+++ I dedicated this chapter to CandaceGillespie because we had a conversation about men with their hands in their pockets on another story of mine, 'Crooked Smile'. ;) +++

A few hours later we got up to a grey Californian winter day. After a shower I discarded the towel in favour of the red shirt Michael had worn the previous day, and then collected my own clothes from the floor and sat down in the unmade bed to sort them out. Moments later Michael returned from his closet in a pair of jeans. He left a folded shirt and t-shirt on the corner of the slightly crowded side table, turned his attention to the state of the room and still with bare chest and feet started to gather shed garments. He draped his black pants over a chair next to the table and stood there for a moment looking at me. "You're wearing my shirt," he said finally.

I looked down on myself as if his statement needed verification. "Do you want to put it back on? Well, you could wear something else. Or... you could come and get it."
Michael laughed and turned away, running his fingertips lightly over the assortment on the table as if taking stock. "It has make-up on the collar," he said only briefly averting his eyes from his fingers. I pulled it away from my neck to check and it indeed had smears of a light substance on the inside. "Apart from that," he continued, "it's a costume. It belongs to the outfits for the upcoming album. I definitely won't wear it again today."

I left a photoshoot in a hurry.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. "I'm sorry, Michael. I shouldn't have put it on. I didn't think about it. I'll take it off." And I got up on my knees to undo the buttons and slip out of it.
"No!" he said so loudly that I stopped in the middle of the motion taken aback by his reaction. "No, don't take it off!" Then his inhaled and amended. "I mean, I don't mind if you take it off. I wouldn't mind, obviously." An embarrassed smile crossed his face and he looked back at where his fingers travelled the contents on the table. They brushed over my camera sitting in the middle of it all and he picked it up and started to examine it. "But no harm will come from you wearing it."
"I still wouldn't have put it on if I'd thought about it. I don't want to mess with..." But I couldn't find the right word. "There's so much precision in what you do – I don't want to mess with that," I said instead.
"It's just a shirt!" Another smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Actually, I like you wearing it. – That's a good camera right there!" He turned it over, then removed the cap and lifted it to his face to look through the visor. "No autofocus?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I've had it for a couple of years, now. It's not new anymore. But it's a good camera, indeed, and it was expensive. Besides, autofocus is for people who can't really handle cameras."
"Is that so?" He did another check of the functions, pulled the lever to transport the film and lifted the camera to his eyes a second time.
"Like automatic cars are for people who can't really drive. Or have you ever seen an automatic racing car?"
"No, but my experience with racing cars is limited." He sounded amused. The lens was turned on me and his fingers adjusted the objective carefully, focusing. "Most cars in this country are automatics."
"What does that tell you about drivers in this country?"
The upper half of his face was hidden, but I could see his grinning mouth. "That they're crappy?" He pressed the release and the shutter snapped closed.
I looked down on myself to make sure his shirt covered me. I wasn't wearing anything under it.
"Oh, I wouldn't do that!" Michael laughed. "I wouldn't embarrass you. Don't worry." He pulled the lever transporting the film a second time.
"The shirt smells of the lights," I said.
Moving a little to the left he turned the camera a 90° angle and took another photo. "Does that mean sweaty or scorched?"
I wasn't sure, but heat was certainly part of it. Perspiration, maybe, and hours of the lamps burning down on the fabric, plus a combination of products – hairspray, powder, makeup... I'd smelled it on him the previous day but it wasn't until now that I associated it with the photoshoot.
Michael repeated the action of transporting the film and took yet one more picture. And one more.

