A/N: *waves* Humble long-term Michael fan, member of the Michael Defense Squad, and pro Michael/Ella brotp (familytp) So on that note... I present whatever this is.
Disclaimer: Unbetaed. I don't own anything. Post "Buckle Up" Reviews more than welcomed.
~o~
He's pretty but he sure as hell isn't dumb.
Though it wouldn't be the first time he was underestimated and by now he's accepted that it probably won't be the last.
For some reason he thought Cyrus knew that already. It wouldn't be the first time that he played Cyrus, hell half the reason they got into the mess they were in to begin with was because he played Cyrus, but tipped him off too. Yet clearly he was wrong. Months spent with that man and Cyrus was still the greatest offender. He let it slide. For a while they fell into an easy rhythm. For a while he thought they had become friends, or at the very least partners. for a long while, it was easy to forget that they weren't a real family, with a real marriage, composed of two people who may not have loved each other but at least liked each other enough to make things work. He tried to keep his head down, overlook the scheming, and plotting, and Cyrus being Cyrus because it wasn't of his concern.
Until it was.
He was livid. It wasn't so much that Cyrus had been cheating on him. He wasn't that naïve. He knew the risks. Their marriage was still one of convenience no matter how comfortably he fell into a routine. He had his suspicions. No, infidelity wasn't what pissed him off. They made a deal. He expected at the very least that Cyrus would honor it. Hell the whole reason they ended up rushing to the altar to begin with was because he himself was reckless and nowhere near discreet. He learned his lesson, he expected that Cyrus would've learned one too…They made a promise to be upfront when it came to their relationship. And while he wasn't seeing anyone else, or sleeping with anyone else, he didn't expect the same from Cyrus but he did expect the truth. Not to be reminded of his past or worst yet his place. He cared for Cyrus but he wouldn't go so far as to say he was in love with the man. He wasn't jealous. He was angry because there was more at stake than just them and their image. And he didn't make it that far in his life to be degraded and disrespected. He couldn't love Cyrus Beene but he could be hurt by him.
He once heard that love was giving someone the opportunity to destroy you and trusting that they won't.
The idea of that terrified and intrigued him. He wanted it, but he was also afraid of it. He spent his lifetime prepping for it. The possibility of being so in love with someone that they could ruin him. He knew he was already a loyal person, sometimes to a fault and definitely to his own detriment. He knew that he had his own values, honor, integrity…a moral code. He knew that the second he found a love like that that it couldn't just ruin him…it wouldn't just destroy him. It would devastate him. It would consume him. It would kill him, because he was never one to do things by half measure. He gave everything he did his all. When he was in, he was all in and when he fell he fell hard. Damn hard and there was no coming back. He knew that about himself. No one could ever tell him he wasn't self-aware. Despite anything Cyrus ever told him.
He spent his whole life being cautious about love. Preparing for it. Protecting himself from it. Controlling every situation as much as he could. He was so focused on his romantic endeavors that he didn't see her coming.
Ella.
No one and nothing prepared him for parenthood.
Ella Beene was like a damn sucker punch to the solar plexus. He didn't see her coming. If love was giving someone the opportunity to destroy you, the unconditional love between a parent and child was like willingly flinging yourself into an inferno. It was raw, and pure, and every feeling he could ever imagine heightened and packed into his heart so tightly he felt like he would burst and all directed at this one tiny human that stared at him with big brown eyes like he hung the moon. She looked at him with trust, adoration, love and need in its purest forms.
It was the scariest feeling he ever had in his life and it was constant, persistent, and strong.
His worst night at conversion camp wasn't as painful as the night Ella's fever was high and Cyrus was away, and he found himself at the hospital sobbing like no grown man ever should. Being a teenage runaway sex worker held at gunpoint by a self-hating homophobic john in a seedy part of town wasn't as terrifying as the day he took his eye off Ella for a second and she dashed into oncoming traffic chasing after a butterfly, narrowly escaping meeting her maker…and that first time he's pretty sure he pissed his pants. No, he spent a lifetime trying to protect himself from the pains of love and yet there he was on the highway, with what had become his very heartbeat in the back seat asleep.
The day he met her he fell in love. Impossibly, inconceivably, unexpectedly in love. The first time she crawled into his lap and pressed her tiny hands against his cheeks and giggled he was hers. She had him wrapped around her little finger instantly and damn if she didn't know it and use it to her advantage whenever she could. His heart no longer belonged to him the day he begin taking care of Ella on his own. She became his heart beating outside of his chest. She became the family he always wanted but never really had. She became the only one who loved him without conditions or terms but just because, just because her heart was so full of it and she wanted to give. Loving Ella physically hurt…he ached, every second of every day since she entered his life. He didn't think it was possible to care so much about another person. Every thought he had went back to her. Every move he made, every decision, every choice was about Ella, for Ella.
