant-um-fizzx · 5 years

Text

This is When

Pairing: Steve x Reader

Summary: Reader has liked Steve from afar and, when an opportunity finally arrives, her efforts to be what she thinks he wants have consequences.

Prompt: I don’t know what you want from me/So careless in my company/Oh, if all that you say is true/There’ll be no getting over you (Tearing Me Up – Bob Moses)

Word Count: 6700 (yikes.)

Warnings: Unrelenting Angst. Reader makes poor choices, consistently. This starts several weeks before Endgame, so expect there to be character death mentions. Referenced Steve x Peggy. Mildest smut.

The bad guy isn’t always so easy to spot. A villain, the very last person you expect.

Steve stands, looming larger than life over the disused conference table. Five years of recently unearthed dust still visible on the far corners. Brittle paper rustles as he unfurls an antique, camel-colored map, apparently routing modern comparatives. It’s just him, a screen, and some papers. Despite that, the room feels full, fit to burst. You opt to leave before it does. Turn tail, spin on the ball of your foot, and leave him undisturbed.

“Nope,” you say, pursing your lips and shaking your head as you return to where Nat sits, legs up and feet crossed on her table across the compound.

“No?” She says, surprised and speaking a little slowly around a mouthful of peanut butter. “He won’t do it?”

Your face scrunches up; eyes close not wanting to see her reaction. “No, uh...nope. I sorta couldn’t ask him to.” It sounds more like a question. One eye peeks open while the rest of your face probably looks like you’ve sucked down a crate of lemons.

She plops her half sandwich down dramatically, makes a show of brushing crumbs. “You know,” she begins, eyes twinkling, “I once watched him microwave a can of tomato soup. In the can.”

“I fail to see how that’s relevant here.” It was probably right after he first came to this century, too, you think defensively on his behalf.

“I’m just surprised you’re intimidated.”

You scoff. “I am allowed to be intimidated. For crying out loud Nat, he punches aliens.”

“I punch aliens.” Her eyebrows lift in challenge, enjoying this too much.

How long has it been? Years since you met him once in passing. Never any real interaction. He may not even recall your name. Sporadic appearances in heavily-crowded rooms, and no mutual dealings before...well, before half of everything went to Hell.

Not much opportunity now, he lives off-site, always gone leading therapy groups and the occasional mission. Still, every time the past few years you’ve heard Nat mention he’s come around the all-but-deserted HQ, butterflies.

Lost in thought for a moment longer than innocent, you spot Nat smirk knowingly.

This is when you decide shit needs to change. Steve Rogers needs to notice you.

“Fine!” You head back out, arms waving near your head in mock surrender.

Striding up behind him in the conference room, you clear the nerves from your throat and, from the subtle flex near his shoulder blades, it’s clear he knows you’re there - that someone is there - but he’s unfazed. He certainly doesn’t notice you. Being unnoticed by Steve Rogers is a skill you’ve unwittingly, unwillingly mastered.

In fairness, he notices you as much as he would most everyone else that’s left. No one’s exactly sneaking up on history’s greatest soldier.

You suspect it’s more of an instant evaluation and subsequent, triaged dismissal: Nondescript person. Location appropriate attire. Behavior within expected parameters. Sufficient security clearance relative to location. Threat level low.

Surely, you’re no threat at all, to him. To yourself...jury’s out.

“Captain Rogers?” You step across the table from him.

He looks up, briefly. Enough to be courteous but remains focused on his project. “How can I help you?”

Suddenly, your lips dry despite the strawberry Chapstick they’re always coated in. “Nat wants me to find out if you’ve made a decision about helping escort the groups next week?”

He leans slightly and braces both arms on the table. Not looking up, he sighs out, “I want to help, but trotting out Captain America doesn’t seem like the way to do it.”

Without thinking, you say, “Hadn’t really been looking for a super soldier to take a bus load of orphans to the museum. Just Steve Rogers: Certified Driver’s License holder.”

A ghost of a smile. He looks up. “Fair enough. Count me in.”

As you leave, practically bouncing from this positive first real interaction, you call over your shoulder, “Though, after you’ve tried to wrangle 150 kids for lunch, that superhero bit might not seem like such a bad idea.”

You hear a faint laugh as you exit.

“You know,” Nat says, right after you tell her Steve’s decision, “I used to suggest dates to him all the time.” She looks wistfully out the window, to a past more than a world away. “He never bit. Maybe that was for the best back then. I was just throwing out names. Trying to get him out.” She says that, but takes a beat. She knows, we both do, that’s not quite it. Not to get him out. It was really trying to help him fit in. “But, yeah, never seemed interested. Made me promise to stop. Stop suggesting. Stop having women bring him coffee, bump into him in the elevator, what have you. So, I promised.” You watch her twist the plastic bag around a loaf of bread and shove it to the back of the counter. “Now, I’m not so sure.”

You look over to the doorway that leads back toward the conference room he’s probably still in. “That seems like a good thing. Probably making him uncomfortable for the sake of a few dates.”

“True. They were good people, not good matches.” She shrugs, a small hitch - one that you only recognize from logging hundreds of hours around her - shows she’s only feigning casual. Quite suddenly, you understand this is a dead-serious talk. “I never regretted making him that promise until you came along.”

You swear you hear an actual record scratch.

“Wh-? What on earth would make you say that?” You look down at your faded t-shirt and - oh, you hadn’t noticed - threadbare yoga pants. Your standards have devolved into If It’s Clean, It Gets Worn. You know your hair’s in disarray, face bare. Not exactly Steve’s button downs and starched jeans.

“C’mon, your ability to adapt? That might be an actual superpower. You both operate on the same compass. Don’t know how to stop putting others first. No compromise. When I saw your letter to Secretary Ross bullet-pointing everything wrong with his stupidass Survivor Mandates? An admin who commits career suicide by telling off the Secretary of State?” Nat shakes her head. “That’s right up there with airport rumbles and jumping outta planes without a chute.”

You really don’t know what to say to that.

Of course, you’d fantasized something happening between you and Steve. Look at him.

Plus, he’s a good guy. THE Good Guy. The Embodiment of morals and decency.

Your room currently has several drained Jameson bottles, at least three weeks’ worth of dirty laundry, a fist-sized hole in the wall from when you received your first reply from Ross, and simply scorchingly filthy porn on an incognito tab. (As a precaution, you’d searched a few vanilla sites too, hoping if anyone ever went snooping through your browser history, they’d be satisfied with that and not dig deeper to find the banned-in-several-states stuff.)

You were more likely to listen to Steve Miller or, heck, even Roger Miller, than Glenn Miller.

You’re convinced you’d turn him off in a heartbeat. Based on what you know of him anyway. A lot can be discerned reading about his life and choices. He is just so closed off - red, white, and blue brick walls. So much in the past.

None of that matters though. It doesn’t matter if you never actually get his attention in the first place.

Looking past Nat at your reflection in the window, you have to wonder how you’d keep it if you ever got it.

Honestly, maybe you shouldn’t even try. Life is barely hanging on. People are either so broken they don’t function or so good at compartmentalization that they don’t move on and just keep trying to resuscitate it, to maintain it.

“How’s your housing proposal coming along?” Nat breaks you out of your thoughts. “Is it too much? You’re already doing that food program revamp plus the international incident monitoring.”

“Nah, I got it.” You have to. You want to. Anything you can do that allows Nat time to track down her best friend and maybe, just maybe, someone will find a way to bring everyone else back, too.

The skeleton crew that remained at Avengers HQ after Wakanda, after Thanos, had drifted away within weeks. All with broken families and lives that needed stitched up, pressing wounds that demanded them more. All but you and Nat. Nat had no one and you had no one worth going to. You’d been just another worker bee before, trying to make things right, doing the best you could for the best people so they could actually accomplish things.

Life is full, brimming with grey mourning and chalky despair, and you really don’t need a distraction. Even if it’s as amazing as Steve Rogers.

You almost convince yourself that’s true.