I didn't quite know what to do. I watched him as he moved around and felt a little silly. My hair was still wet from the shower and the sheets were a mess. "What are you even taking photos of?"
"You," he said. "In my shirt. In my bed." He came around to the head of the bed, threw his pillows over to where I had slept and sat down with his back against the headboard before training the camera on me again. The shutter clicked.
"I thought you would be more used to the other side of a camera," I said putting my pullover and jeans from the previous day to the side of the bed.
"Actually, I know both sides." He looked down at the tool in his hands. "But I like this side better."
"Why is that?" I leaned forward and took the camera from him before he could use the entire film up.
"Because having your picture taken is very passive."
I focused on him and he made a goofy face as I took the picture. The lever made a scratching noise. "Be serious."
Michael looked at the lens and his features changed. His eyes, his cheekbones, his mouth. It was subtle but at the same time astonishingly, fundamentally different. He turned to face the light from the window. "You'll be able to see all my scars," he said as I pressed the release and the shutter snapped, but I wasn't sure which scars exactly he meant.

The gloom only lasted a moment, then he turned back to me again with a smile that was lovely but at the same time masklike professional. Snap. Transport. Focus.

It was like collecting faces. And it was amazing how many he could produce without any noticeable effort. He leaned towards me, flirting with the lens, and the defuse light that came from the window emphasised the movement of the muscles in his bare chest and arms as he shifted weight onto them. I leaned backward, away from him. Snap. Transport...

Suddenly he moved forward getting up on hands and knees and came out of focus. His image blurred but my finger was already on the release and I couldn't stop the picture from being taken. When the shutter opened again, I saw his reaching hand through the visor. He pushed the camera away from my face and put his mouth on mine. It wasn't rushed. It wasn't forceful. It just happened. His lips were soft and gentle and his advance on me made me smile. Heat was coming off his chest and there was a light, dusty sent of after-shower powder. Close up, white traces of it were still visible on the side of his neck where he hadn't rubbed it into his skin properly, and while I was holding the camera in my right hand, suspended somewhere in mid-air, I rubbed the dust away with the other. It left his skin smooth and silky and did the same to my fingers. I slid them up the back of his neck, the open shirt sleeve riding up to my elbow. He hadn't washed his hair, but nonetheless there was a bit of cool moisture from the shower in it. I felt it on my arm – the smooth, warm skin and the moist hair. His hand touched my thigh, moving along it, gently but strong. And then he passed some unseen point and I suddenly knew this wasn't a tease. He wasn't going to stop. He was in my mouth and his hand was running up the outside of my leg and it wasn't going to stop at that.

Michael wasn't one for dirty talk – he wasn't much of one for touch, either. We kissed and we made love – but he had never done much touching until he was too far down the line to really know what he was doing. There was no way he was that far gone, now. His hand glided under the shirt, lifting the red cloth off my skin as it travelled over my hip, came up to my waist, his wrist taking the shirt with it. I was going down into the crushed sheets and upturned quilt by the foot end of the bed, and he was going down with me. Fingers pressed into my flesh, his thumb rubbed over my stomach. He looked down to find the lowest button, but I had one hand free to pull his face back to my mouth. He found the button anyway. And the next one.

Unseeing I reached my arm over the foot end of the bed and let first the camera slip from my hand, then let the strap glide through my fingers until I felt the weight rest securely on the floor. And then I let go of the strap. And while his hand working its way up through the buttons, I thought that I would never be able to develop that film. Because whoever would develop it would find photos first of me in that tell-tale red shirt with the black shoulder flaps sitting in an unmade bed, and then pictures of Michael Jackson in that same bed without a shirt. And to round it all up a blurred snap shot of him on hands and knees coming towards the camera. It wouldn't take much imagination for anyone to come up with the rest of the story.

The shirt had fallen away, and I wondered, if my heart really beat harder because his hand was there or if I could only feel it stronger because of the palm on my chest. It didn't matter. I felt his body for his jeans. He looked down at my hands when I took hold of the waist band so that for a moment I thought he would stop me, but he made no attempt. Instead he let me open button and zipper and struggled out of them.