She stirred in her car seat and he instinctively turned the music down and prayed he didn't wake her. He wondered when he got to that point. It was like he went to sleep a prostitute and woke up a parent. He didn't choose it. Not really. But he can't imagine what his life would be like without her now. And thanks to Cyrus' bullshit he never felt so afraid of losing another person in his life.
The nerve of that old bastard.
He didn't doubt that Cyrus loved Ella. In his own way. As much as Cyrus could love anyone. But more often than not he regarded her at worst as though she was a prop in his personal Greek tragedy and at best as if she was a blood and flesh personification of his guilt over whatever happened to Cyrus' first husband. He had firsthand experience on what it was like to be married to Cyrus Beene so he knew there had to be some guilt involved. His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. Cyrus barely ever acknowledged Ella as his own child if a camera or a scheme wasn't involved. He called her James' kid…like she was an abandoned puppy or a discarded sweater after a breakup. He called her "the kid" when he wanted to put a personal touch on it, but never his. She was never his child. She was the child he got saddled with after his husband died. Michael didn't know much surrounding their marriage but he knew that. He sensed it. Ella was walking nostalgia, a memorial for Cyrus to bow his head before when he wanted to quietly seek forgiveness for his sins. A memory of the only man Cyrus ever truly loved.
And while he got it. He recognized her gravitational pull, her magnetic force, her pure light and how it beckoned anyone around her. He understood more than ever the desire to exchange burdens and heartache for the human personification of eternal sunshine…he also knew that Ella was a child, not someone else's solace.
She was a kid who needed parents, a father, love and affection, guidance and a solid foundation. She didn't need a revolving door of nannies and assistants treating her like a paycheck or a problem. She was a kid without anyone who wasn't emotionally damaged or distant to love her. He was damaged but needing something or someone to love. They were a partnership written in the stars at the mercy of being exploited by Cyrus Beene but smiling anyway because they had each other.
Cyrus was threatening that.
He had put up with a lot of shit from Cyrus. He took it to the chin to the point of it being mistaken as him being a pushover. But as cruel as Cyrus was sometimes, he'd heard worse. Years spent with self-hating johns as an escort, years out on the street, hell his professor was no picnic, and then there was his entire childhood with his homophobic parents. Harsh words were like breathing air, natural. But Cyrus had the audacity to tell him that after all that time Ella wasn't his. That he wasn't her father.
As if he didn't tuck her in every night. As if he didn't read to her, her favorite stories and give her baths. As if he didn't spend hours watching tutorials on how to do her hair. Hell, he even joined a few natural hair group pages on Facebook. As if he didn't listen to the Frozen soundtrack and sing along with her even though that God forsaken song made him want to pull his hair out. Cyrus, of all people treated him as if he didn't make Ella dinner every night, all of them dinner every single night, and bake cookies with her. As if he didn't take her to play dates and pre-school, and take care of her when she was sick or soothe her when she had nightmares. As if he didn't brush up on the native tongue of his nonna just so he could teach her that too. He read in one of the dozens of Parenting magazines that he read daily that she was in the crucial years, and it was the best time to teach her languages if she had a shot at being multi-lingual, and that would give her edge if he ever expected to her in the best schools, because his daughter…
He knew what her favorite color was. He knew the cartoon she loved most and which stuffed animal she carried around with her. He knew which blanket she couldn't sleep without and where he stocked the spare blankies whenever something inevitable went wrong. He knew her favorite ice cream. He could tell anyone about the way her bright eyes lit up when she laughed, and the slight dimple in her cheek. He knew how she poked her lip out and scrunched her nose just seconds before throwing a tantrum. He could distinguish each and every one of her cries. He knew how much she loved piggy-back rides. She climbed him like he was a mighty oak, her small limbs only carrying her up to his abdomen before she'd curl her fingers into his shirt and squeal until he finally gave in and put her on what she deemed was her throne, his shoulders. He knew what it felt like when she hurled her little body towards him blindly trusting that he would catch her because he always did and he always would.
He always fucking would.
He's not even sure when he made that promise, that pledge, to always be there for her, but he did. So no one including Cyrus, especially Cyrus could ever tell him he wasn't a damn father because he was.