The outing goes smoothly. All kids accounted for and - it shouldn’t be the highlight, but it is - Steve has spoken with you most of the day. Usually about the kids and their needs. Interspersed, he asks where you’re from. Who you lost. Where you were when it happened. All the sorts of things everyone has learned to ask so they don’t trigger a breakdown.

“Who did you lose, Steve?” It’s common knowledge, but you ask anyway.

He seems surprised to hear the words. Waits a beat before answering. “This time it wasn’t everyone.”

Near the end of the day, outside the giftshop, you spot him deep in conversation with a rather pretty guide. She scoots a little closer every few moments and he allows it. Her hair is brown, soft waves pulled back in a barrette. Dark red lips. Neatly tucked uniform, pencil skirt.

Huh. Okay. He is very much in the past. Even further than the rest of us.

This is when the idea hits. It’s all at once, a lightning strike forcing it to life.

On the way home, you stop by a drug store and make a solitary purchase: semi-matte, red velvet lipstick.

You’re determined to focus on work and not go chasing after him or concoct schemes to run into him. You’re not some errant child running after him like he’s a clanging ice cream truck. You are a mature person with goals and obligations and willpower and if you’ve recently developed a raging interest in the 1940’s, well, that’s pure coincidence.

You are not going to seek him out.

You cave two days later.

Container of freshly baked (by someone, not you) cookies in one hand, you find yourself waiting for a break in a VA meeting he leads. A curious smile pulls at the corner of his mouth when he spies you leaning against the doorframe.

“Well, let’s take a break. Back in five?” He jogs up to you, eyeing the cookies. “What’s this?”

“Oh,” you say, holding them up as if you’d forgotten they were there, “These old things?” While you speak, you notice his gaze go to your dark lips. His brow furrows slightly, then back to your eyes. “I just thought maybe your group would like treats?” Suddenly, you feel silly. As if you’ve mistaken combat veterans for kindergarteners in need of snack time. “Do you serve refreshments?”

His rare smile is blinding. “We do now.” Grabbing the cookies, with one last glance that doesn't quite reach up to your eyes, he returns to the group.

As you turn to leave, he calls after you, “Wait, let me introduce you. Please, stay. We’re almost done anyway.”

You position yourself at what you hope appears to be a respectful distance for the remainder of the meeting.

He’s very good, you realize. Gets everyone to open up, encourages them to share and then to move on. Somehow managing to come across as opening up, but never revealing more about himself than any history book contains.

After, he thanks you again.

“It was nothing really. Happy to do it.”

“You baked and came all the way down here with cookies for people you’ve never met?” That isn’t accurate, but you don’t correct him. “I wouldn’t call that ‘nothing.’” He rubs the back of his neck. “So...I should probably see you home safely.”

Trying to seem not-ridiculously overjoyed, you shrug. “I made it here on my own. I can probably make it back.”

“You stay at HQ, right?”

“Sure do.” “You don’t, uh, have anyon—anywhwere, some place in the city?”

No, you don’t. You shoot your shot. “That’s a story. Wanna hear it over coffee?”

He tilts his head. “Yeah, I could do that.”

Until 2:00 a.m., over cold coffee, you end up talking about pretty much everything except any real details about yourselves.

After you slide out of the booth to leave, he appears deep in thought, runs a finger over the lipstick smudge on your cup.

Three days after shared coffee, and roughly eight hours of big band and WW2 research, you paint your lips and slide on a skirt for the first time in years.

Steve is due at HQ today and, though you don’t know his mission, you are going to find a reason to be in his vicinity.

“Hey, lady,” Nat whistles, “are you trying to seduce your way past Ross’s assistant? Because that skirt might do the trick.”

You run your hands over invisible wrinkles, “Something like that.” You hope Steve makes an appearance soon, because you’ve been so preoccupied that going there had slipped your mind.

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain ca-”

“Shh!” You cut her off as Steve enters. He nods to you. Your cheeks warm as his eyes follow down your skirt.

“Wheels up in 10, Natasha.”

“Think we’ll be back before dinner?” Nat teases.

He gives a withering look. “Maybe dinner next Thursday.”

Now or never. “I was going to make chicken fricassee soon. I could, maybe, do it when you both get back?”

Nat looks at you as if you sprouted two heads. “Uh, sure? Not gonna turn down a home cooked meal.”

Steve follows her lead. “Not sure Romanoff has ever completed a mission report without Chinese take-out, but we can give it a go.”

Nat elbows him and exits, still looking at you through narrowed eyes.

Figuring out how to cook in a few days shouldn't be that hard.

It was that hard.

You end up baking a ham instead. The air swirls in brown sugar and cinnamon. Nat, winking, invents a reason to leave immediately with her apple crisp.

Steve watches the common area door shut behind her. “You know, for a spy, she isn’t very subtle.”

“True.” You shrug, busying yourself putting leftover ham slices on rye bread that you’ll insist he take home later. “But maybe there’s no place in this world for subtlety anymore.”

He looks at you, the lipstick you’d touched up earlier, your hair pulled back. Nods softly.

“Steve, would you like to go on a date with me?”

This time he nods a little harder. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

Steve’s schedule is only open on the many days you give dance lessons at the orphanages. After some shuffling, you get them postponed.

It takes a few tries, but you start to get the hang of this new look.

Little things at first. Subtle. Small. Glossy clear lips exchanged for matte red. A knee-length dress here and there. Belts to accentuate your waist.

You try doing your hair differently. It seems somehow too much. Too obvious. Too...her. You know about her, everyone does. You know who she is. It’s a present, tangible thing, his love for that remarkable woman. And she was remarkable, utterly deserving of Steve, if any woman is. Or, was. They’re far beyond star crossed lovers, displaced by glacial ice and merciless march of time.

But you’re right here and, determined.

You can hear the echoes of your grandmother and countless wise women, “Don’t change yourself for any man.”

Oh, but Gram, Steve Rogers isn’t just any man.

At your third dinner, a band plays standards. Several couples get up to dance. You drop hints like rainfall. “Sorry, I...I don’t dance.” He shifts in his seat uncomfortably.

“Oh. Oh, that’s okay. I don’t really either.”

His place is spartan. Walls dull grey, painted in longing. A few framed sketches. Stunning, beautiful. He says nothing when he notices you linger on the one of her the longest. It’s gone, tucked away somewhere, the next time you come over to cook dinner.

A few weeks in, over potato soup that turned out pretty good even if you were craving sushi instead, you begin to wonder if you’ve miscalculated this whole thing. You’ve held hands out walking. Hugs linger a little longer. Nothing more. Stagnant.

Maybe he just...can’t. Move on. Move on. Move on. Decade-long mission. Try to move on. Make the best of it. Going through the motions, a caricature of himself, of who he’s supposed to be.

Maybe that’s what you admire the most about him. He just keeps getting back up. It’s not that he won’t break - he seems so very, very impossibly unbroken. Too stubborn from a lifetime of fighting that he won’t surrender tethers to his past.

Whatever it is, or isn’t, you can’t stay away.

Sometimes, he eyes you skeptically. When you’ve done perhaps too much, channeled a smidge more housewife than prudent (and you do question why you’ve taken this tact but he keeps seeing you so you barrel ahead) when you’ve silently, voluntarily rearranged and back-burnered your own work and interests.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, but you really don’t have to go to all this trouble,” he says one evening, setting the table.

“Oh, it’s no trouble.” It is. “I enjoy doing this for you.” I enjoy doing things for you, but not so much this. “Besides, what else would I be doing?” Cleaning my apartment that I never let you see for many reasons. Actually completing projects. Wearing stretch pants. Work.

He sets a plate down. “What would you like to be doing?” It’s an innocent enough question, asked innocently enough. It’s only you that makes it feel more like I find it hard to believe you want to be doing this.

This is when you realize you’ve convinced yourself these changes are improvements.

Surely, he - who stands eye-to-eye with gods and monsters, who observes the world from a vantage point that quite literally no one else has - wouldn’t be interested in your mundane, day-to-day work. Not the minutiae of clerical work, grant proposals. Wouldn’t endure your ironic love for hair bands that is pretty light on the irony or backtrack on that whole no-dancing rule.

He’d definitely be leaving a Steve-shaped exit hole in the wall sprinting in the opposite direction of the porn you haven’t peeked at in weeks.