Suddenly his body was closer, his muscles harder, the kiss harsher.
"Michael, the shirt. Let me take off–" He didn't wait for me to finish the sentence. "Oh, Michael!"
"What?" It was only a whisper and his mouth was so close that his lips brushed mine as he spoke.
"You should have let me take off the shirt first," I breathed.
"Why?"
"Because this is messy!"
"Oh, is it?" He was smiling. I could hear it – feel it – I wasn't sure which.
"Yes!"
"Because I just think it's nice." In my peripheral vision I could see the sinews in his lower arms tighten.
"It's nice." It was. "But it's messy, too."
He caught my lower lip between his teeth.
"I mean it, Michael. We'll get stains on the shirt!"
"I'll have it washed." For a moment he was just breathing, then he continued, "But I'll think of today every time I wear it."
I sighed, partly because I didn't know what else to say and partly because our being together was starting to be really nice.
He pulled himself up on his arms and looked at me. "Do you want me to stop?"
But I didn't. Not anymore. The moment had been missed. I could feel the sleeves of his shirt riding up my arms as I touched him. Millions of people would see him wearing it on the photos they had been taking the previous day, and we were making love on it. Somehow that was unbelievably naughty. I pressed my lips together and shook my head. "Mh-mh."

"I'll think of this every time I see you in it," I whispered as he came close to my face again.
His chuckling echoed in every single one of his spring-tight muscles.

We had another shower, and for the second time that morning Michael picked up a pair of pants from his bedroom floor. Although he was slightly shaking his head, he seemed amused by it.

I watched him as he dressed. There wasn't anything spectacular about it – not really. But still I enjoyed seeing him go from naked to his daytime attire. He was standing by the window looking outside as he slid on his t-shirt, then unbuttoned a soft, thicker button-up in muted shades of red and blue. The cloth fell from his shoulders down his back and folded around him, hugging him, and a strange feeling crept through me that I wanted to be that shirt, which of course made no sense whatsoever. But it was the closest I could come to identifying the sensation. He turned around, his fingers still busy righting the collar, found me looking and smiled.

Leaving Michael's private rooms we sauntered to the kitchen for breakfast. The round table in the alcove was laid, equipped with bowls of cut fruit and different cereals, a pot of coffee and a basket of bread rolls, and the air was saturated with the warm smell of the latter two. We went to the kitchen counter to ask for refrigerated goods to be brought to the table, and I apologised for missing dinner the previous night. It had probably been prepared, and I didn't want to start my stay off with disregard for the work of Michael's personnel.
She waved my apology away with a smile. "That's all fine, honey, don't worry about it. It must have been a very long and tiring journey. And the sleep clearly did you good. You're glowing."

I thanked her and while she went to get milk and jam, we turned back to the table. Michael, who had been leaning with his elbows on the counter during the short exchange, was looking at me with a smug smile.
"What is it?" I asked and the smugness melted out of his expression so quickly and so completely that I wasn't sure I hadn't imagined it.
He shrugged. "She's right. You are glowing." And he put an innocent kiss on my cheek.
"And we both know it has nothing to do with how well I slept," I said so only he could hear.
Michael shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked down at his shoes and the same smug smile kept revealing his teeth although he was trying to suppress it. For the effort alone I could have kissed him but we weren't alone and I didn't want to embarrass anyone, so instead I lightly brushed my fingers against his side just above his belt. It was only a small touch, but I could tell from the change in expression on his face that he'd felt it.

~~~~~
Hey, y'all! <3

First of all, I want to apologise once again for not updating last week!
The update is here, now, and I hope you enjoyed it, so at least it was worth waiting for it. :)

Last time I asked what you imagine Anna to look like, but nobody said anything. I'm really, really curious about this, though, so I'll try again:

I make each and everyone of you casting director of my story!
You can have anybody you want. We have an unlimited budget.
So whom would you cast?

I'll follow everybody who bothers to leave a comment about this! :)

Apart from that, please don't forget to vote! :D

Kisses and Cookies, Birdie <33