They made a deal. He signed a contract giving over at the very least five years of his life to Cyrus. He knew they wouldn't last forever. He didn't want them to. But his Ella-bee was forever. There wasn't much he wasn't willing to do for her, and apparently kidnapping her wasn't off the table. She was his child. He didn't have to share her blood, or be the one who personally and formally adopted her himself, like James, but he was her father. He knew Cyrus could be a monster. He was able to overlook it for a while. They did okay. Cyrus was difficult and he certainly wasn't helpful, but he did okay. Minor complaints aside he didn't mind being a househusband but he did mind being placated.
The truth is, his taking Ella was inevitable. It was something that crossed his mind the moment he realized that the only girl Cyrus put first was America. He couldn't raise a kid if he was raising a country. Worst yet, Cyrus admitted as much. Every time he justified why it was perfectly acceptable that he leave his husband to raise their kid while he went off and chased after his dreams. If there was one thing he learned from years of neglect it was that children should always come first.
For him, Ella came first. He knew Cyrus wasn't capable of that. Of loving a child. Of raising a child. But he was. Ella was the best thing he was doing with his life. She was the brightest spot of it. She was the one thing that he was always proud of. So he begin formulating a backup plan for the inevitable day when Cyrus went off the rails and tried to rip apart the only family Ella ever had. Him. He doesn't know much about the spouses that preceded him, but he knew his own limits. He knew that no matter how quiet, how accommodating, how non-confrontational he came across, there was only so much shit he was willing to take. And Cyrus Beene hurled a hell of a lot of shit.
He didn't wish Cyrus ill. He cared for the man. It was why he didn't bat an eye at actually helping him when Cyrus asked him to, because he believed in loyalty. He believed in taking care of the people you care about. It's why he helped Cyrus before. No way in hell would he be the cause of anyone betraying his husband or his makeshift family. He believed in airing out grievances and handling issues in-house or with a professional. He may have entered a marriage of convenience for optics, but as far as he was concerned they were a real family and Ella was a real child, and politics rearing it's ugly head would not touch the inside of their household or their family if he had anything to do with it. His only regret is that it touched the family of someone else's, but it bought him time to leave and he needed that,and his family came first. He told Cyrus that in the letter he left him. It didn't seem right to leave him without an explanation and unlike Cyrus, he'd at least give the man the courtesy of telling him the truth. That Ella was his family. That he loved her. That Cyrus was a poison who killed everyone around him and he wasn't going to let that happen to a child. That he and Ella didn't deserve that and Cyrus didn't deserve them. That he'd take good care of her as he had been doing since the beginning. That he needed a break until Cyrus got his head on straight. That he wasn't someone to be trifled with either. That he'd take whatever Cyrus threw his way.
He was afraid of Cyrus and what Cyrus could do. He was afraid of the uncertainty of his rights to the precious little girl he came to love as his own. He was afraid of what would happen to her, to them both, if he stayed more though.
"Dada," Ella's drowsy voice floated to him from the backseat, jarring him of his ruminations. She squirmed in her car seat, itching to get out, her stuffed animal tucked tightly to her side. "Dada, can we stop now?" Big brown doe eyes met his in the rear-view mirror. She gave him a lazy smile before staring out the window again.
"We'll stop soon," he told her. He turned the music up and switched the signal to a kid-friendly station. "We'll stop real soon, sweetheart. I promise."
"Where are we going?" she asked innocently, her thumb finding its way to her mouth, even though he tried to stop her from sucking on a million times. It was a sign that she was ready to drift off again.
"On an adventure, Ella-bee" he responded his voice low as he blinked back a few tears and veered off the highway. "Dada's taking you on an adventure."
He was used to be underestimated. Maybe it was his good looks, or boyish charm, or the fact that despite his size he seemed docile. Maybe it was because the latter years of his adolescence he spent on the street and poor. Maybe it was because people looked down on the services he used to provide. He remembered the days when a classmate or two found out he was an escort, and the joy he took when he told them that unlike the, he was free of student loans and debt because of it.
Cyrus underestimated him. Cyrus also underestimated the love that a man can have for a child, because apparently Cyrus didn't feel it the same way that he did. Cyrus used Ella to keep Michael in line, to cripple him, to threaten him, to remind him that he was powerless as long as he lived under Cyrus' roof. Cyrus used Ella to remind Michael that he's lived with a monster.
But Cyrus didn't realize that when you lie with a monster long enough you learn how to become one.
~o~