You venture another look. His face is earnest. You recall something you’d always meant to do.

“Well, I think shelters want people to come pet the cats.” Oh, god. What if he hates cats? “Dogs, er, dogs and cats. Animals.” Smooth.

He smiles, a little wider than you could’ve anticipated, and resumes placing silverware.

“If you’re free Saturday, let’s go.”

The questions start again during dinner. Having things done for him, his disquiet is palpable, like his skin itches and stretches over knitting wounds. Forgotten scars busted open.

“You do realize it was never like that for me, right?” He says. “There wasn’t pot roast on the table and a newspaper waiting for me. I grew up in the Depression. It was a mug of hot water instead of tea and getting sent to bed so early we didn’t notice we’d missed dinner.”

You had realized that. You hadn’t realized he knew you were catering specifically to him.

“This is how my grandparents raised me. I miss that sense of home, that sense of...comfort?” You fiddle with a spoon, your reflection elongated, distorted along its curve. “Steve, just because you didn’t get it, doesn’t make it right.”

His head draws back, taking you in. An unreadable look in his eye.

“I know you didn’t get what you deserved,” you chew the words, “back then. I just want to help you get it now.” Fidgeting, words feeling too...accurate. “Or, the closest thing to what you...we deserve.”

His hand covers yours, wraps fingers together, entwines. Gives you a tailored version of his VA coaching. Tells you that the world is what we make it. That it can be good and right. That he knows you’re holding back, holding something back, but admits he is, too, that he isn’t sure he knows how not to anymore. “Please,” he starts, squeezes your hand gently, “what aren’t you telling me?”

Slipping your hand out from under his, missing the warmth immediately, you start without thinking. “You’re here and I’m here and making the best of it. Have you felt…” you stop for a moment, realizing something you hadn’t let yourself think before, “...have you even felt real in years?”

The back of his chair squeaks as he leans back against it. Concedes. “Not very often.”

“I’m tired of it, weary of just getting by. Aren’t you, Steve? What are our lives for, if not for something better than just seeing if we can make it to another sunset?”

This is when you think it’s all gone to Hell. Maybe you’ve overstepped.

Wordlessly, never taking his eyes off you, he folds his napkin, pushes his chair back, stands up and comes directly over to where you sit. Bending his knees until he’s at eye level, he runs his hand along the side of your face, thumb tracing your skin, and slowly, slowly places his lips on yours.

You can’t help the smile that overtakes you mid-kiss. He pulls back and smiles, too, color in his cheeks.

It’s all very sweet and proper. Nice.

Then you notice the slightly darker tint to his eyes and you, for lack of a better word, lose it.

“C’mere.” You grab his collar and crash your lips to his. His eyes fly open and you almost laugh but you use this element of surprise to propel yourself out of your chair and twist until he’s flat and you’re straddling his chest.

Hovering an inch above his pleasantly, openly shocked face, you breathe out, “Wanna start living in the moment, Mr. Rogers?”

He does. Three times, all the most polite missionary orgasms in history. No complaints. You do a No-Shame-At-All-Walk back to HQ the next day.

It’s gradual, but somewhere along the line, he starts talking to you. Really talking. About his mom. Drawing. Losing Bucky again. And again. The Strike Team’s betrayal - his team for over a year - acute and somehow still raw.

Days become mutual, together. Not alone. The kind of unalone so stark and bright, like daybreak rain, that it highlights how alone you’ve both been. Like you’d hoisted the cellar door and crawled out of its dank depths.

One night, a man from his groups doesn’t make it. Car wreck.

“Go, Steve. It’s okay. They need you.”

“It’s strange now,” he sighs. “To have death come suddenly, in such a… normal way.”

“Us normal folk don’t often get epic send-offs,” you joke, lamely. Apologize with your eyes. His brow tightens like he didn’t really want to contemplate that.

“The group wants to grab a few drinks,” he says. You know he means you’d be bored, since this version of you doesn’t drink. “I don’t know how long...” His voice is the slightest tinge hopeful.

“Just go,” you say softly.

You wait at his place. Answer overdue emails, start to catch up. Feel more like yourself.

Sometime after midnight, you fall asleep on top of his bedspread. Later, he slips in, curls up around you. Tucks you below his chin. He smells of soap and something distinctly Steve. You stir and turn to him, palm flat on his chest, press a soft kiss above his heart.

“You stayed.” He kisses your fingers.

“Of course,” you say, sleep-slurred.

Before sunrise, he buries himself inside you, tilts your hips, angles in. It’s slow sweat and sweet, limbs tangled and swallowed breaths. Holds your face, hands woven in your hair as he rocks in you. Never says a thing, his tongue curls into your mouth, pushes your secrets back in.

And you fall a little further each passing night. It feels foreign, but warm. Like remembering something you never really knew.

What should be joy is horror. You’ve never been more scared. Even when you’d watched everyone on your bus disintegrate, driver’s hand gone to soot.

Late one weeknight, you burn the ever-loving shit out of your hand on the stove. A string of creative curse combinations leaves your mouth for a full forty-five seconds. It’s all very incongruous with the frilly apron and (useless) oven mitts.

He looks gloriously scandalized before laughing until his eyes water.

He takes you bent over the island and it is anything but polite. Positively revels in you. Reveals spots you didn’t know you had. You scream his name.

Ragged breaths behind your ear. “You’re so close...I want it.” His words push you over, as you clench he loses rhythm, follows.

Panting, pressed against cool granite, confessions carved into stone, you hear yourself whisper how much you love him.

He has propriety enough to act like he didn’t hear you.

This is when it gets awkward. Two steps forward, three miles back.

You barely speak the next day. And the next. Then, it’s the most days without seeing one another since this whole mess started.

On day four, you slide out of your sweats and into a dress, paint on your face, and go lean on his apartment door to wait for him.

Being alone with one’s thoughts is never a great exercise, but certainly not for someone who has been play-acting for a few months. Mentally, you scroll through all the deadlines you’ve missed.

Nat’s voicemail replays in your head. “Hey, I know you might think this isn’t my business, but you’re my business and those kids are my business and, frankly, Steve is my business. You’ve lost perspective and, again, frankly, I didn’t think you’d be like this with him. Please call me. Or, come to work. Both. Both would be good.”

You look up at the ceiling and breathe out. An unblinked tear escapes.

You miss Steve approaching. “Hey, are you o-” he starts, then chews his lip for a moment. “We need to talk.”

“I’m not so sure we do.” You stare blankly at the walk ahead. “I think I’m just gonna go.”

“Is that what you want?” “It’s what you want that’s at issue here.” Another traitorous tear slides down your face. “I know I’m not genuinely what you want.” “Damn it,” he huffs, mostly to himself. “Just come inside. We shouldn't do this in the hallway.”

You move off the door and he goes in, pulling you in at first, then looks to where he holds you and drops your arm as if burnt.

“Sorry.” “You don’t really have anything to be sorry for Steve, except maybe avoiding me for a few days.”

He runs his hands over his face. “I just don’t think I can be what you need. I thought I could, but I just don’t think I’m...capable of that anymore.”

“Capable of what?” You know. But you need to hear him say it, to rip it off like a bandage left too long, gauzy fibers soaked, enmeshed with tissue. If you finally hear it, then you can...you don’t know.

“Oh, shit, this sounds so bad. I want to. I want to love you. There are moments when I think I could, that it could happen, but it just...doesn’t.”

This is when you break.

No rebuttal comes. Your mind sparks but fades. You can’t help but try to hang on, dig in, your fingers clawing at the dirt. “It’s okay, Steve. I didn’t mean t-” “It is definitely not okay! None of this is okay. I don’t want to hurt you or waste your time.” He shakes his head. “I can’t ask you to compromise like that.”

“The whole damned world now is nothing but compromise and it sure as Hell didn’t ask.”

“We’re better than that,” he says, frowning. “We deserve real.”

“Are ‘we’ better than that? You...you are. Me? I don’t know.” You try to laugh but it just chokes off. “The planet used to be stuffed with twice as many people and most of us - I sure as Hell was, weren’t you? - were very much alone.”

