Bad Attraction | Chris Motionless x Michael Jackson

CHAPTER 2

Only when the bright sunlight literally burned his eyes did Michael look down. Blinded, he blinked slowly until the white spots transformed to various black ones, before they faded as well and Michael saw his own feet, clad in those ugly shoes, and the concrete ground. As soon as the pain in his eyes had receded, he lifted his face back up, to the sky.

It made him feel free, or at least freer than if he looked anywhere else around him. The yard was big, and crowded with prisoners gathered there -- but Michael wasn't going to complain about it.

Walking and looking around, he had secured a bench to himself, and didn't feel the glares as much as he had previously. He shuddered just to think back about it, the uncomfortable feeling of being watched, peered at, ogled at still more than fresh in his memory. Dozens of eyes had turned to him and had stared unashamedly at him, not leaving him with a second of respite, turning him sicker than the awful food he had eaten. He had told himself it had just been the novelty -- survive through that first meal, that first hour, that first day, and tomorrow the novelty would wear off and he would be left alone.

God, he hoped the novelty would wear off.

Gazing up at the sky made him feel like he wasn't stuck there, having to spend the next months being ogled at like a piece of meat. Locked between walls, he who hated that, more than anything in the world... But he had made his choice.

Even the sky was hidden by grillage, which was why he had started to stare so openly at the sun, despite his ma's recommendations echoing in his head, from where he had been a little boy. After some time, the light turned blinding enough that the grillage mingled with the sky, and disappeared. Then, he could imagine he was sitting in the grass, instead of concrete, with the forest surrounding him, and not barbed walls.

Gulping, Michael started his little game anew when he felt someone sit down next to him, body facing the other way but definitely looking at him.

"Here you are, handsome." Chris said for all greeting, and Michael closed his eyes, holding back a long-suffering sigh.

It was the third prisoner who came to him, since he arrived at the incarceration center this morning, all of them giving a barely changing version of the same greeting. And that "handsome", Michael thought as he gritted his teeth, how he hated that.

"I'm not interested.." He said, hoping to cut the conversation short and make the man leave. The second one had done so, to his pleasant surprise, and Michael had hoped it would mean all the others would do the same. Seemed fitting, after all: the first one who had come to him had been the most stubborn, glaring at him and cursing him even as he stomped away, like a child that would have refused a certain toy, and Michael had surmised he must be the most important one. To turn him away should have made all the others understand he would turn them away, as well.

"Oh really? But you don't even know what I'm offering, pretty boy."

The last word almost made him roll his eyes, and Michael turned to face him. His voice had been quiet and smooth, a stark difference with the previous ones who had maybe thought he would be impressed by growling sounds, but he immediately disliked his eyes. They were staring at him way too confidently for his comfort, and Michael didn't miss the contemptuous glint that flicked through them. Michael allowed his own to show, in return. "I doubt your offer," he almost snorted at that word. As if it were a favor they were giving to him, out of the goodness of their hearts, "will be much different than the previous ones. I wasn't interested in the previous ones, I'm not in yours."

Chris' eyebrows pulled into a frown, and his lips thinned even more than they already were. In one second, his face minutely shifted, annoyance flooding into his dark eyes, as he tutted. "Don't be so categorical."