He sighs. Brushes a tear from under your eye. “Part of me...part of me is always going to be someplace else.” This isn’t news. You blow out air slowly. “How I feel isn’t going to change whether you feel the same or not. I don’t want you to send me away because you think you know better.” You aren’t crying anymore. You’re mad. “I want to be with you, regardless.” A blind rage, mostly at yourself. Probably all at yourself. “It’s my choice and I damned well think you’re worth it.”

His face is genuinely stunned.

You both really do try. Make the best of it.

Things change though.

Resigned that, whatever he feels, it’s not love. It’s affection adjacent. If a thin line exists between love and hate, then it’s a thick metal girder between love and like.

You double down. Desperate, every word rehearsed, every aspect honed to perfection. Let me have these pieces of you in exchange for pieces of me.

In the throes, one night, you hear him stop himself from saying it. He doesn’t mean to, you know it. He can’t help himself any more than you can. It’d be fighting oceans and tides and lightless moons.

On your knees, in stockings and red-lipped, before him. “Peg-...Pe-...Please...don’t stop.” The pain squeezes your heart, musculature seeping between its dead, cold digits. You swallow it down along with him.

On top of you, wrapped up around you, his hoarse puffs beside your ear. They all sound like the beginning of her name.

They all are.

You could pretend it’s your name, a name for what you’ve become. Placeholder. Placebo. But even that’s not accurate. You’re pure medicine scorching through his veins. You’re this century’s super serum, burning up under the hot lights and sterile space a Stark made for him. You’re on fire, searing away trying to be what you think he needs - but, he didn’t need anything to be good, never did - all the while, over the chaos, Peggy shouts to stop.

You signed on for this.

Because you faked it so well, you’d fooled yourself.

Messy. Misaligned. Reckless love.

You take to crying in the shower. Searching every piece of you, you don’t know what more you can change or give or swap out like spare parts, to finally, finally, be enough/real/alive.

In the fogged mirror, you look. Truly look. A collection of cobbled together bits and limbs. Someone else’s lips and hair and clothes. All yourself and your work amputated. A zombie pantomime of by-gone ideals and remembrances.

You wipe away the fog again. There, smeared and broken among the watery trails, it is all too obvious why he cannot love you. You do not love yourself like this. A monstrous visage, the good parts ignored to decay, just a stitched-up collection of dead things.

He catches you crying sometimes. Swears to leave you for good and you beg him to stay. Every time. Holds you tight to his chest and whispers he’s sorry and promises to stop hurting you because he cares, he really cares, but you don’t think he knows exactly who is to blame.

He is late getting to his place one night so you start the record player. Sway, arms wrapped around yourself as Billie Holiday sings “You Go to My Head.”

On the refrain, Steve comes up behind you. Places his lips gently on your shoulder, runs his hands down your arms.

“Dance with me, Steve,” you say, facing away. Hold yourself a little tighter.

You hear his short gasp.

“God, please give me this, Steve. Please, just dance with me.” You didn’t ask, but I gave up everything for you.

Wordlessly, he turns you and draws you to him. Sways until the notes fade away.

Your heart might not beat for a solid minute when the words “Time Travel” first come up.

It’s the end. Steve doesn’t realize what he’s going to do, but you do. Given half the chance, there’s no doubt.

“Hey, Doll.” He pulls you into his chest. “It’s going to be okay. This is what we do.”

You nod against him. No doubt they will be successful. Mutely, you pull out of his embrace. You cannot leave fast enough, this place where all these gods and angels stand.

Your last mistake is not going to your room.

While the solitary bird flits around where you sit in the courtyard, a concerned Steve overrides security to get into your quarters to comfort you.

When you get to your room, Steve is there. Looks so out of place, like a dog on its hind legs. His face is flat, eyes cold. Silently, he turns your digital photo frame toward you. Each photo stripping away another lie. A photo of you with your parents, another in your toe shoes, two at recitals, tongue out and drunk at an Ozzy concert. Not one looks like you now. Not one.

Jaw squared, he looks to the kitchen where printouts of old recipes litter the counter.

“Steve,” you say, starting to reach for him. He puts a hand up. “Steve, let me explain.”

“You know,” his voice is steel, “I didn’t go out with you because you reminded me of the past. I went out with you because you asked me.”

“Steve, I just wanted to…wanted to…” “You wanted to what? Read about me in a textbook and try to be - what? - fake it? Ugh, God.” He rolls his eyes, body half-twists away.

“It’s not like that.” Except, it is.

“It’s not? Oh, well then please tell me. Enlighten me. Because from where I am right now, it sure fucking looks like you took things you thought were special to me and just, what? Wore it like a suit to manipulate me?”

Near numb, you shake your head.

“It worked...it worked so well and you let me feel guilty about it!”

The shame pushes your legs out from under you. “I just wanted to make you happy.”

“Me? You can try to tell yourself that. No, you did this for you.” Holds the picture frame in both hands, the colors reflect in his eyes as they change. Under his breath, he says, “I don’t even know you.”

Steve nails you with his gaze. “Do you even realize what you’ve stolen from me? What you guilted me into? What I saved and I can never get back?”

Billie Holiday echoes in your brain. The song, the dance. Like a miracle, you hate yourself more.

You are carved down, scoured out, brittle bones bleached in the sun.

He shakes off his anger slightly. “I knew you were holding back, but this?” He points to a stack of work you’d let languish. Detailed housing plans, nutrition guidelines, research and half-complete presentation charts. “I can’t understand why...why wouldn’t you include me in this? Were you scared of not being enough? Too much? Of being you?” He sighs out. “Everyone can have those thoughts, that’s understandable. But, you didn’t trust me with you.”

You desperately reach for him, hold his arms. “I do trust you. I do.”

He scoffs. “The problem is you let me care about someone who doesn’t even exist. Who never existed. You kept “you” secret from me while I opened up to you. You think I let anyone else ever know how fucked up I feel?”

He looks at you in a way you never wanted. With grief.

“Damn it - Goddamn it all. I let you in.” I expect him to punch the wall, but the air just leaves him. He deflates. Smaller than ever seemed possible. “I fucking let you in.”

Everyone comes back. Except Nat. All you have left is her voicemail.

There’s no more times together. Nothing.

It’s always been beautiful, pulsing nothing.

Bleeding out every pore.

In a makeshift office miles from decimated HQ, you bury yourself in her projects and try to resurrect your own until it’s time for Tony’s memorial.

You’re not sure why you’re going. Apart from Tony hiring you, you don’t really know anyone else there except Steve. But, Tony gave you a chance and, while you’ve mucked it up spectacularly of late, you go to honor him as best you can.

You try to stay in the shadows, so you’re surprised Steve finds you nonetheless. Even more surprised he tries.

Looking out over the water, he asks, “Are you going to be okay? Did you find a place to stay?”

“Yes.” No and yes.

“I’m so very sorry Steve. I just wish, I just wish…”

“Don’t, okay?” He blows out a sigh. Hands in his pockets. “If you didn’t trust me, I could work to make you. If you didn’t trust yourself, I’d help you learn to. But you didn’t trust either of us and there’s nothing I can do about that. And that’s a damned tragedy.” He turns and starts to walk past you.

“Steve! Steve wait!” You cringe, your voice echoes over the serene lake. He keeps walking.

“Steve.” You sniff. “Please.” He takes a huge gulp of air and turns partially toward you, staying in profile. Shaking his head softly, jaw askew, he lifts his hands and lets them fall as if to say, “What do you want from me?”

“Can we just try again? Start over?”

How did we meet? How did we meet back when I was real?

“Steve, I’m...I’m so sorry. You’re right. I was more than guarded, I was trying so hard to be good for you. I took what I knew and what you showed me and tried so hard to mold myself into what I thought you’d want. I know that was so stupid now. But I know you. I know you! And I just want a chance for you to know me. I...I...I like metal bands and R&B. I’m a cat AND dog person. I used to tap dance. There’s photographic evidence! They let me back on the orphan program and we’re using it as a template for veterans. I have yelled in the face of the Secretary of State. More than once. My grandparents didn’t raise me but I spent summers with them.” You choke back more tears. “I am actually a bit of a pervert. That’s who I am. I screwed up. I just want a chance to show you ‘me.’”

You cough and through blurry vision it almost looks like he starts to reach for you. Then, his arm pulls back.

“But what I felt - what I feel for you is so real. I’m absolutely in love with you, Steve Rogers.” You wipe your sleeve across your wet face. “I know I screwed up and I hurt you and I have no excuses, but I am b-begging you to give me a chance. Just let me start over.”

He doesn’t move, still looking out over the lake.

“Steve, please, I just want to show you who this girl really is.”

“She sounds amazing,” he says, toneless. Walks past you toward the platform where a case full of gems and a magic hammer wait. “I wish I could’ve met her. I would’ve loved her.”

This is when you know. You’re the bad guy in your own story.

#steve rogers x reader #Steve rogers smut #eliza's 5k challenge #quantumfizz writes fic #steve rogers x you #steve rogers fanfiction

316 notes · View notes

mydarlingfilm · 3 years

Text

TIME DOESN’T HEAL

This is going to be a very long post and I would love to read it over and over again. It was painful and timeless at the same time. This conversation is hold between an Rolling stone and Pk.

In her first-ever in-depth interview, Michael Jackson's daughter discusses her father's pain and finding peace after addiction and heartache

Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson is staring at a famous corpse. "That's Marilyn Monroe," she whispers, facing a wall covered with gruesome autopsy photos. "And that's JFK. You can't even find these online." On a Thursday afternoon in late November, Paris is making her way through the Museum of Death, a cramped maze of formaldehyde-scented horrors on Hollywood Boulevard. It's not uncommon for visitors, confronted with decapitation photos, snuff films and serial-killer memorabilia, to faint, vomit or both. But Paris, not far removed from the emo and goth phases of her earlier teens, seems to find it all somehow soothing. This is her ninth visit. "It's awesome," she had said on the way over. "They have a real electric chair and a real head!"

Paris Jackson turned 18 last April, and moment by moment, can come across as much older or much younger, having lived a life that's veered between sheltered and agonizingly exposed. She is a pure child of the 21st century, with her mashed-up hippie-punk fashion sense (today she's wearing a tie-dye button-down, jeggings and Converse high-tops) and boundary-free musical tastes (she's decorated her sneakers with lyrics by Mötley Crüe and Arctic Monkeys; is obsessed with Alice Cooper – she calls him "bae" – and the singer-songwriter Butch Walker; loves Nirvana and Justin Bieber too). But she is, even more so, her father's child. "Basically, as a person, she is who my dad is," says her older brother, Prince Michael Jackson. "The only thing that's different would be her age and her gender." Paris is similar to Michael, he adds, "in all of her strengths, and almost all of her weaknesses as well. She's very passionate. She is very emotional to the point where she can let emotion cloud her judgment."

Paris has, with impressive speed, acquired more than 50 tattoos, sneaking in the first few while underage. Nine of them are devoted to Michael Jackson, who died when she was 11 years old, sending her, Prince and their youngest brother, Blanket, spiraling out of what had been – as they perceived it – a cloistered, near-idyllic little world. "They always say, 'Time heals,'" she says. "But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before. So I can handle it." Michael still visits her in her dreams, she says: "I feel him with me all the time."

Michael, who saw himself as Peter Pan, liked to call his only daughter Tinker Bell. She has FAITH, TRUST AND PIXIE DUST inked near her clavicle. She has an image from the cover of Dangerous on her forearm, the Bad logo on her hand, and the words QUEEN OF MY HEART – in her dad's handwriting, from a letter he wrote her – on her inner left wrist. "He's brought me nothing but joy," she says. "So why not have constant reminders of joy?"

She fixes her huge blue-green eyes on each of the museum's attractions without flinching, until she comes to a section of taxidermied pets. "I don't really like this room," she says, wrinkling her nose. "I draw the line with animals. I can't do it. This breaks my heart." She recently rescued a hyperactive pit-bull-mix puppy, Koa, who has an uneasy coexistence with Kenya, a snuggly Labrador her dad brought home a decade ago.

Paris describes herself as "desensitized" to even the most graphic reminders of human mortality. In June 2013, drowning in depression and a drug addiction, she tried to kill herself at age 15, slashing her wrist and downing 20 Motrin pills. "It was just self-hatred," she says, "low self-esteem, thinking that I couldn't do anything right, not thinking I was worthy of living anymore." She had been self-harming, cutting herself, managing to conceal it from her family. Some of her tattoos now cover the scars, as well as what she says are track marks from drug use. Before that, she had already attempted suicide "multiple times," she says, with an incongruous laugh. "It was just once that it became public." The hospital had a "three-strike rule," she recalls, and, after that last attempt, insisted she attend a residential therapy program.

Home-schooled before her father's death, Paris had agreed to attend a private school starting in seventh grade. She didn't fit in – at all – and started hanging out with the only kids who accepted her, "a lot of older people doing a lot of crazy things," she says. "I was doing a lot of things that 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds shouldn't do. I tried to grow up too fast, and I wasn't really that nice of a person." She also faced cyberbullying, and still struggles with cruel online comments. "The whole freedom-of-speech thing is great," she says. "But I don't think that our Founding Fathers predicted social media when they created all of these amendments and stuff."

There was another trauma that she's never mentioned in public. When she was 14, a much older "complete stranger" sexually assaulted her, she says. "I don't wanna give too many details. But it was not a good experience at all, and it was really hard for me, and, at the time, I didn't tell anybody."

After her last suicide attempt, she spent sophomore year and half of junior year at a therapeutic school in Utah. "It was great for me," she says. "I'm a completely different person." Before, she says with a small smile, "I was crazy. I was actually crazy. I was going through a lot of, like, teen angst. And I was also dealing with my depression and my anxiety without any help." Her father, she says, also struggled with depression, and she was prescribed the same antidepressants he once took, though she's no longer on any psych meds.

Now sober and happier than she's ever been, with menthol cigarettes her main remaining vice, Paris moved out of her grandma Katherine's house shortly after her 18th birthday, heading to the old Jackson family estate. She spends nearly every minute of each day with her boyfriend, Michael Snoddy, a 26-year-old drummer – he plays with the percussion ensemble Street Drum Corps – and Virginia native whose dyed mohawk, tattoos and perpetually sagging pants don't obscure boy-band looks and a puppy-dog sweetness. "I never met anyone before who made me feel the way music makes me feel," says Paris. When they met, he had an ill-considered, now-covered Confederate flag tattoo that raised understandable doubts among the Jacksons. "But the more I actually got to know him," says Prince, "he's a really cool guy."

Paris took a quick stab at community college after graduating high school – a year early – in 2015, but wasn't feeling it. She is an heir to a mammoth fortune – the Michael Jackson Family Trust is likely worth more than $1 billion, with disbursements to the kids in stages. But she wants to earn her own money, and now that she's a legal adult, to embrace her other inheritance: celebrity.

And in the end, as the charismatic, beautiful daughter of one of the most famous men who ever lived, what choice did she have? She is, for now, a model, an actress, a work in progress. She can, when she feels like it, exhibit a regal poise that's almost intimidating, while remaining chill enough to become pals with her giant-goateed tattoo artist. She has impeccable manners – you might guess that she was raised well. She so charmed producer-director Lee Daniels in a recent meeting that he's begun talking to her manager about a role for her on his Fox show, Star . She plays a few instruments, writes and sings songs (she performs a couple for me on acoustic guitar, and they show promise, though they're more Laura Marling than MJ), but isn't sure if she'll ever pursue a recording contract.

Modeling, in particular, comes naturally, and she finds it therapeutic. "I've had self-esteem issues for a really, really long time," says Paris, who understands her dad's plastic-surgery choices after watching online trolls dissect her appearance since she was 12. "Plenty of people think I'm ugly, and plenty of people don't. But there's a moment when I'm modeling where I forget about my self-esteem issues and focus on what the photographer's telling me – and I feel pretty. And in that sense, it's selfish."

But mostly, she shares her father's heal-the-world impulses ("I'm really scared for the Great Barrier Reef," she says. "It's, like, dying. This whole planet is. Poor Earth, man"), and sees fame as a means to draw attention to favored causes. "I was born with this platform," she says. "Am I gonna waste it and hide away? Or am I going to make it bigger and use it for more important things?"

Her dad wouldn't have minded. "If you wanna be bigger than me, you can," he'd tell her. "If you don't want to be at all, you can. But I just want you to be happy."

At the moment, Paris lives in the private studio where her dad demoed "Beat It." The Tudor-style main house in the now-empty Jackson family compound in the LA neighborhood of Encino – purchased by Joe Jackson in 1971 with some of the Jackson 5's first Motown royalties, and rebuilt by Michael in the Eighties – is under renovation. But the studio, built by Michael in a brick building across the courtyard, happens to be roughly the size of a decent Manhattan apartment, with its own kitchen and bathroom. Paris has turned it into a vibe-y, cozy dorm room.

Traces of her father are everywhere, most unmistakably in the artwork he commissioned. Outside the studio is a framed picture, done in a Disney-like style, of a cartoon castle on a hilltop with a caricatured Michael in the foreground, a small blond boy embracing him.It's captioned "Of Children, Castles & Kings." Inside is a mural taking up an entire wall, with another cartoon Michael in the corner, holding a green book titled The Secret of Life and looking down from a window at blooming flowers – at the center of each bloom is a cartoon face of a red-cheeked little girl.

Above an adjacent garage is a mini-museum Michael created as a surprise gift for his family, with the walls and even ceilings covered with photos from their history. Michael used to rehearse dance moves in that room; now Paris' boyfriend has his drum kit set up there.

We head out to a nearby sushi restaurant, and Paris starts to describe life in Neverland. She spent her first seven years in her dad's 2,700-acre fantasy world, with its own amusement park, zoo and movie theater. ("Everything I never got to do as a kid," Michael called it.) During that time, she didn't know that her father's name was Michael, let alone have any grasp of his fame. "I just thought his name was Dad, Daddy," she says. "We didn't really know who he was. But he was our world. And we were his world." (Paris declared last year's Captain Fantastic , where Viggo Mortensen plays an eccentric dad who tries to create a utopian hideaway for his kids, her "favorite movie ever.")

We couldn't just go on the rides whenever we wanted to," she recalls, walking on a dark roadside near the Encino compound. She likes to stride along the lane divider, too close to the cars – it drives her boyfriend crazy, and I don't much like it either. "We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn't get to go do all those things."

In his 2011 memoir, Michael's brother Jermaine called him "an example of what fatherhood should be. He instilled in them the love Mother gave us, and he provided the kind of emotional fathering that our father, through no fault of his own, could not. Michael was father and mother rolled into one."

Michael gave the kids the option of going to regular school. They declined. "When you're at home," says Paris, "your dad, who you love more than anything, will occasionally come in, in the middle of class, and it's like, 'Cool, no more class for the day. We're gonna go hang out with Dad.' We were like, 'We don't need friends. We've got you and Disney Channel!'" She was, she acknowledges, "a really weird kid."

Her dad taught her how to cook, soul food, mostly. "He was a kick-ass cook," she says. "His fried chicken is the best in the world. He taught me how to make sweet potato pie." Paris is baking four pies, plus gumbo, for grandma Katherine's Thanksgiving – which actually takes place the day before the holiday, in deference to Katherine's Jehovah's Witness beliefs.

Michael schooled Paris on every conceivable genre of music. "My dad worked with Van Halen, so I got into Van Halen," she says."He worked with Slash, so I got into Guns N' Roses. He introduced me to Tchaikovsky and Debussy, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Temptations, Tupac, Run-DMC."

"His number-one focus for us," says Paris, "besides loving us, was education. And he wasn't like, 'Oh, yeah, mighty Columbus came to this land!' He was like, 'No. He fucking slaughtered the natives.'" Would he really phrase it that way? "He did have kind of a potty mouth. He cussed like a sailor." But he was also "very shy."

Paris and Prince are quite aware of public doubts about their parentage (the youngest brother, Blanket, with his darker skin, is the subject of less speculation). Paris' mom is Debbie Rowe, a nurse Michael met while she was working for his dermatologist, the late Arnold Klein. They had what sounds like an unconventional three-year marriage, during which, Rowe once testified, they never shared a home. Michael said that Rowe wanted to have his children "as a present" to him. (Rowe said that Paris got her name from the location of her conception.) Klein, her employer, was one of several men – including the actor Mark Lester, who played the title role in the 1968 movie Oliver! – who suggested that they could be Paris' actual biological father.

Over popcorn shrimp and a Clean Mean Salmon Roll, Paris agrees to address this issue for what she says will be the only time. She could opt for an easy, logical answer, could point out that it doesn't matter, that either way, Michael Jackson was her father. That's what her brother – who describes himself as "more objective" than Paris – seems to suggest. "Every time someone asks me that," Prince says, "I ask, 'What's the point? What difference does it make?' Specifically to someone who's not involved in my life. How does that affect your life? It doesn't change mine."

But Paris is certain that Michael Jackson was her biological dad. She believes it with a fervency that is both touching and, in the moment, utterly convincing. "He is my father," she says, making fierce eye contact. "He will always be my father. He never wasn't, and he never will not be. People that knew him really well say they see him in me, that it's almost scary.

"I consider myself black," she says, adding later that her dad "would look me in the eyes and he'd point his finger at me and he'd be like, 'You're black. Be proud of your roots.' And I'd be like, 'OK, he's my dad, why would he lie to me?' So I just believe what he told me. 'Cause, to my knowledge, he's never lied to me.

"Most people that don't know me call me white," Paris concedes. "I've got light skin and, especially since I've had my hair blond, I look like I was born in Finland or something." She points out that it's far from unheard of for mixed-race kids to look like her – accurately noting that her complexion and eye color are similar to the TV actor Wentworth Miller's, who has a black dad and a white mom.

At first, she had no relationship with Rowe. "When I was really, really young, my mom didn't exist," Paris recalls. Eventually, she realized "a man can't birth a child" – and when she was 10 or so, she asked Prince, "We gotta have a mom, right?" So she asked her dad. "And he's like, 'Yeah.' And I was like, 'What's her name?' And he's just like, 'Debbie.' And I was like, 'OK, well, I know the name.'" After her father's death, she started researching her mom online, and they got together when Paris was 13.

In the wake of her treatment in Utah, Paris decided to reach out again to Rowe. "She needed a mother figure," says Prince, who declines to comment on his own relationship, or lack thereof, with Rowe. (Paris' manager declined to make Rowe available for an interview, and Rowe did not respond to our request for comment.) "I've had a lot of mother figures," Paris counters, citing her grandmother and nannies, among others, "but by the time my mom came into my life, it wasn't a 'mommy' thing. It's more of an adult relationship." Paris sees herself in Rowe, who just completed a course of chemo in a fight against breast cancer: "We're both very stubborn."

Paris Jackson was around nine years old when she realized that much of the world didn't see her father the way she did. "My dad would cry to me at night," she says, sitting at the counter of a New York coffee shop in mid-December, cradling a tiny spoon in her hand. She starts to cry too. "Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn't do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I'm like, 'How can people be so mean?'" She pauses. "Sorry, I'm getting emotional."

Paris and Prince have no doubts that their father was innocent of the multiple child-molestation allegations against him, that the man they knew was the real Michael. Again, they are persuasive – if they could go door-to-door talking about it, they could sway the world."Nobody but my brothers and I experienced him reading A Light in the Attic to us at night before we went to bed," says Paris."Nobody experienced him being a father to them. And if they did, the entire perception of him would be completely and forever changed." I gently suggest that what Michael said to her on those nights was a lot to put on a nine-year-old. "He did not bullshit us," she replies. "You try to give kids the best childhood possible. But you also have to prepare them for the shitty world."

Michael's 2005 molestation trial ended in an acquittal, but it shattered his reputation and altered the course of his family's lives. He decided to leave Neverland for good. They spent the next four years traveling the world, spending long stretches of time in the Irish countryside, in Bahrain, in Las Vegas. Paris didn't mind – it was exciting, and home was where her dad was.

By 2009, Michael was preparing for an ambitious slate of comeback performances at London's O2 Arena. "He kind of hyped it up to us," recalls Paris. "He was like, 'Yeah, we're gonna live in London for a year.' We were super-excited – we already had a house out there we were gonna live in." But Paris remembers his "exhaustion" as rehearsals began. "I'd tell him, 'Let's take a nap,'" she says."Because he looked tired. We'd be in school, meaning downstairs in the living room, and we'd see dust falling from the ceiling and hear stomping sounds because he was rehearsing upstairs."

Paris has a lingering distaste for AEG Live, the promoters behind the planned This Is It tour – her family lost a wrongful-death suit against them, with the jury accepting AEG's argument that Michael was responsible for his own death. "AEG Live does not treat their performers right," she alleges. "They drain them dry and work them to death." (A rep for AEG declined comment.) She describes seeing Justin Bieber on a recent tour and being "scared" for him. "He was tired, going through the motions. I looked at my ticket, saw AEG Live, and I thought back to how my dad was exhausted all the time but couldn't sleep."

1 note · View note

nuvya · 7 years

Text

Michael Jackson: The Human Being Behind The Superstar By Paris Jackson

Paris Jackson: Life After Neverland (Rolling Stone Interview )

In her first-ever in-depth interview, Michael Jackson's daughter discusses her father's pain and finding peace after addiction and heartache

She also has tattoos honoring John Lennon, David Bowie and her dad's sometime rival Prince – plus Van Halen and, on her inner lip, the word MÖTLEY (her boyfriend has CRÜE in the same spot). On her right wrist is a rope-and-jade bracelet that Michael bought in Africa. He was wearing it when he died, and Paris' nanny retrieved it for her. "It still smells like him," Paris says.

Her dad wouldn't have minded. "If you wanna be bigger than me, you can," he'd tell her. "If you don't want to be at all, you can. But I just want you to be happy."

Paris' chosen decor is somewhat different. There is a picture of Kurt Cobain in the bathroom, a Smashing Pumpkins poster on the wall, a laptop with Against Me! and NeverEnding Story stickers, psychedelic paisley wall hangings, lots of fake candles. Vinyl records (Alice Cooper, the Rolling Stones) serve as wall decorations. In the kitchen, sitting casually on a counter, is a framed platinum record, inscribed to Michael by Quincy Jones ("I found it in the attic," Paris shrugs).

"We couldn't just go on the rides whenever we wanted to," she recalls, walking on a dark roadside near the Encino compound. She likes to stride along the lane divider, too close to the cars – it drives her boyfriend crazy, and I don't much like it either. "We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn't get to go do all those things."

She says Michael emphasized tolerance. "My dad raised me in a very open-minded house," she says. "I was eight years old, in love with this female on the cover of a magazine. Instead of yelling at me, like most homophobic parents, he was making fun of me, like, 'Oh, you got yourself a girlfriend.'

Paris isn't sure how Michael felt about Rowe, but says Rowe was "in love" with her dad. She's also sure that Michael loved Lisa Marie Presley, whom he divorced two years before Paris' birth: "In the music video 'You Are Not Alone,' I can see how he looked at her, and he was totally whipped," she says with a fond laugh.

Paris blames Dr. Conrad Murray – who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in her father's death – for the dependency on the anesthetic drug propofol that led to it. She calls him "the 'doctor,'" with satirical air quotes. But she has darker suspicions about her father's death. "He would drop hints about people being out to get him," she says. "And at some point he was like, 'They're gonna kill me one day.'" (Lisa Marie Presley told Oprah Winfrey of a similar conversation with Michael, who expressed fears that unnamed parties were targeting him to get at his half of the Sony/ATV music-publishing catalog, worth hundreds of millions.)

Paris is convinced that her dad was, somehow, murdered. "Absolutely," she says. "Because it's obvious. All arrows point to that. It sounds like a total conspiracy theory and it sounds like bullshit, but all real fans and everybody in the family knows it. It was a setup. It was bullshit."

But who would have wanted Michael Jackson dead? Paris pauses for several seconds, maybe considering a specific answer, but just says, "A lot of people." Paris wants revenge, or at least justice. "Of course," she says, eyes glowing. "I definitely do, but it's a chess game. And I am trying to play the chess game the right way. And that's all I can say about that right now."

Michael had his kids wear masks in public, a protective move Paris considered "stupid" but later came to understand. So it made all the more of an impression when a brave little girl spontaneously stepped to the microphone at her dad's televised memorial service, on July 7th, 2009. "Ever since I was born," she said, "Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine, and I just wanted to say I love him so much."

She was 11 years old, but she knew what she was doing. "I knew afterward there was gonna be plenty of shit-talking," Paris says, "plenty of people questioning him and how he raised us. That was the first time I ever publicly defended him, and it definitely won't be the last." For Prince, his younger sister showed in that moment that she had "more strength than any of us."

The day after her trip to the Museum of Death, Paris, Michael Snoddy and Tom Hamilton, her model-handsome, man-bunned 31-year-old manager, head over to Venice Beach. We stroll the boardwalk, and Snoddy recalls a brief stint as a street performer here when he first moved to LA, drumming on buckets. "It wasn't bad," he says. "I averaged out to a hundred bucks a day."

Paris has her hair extensions in a ponytail. She's wearing sunglasses with circular lenses, a green plaid shirt over leggings, and a Rasta-rainbow backpack. Her mood is darker today. She's not talking much, and clinging tight to Snoddy, who's in a Willie Nelson tee with the sleeves cut off.

We head toward the canals, lined with ultramodern houses that Paris doesn't like. "They're too harsh and bougie," she says. "It doesn't scream, 'Hey, come for dinner!'" She's delighted to spot a group of ducks. "Hello, friends!" she shouts. "Come play with us!"Among them are what appear to be an avian couple in love, paddling through the shallow water in close formation. Paris sighs and squeezes Snoddy's hand. "Goals," she says. "Hashtag 'goals.'"

Her spirits are lifting, and we walk back toward the beach to watch the sunset. Paris and Snoddy hop on a concrete barrier facing the orange-pink spectacle. It's a peaceful moment, until a middle-aged woman in neon jogging clothes and knee-length socks walks over.She grins at the couple as she presses a button on some kind of tiny stereo strapped to her waist, unleashing a dated-sounding trance song. Paris laughs and turns to her boyfriend. As the sun disappears, they start to dance.

From being a kick-ass cook to a strict dad, here are the 5 things we learned about the King of Pop from Paris Jackson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0kjc3VEwFM

#paris jackson #michael jackson #rolling stone magazine #childhood #prince jackson #the jacksons #blanket jackson #captain fantastic #jackson 5 #moonwalker #fatherhood

673 notes · View notes

ecotone99 · 5 years

Text

[MF]In the Shape of the Big Dipper

Celine had eyed me curiously while I paid for our lunch at the little grille we found in Charleston. I did spend a lot of money that day, but Celine acted like I was a drug lord or at the pink Caddy level of a pyramid scheme. I simply paid cash to keep better track of my spending, that’s all. Money, much like life, doesn’t last. You can’t keep either, so you must learn to spend both the way you want. I never had a red cent to theorize about until recently, much less a fortune of dirty money to move twelve hours away to avoid confronting. Here I was, though, hiding out in the boonies with nursing students, numbing myself with crab cakes and sweet grass baskets. Trusting Celine wasn’t the hard part— she was a good, Christian girl who didn’t believe in strangers, white shoes after Labor Day, or mole people. The problem was I hadn’t told anyone the truth yet— my parents are thrilled; they think I left to go to school. School is a joke, but I enjoy the curriculum and making my folks happy. I owed them that much; they left the beauty of Palermo, the Catholic Church, and the 20th century behind for me. My ex-fiancé, Rob, was just fine with it. He doesn’t know that I know he had an affair and isn’t so excited I’m moving on to bigger and better things. He screws his next-door neighbor every Saturday, the 35-year-old named Judy, with a hideous affinity for vintage bobble head Dobermans and flesh colored lipstick. His mother told me on my way in the night I left, told me I needed to kick the little bastard to the curb, so I obliged her. She was a wonderful mother.

As important as they all were, I didn’t belong to the Maple Street gang anymore. Diana was the catalyst to my new life. We got to know each other during her monthly check-ups. She

Page 2

was a patient of Dr. Hales, a sweet old man who’d traded Scarsdale balloon boobies, expressionless faces, and ski-slope noses for his beach house. Diana’s favorite thing was to make me uncomfortable, and if she could encourage my wild side, all the better. She often brought me coffee, offered me cocaine a time or two, and told Dr. H he wasn’t paying me enough every time she visited.

After Celine went home, I had some time to myself, so I began to tell myself the truth. Diana had come into the office for a checkup, after which I relented to a long-standing rain check to visit her apartment. She was a fine thief, something she had no doubt spent a long time perfecting, but I worked with the public.

“Please don’t steal the magazines,” I urged her.

“I paid for these, baby, this doctor charges me $500 just to talk,” Diana said.

“Well, they’re going to ask me what happened to them—I’ll be responsible for replacing them.”

“No, not okay, that’s arrogant and unfair. You’re just a kid and cannot possibly be expected to answer the phone, file papers, take a lunch break, then do the same thing until 5 o’clock while corralling unruly patients.”

“Are you making fun of me? I’m not stupid. I choose to be here and interact with the unruly patients, do my job, and find time to craft 200 Christmas cards by hand.”

“Big shit, I bet you never made a croquembouche while glancing up to make sure Pierre’s boogers didn’t fall into your nearly burning glaze.”

Page 3

“Is Pierre your boss?” I asked.

“Nobody has ever had that displeasure—he was my mentor and my friend. He died when AIDs had us all too scared to swap spit with anyone but WASPS.” Diana answered.

“The Princess of Wales wasn’t afraid. Have you seen Dallas Buyer’s Club?”.

“No, I refuse to see Matthew McConaughey in such a state.”

“It was pretty graphic—what are you always seeing Dr. Hales about anyway?”.

“That’s for me to suffer through and you to look at later when I leave, and you file it away.”

“I can’t look at your medical records, they’re all online now.”

“All the juicy stuff is. Since we’re doing personal questions, how long have you been married?”.

“I’m not, well, I hope he proposes soon. We’ve been together for a year, and I do everything I can to make him happy. He just seems so disinterested in me these days; I’m not really sure what to do if he doesn’t.”

“You’re making 200 Christmas cards and have no husband? You never fail to disappoint me, Greta. Come have a drink and read this Cosmo I’m taking home. You’ve been avoiding my invitation for years.”

I took a cab with Diana back to Manhattan after her appointment while my conscious and Changes by 2Pac blared in my head. We pulled up to a gorgeous brownstone that smelled like leather and rain. The first floor was all tile hallways lined in thick, pastel rugs with shiny, mahogany stairs-- her actual house was the next story up. Once we got in there, I sat down with my pack of smokes and decided I was going to stay for an hour, have a drink, and take 1 aspirin when I got home.

Page 4

Once I was settled, I rammed the business end of my flip-top box into the leg of Diana’s white director’s chair. I inadvertently bounced my curls and breasts, the latter nearly out of my shirt. I flipped the first cigarette I touched upside down, placing it back inside to pick another one, just like Pop- pop showed me. Diana noticed my ritual and nodded in approval.

“What’s up D?” I asked, sucking out my first draw.

“Well first, nice tits. Second, your options are now a sex lesson from me instead of the daft editors at Cosmopolitan or the greatest adventure of your young life.” Diana said.

“What’s more interesting than sex?” I responded, carefully tugging up my dress.

“Stamp collectors, the price of bananas, warts.” Diana said.

She walked over to the left of her living space, squinting to see the sunset out of the bright stained-glass window.

“I’m disappointed you didn’t pick the second option, Greta.”

“I don’t need another adventure, D. I’m already uncomfortable.”

“Your coming here is part of it, so just calm down. You won’t have to actually do much more, sweets.” Diana cooed.

“That croak in a bush thing you mentioned earlier sure sounded interesting.” I said as I surveyed her true crime selection. I noticed most were stolen library books, which seemed overly fitting.

Page 5

“You need professional help. Maybe this was a mistake.” Diana said.

“I don’t mean to be rude--I joke when I’m nervous.” I was enjoying myself more than I thought, but it was getting late. I’d had enough of deciphering these interactions for one day.

“I brought you here to give you something.” Diana turned on her heels and walked over to me. “Something I would give to my kid, save only for two facts: I cannot track him down, and I don’t have enough time to track him down. Either way, it will get passed on just as I received it: from strangers.

“You have a kid?” I asked.

“Yes, and I left him just like my parents left me, no family and no explanation but lots and lots of dough. Any more questions?” she said.

“Not right now. Except maybe for what exactly you want to give me?” I asked.

“More than you bargained for.” Diana said as she walked back to her window. She was squinting harder now, to see the stars through the thick smog.

I had worried when I got there that she was either going to kill me or seduce me. Although I think she could have easily done one, and certainly managed either, Diana didn’t bother me again until 2 days later: the Sunday after my visit to her, when I picked up the Times. She was dangling from a gaping hole where that stained-glass window had been, for all the world to see. No cat eyeliner, no hair, and wearing a suit. The glass on the ground below her had shattered in the shape of the Big Dipper.

Page 6

I excused myself from my parent’s breakfast table, taking page 6 and a lox bagel with me to my room. I wondered about a lot for the rest of the day, but the most unsettling of my ponders was the way D had looked. I knew she probably hadn’t started off as a lady, but I figured her masculine days had to have been far behind enough to disregard. I guess it made sense we got along, I was a sucker for complicated men.

I arrived early to work on Monday. Dr. Hales was also surprised that she’d killed herself, although he did admit he was not a psychiatrist. He’d spent Sunday much the same way I did as he had known her for a long time. Apparently, Diana used to be a Mr. David Dawson; her transition required hormone therapy when those medicines were not yet regulated. They caused a rare and aggressive cancer that would have killed her no later than Valentine’s Day. Dr. Hales was trying to reverse her damage, begging her to do chemo, but D had insisted on more hormones: male ones. My best guess was that D had too many regrets about transitioning, perhaps because it made her so sick. When it didn’t work, she killed herself. This was what I resigned myself to believe, and it made me feel better as well as it explained her strange behavior every step of the way.

For the first few weeks after D’s death, I worried about being questioned. I was the last one there, surely someone else knew that. The papers even called it a most unusual suicide, updating the public every so often on the charismatic chef who’d met a gruesome end before they eventually began to lose interest. On St. Patrick’s Day, I got a call from a guy who told me he was a lawyer who wanted me to meet him outside of Bay Ridge about a patient of Dr. Hales. He wouldn’t give any details, but I knew who it was about. Worst case scenario it was a setup to

Page 7

interrogate me about D’s death, best case it was information about her that further explained my narrative. I decided I would make an appearance, no matter how it shook out.

Finally, after 3 hours in gridlock, I arrived at a small, but clean hotel. The concierge handed me two credit card style keys. They unlocked the door to room 340, where I found no lawyer and no cops, but a short letter accompanied by a bank card, checkbook, and briefcase. The letter is where I learned of the more-than-I’d bargained-for gift D had set me up with.

Dear Ms. Cannuciari,

We thank you for your assistance in the removal of D.D., simply some of the most extraordinary work we have seen. He was our most beloved detective, but the betrayal we experienced was far too great. The sum is broken down into 1 million USD in $100 bills, which are lining the briefcase. A secure account with our financial institution will house the remaining 76 million USD until either the day you die or the day you speak of our transaction to anyone, for any reason. Mr. Dawson chose the option that’s no longer available, which is to have your genitals cut cleanly off with a Jian--we greatly implore that you do not Google that.

Thank you again, madam. We do hope you will work with us again sometime.

submitted by /u/SlyFoxJrLady [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/31mLc2Y

#Blogger #Story

0 notes