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******
"Among several other things," Marvin replied softly, running a quick, blistering check across the steel strings. He made minor tuning adjustments by ear with a speed and accuracy that made the grueling process look like breathing.
"You never mentioned it."
"My lady, you never asked."
Beyoncé leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on the white linen tablecloth, resting her chin on her hands. She watched him with the intense, focused attention she had been developing toward him all day—it was the look of someone who keeps opening doors in a house they thought they had already fully mapped, only to discover entirely new, magnificent rooms.
"Okay, little man," Beyoncé said, her voice dropping into a soft, challenging whisper. "Play something. Let me hear what you found in the air."
Marvin looked up at her then. It was one of those direct, unhurried, blue looks that lasted exactly long enough to make her heart stop beating, and then he looked back down at the guitar.
And he began.
The first notes floated into the warm, candlelit air of the private room and did something immediate, almost supernatural, to the physical quality of the space. It thinned the boundary between inside and outside, between the heavy Texas evening and the careful structure of the planned day.
The melody was built entirely on the Martin D-28's middle register — clean, unadorned, and vibrating with resonant warmth. Marvin let each chord sit in the room for its full, lingering duration before the next arrived, allowing the wood to breathe.
It was the exact kind of playing that doesn't announce itself. It arrives quietly, slipping past your defenses, and by the time you notice it, the music has already made a home inside you.
The melody threaded directly through Beyoncé's chest, settling somewhere deep behind her sternum with the butter-smooth ease of a truth that had always been there, only now finally being named.
Beyoncé went perfectly still.
She immediately recognized the shape of it. This was a song about *wanting* — steady, confident, and dangerously intoxicating. Not desperate. Just undeniable.
And then Marvin sang.
His voice was nothing like a child's. It was warm, mature, and laced with the magnetic pull of an Incubus — low and smooth in the verses, rising into something silky and commanding in the chorus. He delivered every line with lethal economy, no unnecessary flair, just pure intention.
"Something about him… is made for somebody like me…"
The words rolled out slow and deliberate, the R&B phrasing leaning forward with subtle syncopation. Marvin's fingers kept the guitar pulsing underneath, a hypnotic groove that made the air feel thicker.
"Baby… come over… come over…"
His voice dropped into a velvet murmur on the invitation, the Incubus magic weaving through the notes so they didn't just reach Beyoncé's ears — they sank into her body, awakening a slow, delicious heat low in her belly. The desire in the song became *her* desire, vivid and personal.
"And God knows I'm trying… but there's just no use in denying…"
"The boy is mine…"
"I can't wait to try him… let's get intertwined…"
"The stars… they aligned…"
"The boy is mine…"
"Watch me take my time…"
"I can't believe my mind…"
"The boy is divine…"
"Boy is mine…"
Marvin let the chorus breathe, his voice gliding with confident sensuality while the Martin D-28 provided a warm, pulsing bed of chords. The magic made the longing feel luxurious rather than urgent — a slow claim, unapologetic and intoxicating.
He moved into the final stretch, voice growing even richer, more intimate, as if he were confessing directly to her.
"Please know this ain't what I planned for…
Probably wouldn't bet a dime or my life on…
There's gotta be a reason why…"
"My girls… they always come through in a sticky situation…
Say it's fine… happens all the ti-iime…"
"Something about him… is made for somebody like me…"
"Baby… come over… come over…"
"And God knows I'm trying… but there's just no use in denying…"
"The boy is mine…"
"I can't wait to try him… let's get intertwined…"
"The stars… they aligned…"
"The boy is mine…"
"Watch me take my time…"
"I can't believe my mind…"
"The boy is divine…"
"Boy is mine…"
Then the bridge hit, and Marvin's tone shifted — still controlled, but now carrying a raw, vulnerable edge beneath the confidence.
"And I know it's simply meant to be…
And I… I take full accountability… for all these tears…"
"Promise you I'm not usually… like this…
Sh-, it's like news to me… to me…"
"But I can't ignore my heart, boy!"
His voice rose with quiet intensity on the final declaration, the Incubus magic turning the confession into something electric. Beyoncé felt it coil around her spine — the thrill of unexpected desire, the surrender to something bigger than plans or pride.
He brought it home with silky finality:
"The boy is mine…
I can't wait to try him… let's get intertwined…
The stars… they aligned…
The boy is mine…
Watch me take my time…
I can't believe my mind…
The boy is divine…
Boy is mine."
The last chord rang out warm and resonant from the vintage Marvin, then slowly dissolved into the candlelit silence.
Beyoncé remained exactly where she was for a long moment — elbows on the white linen tablecloth, chin cradled in her hands, dark eyes locked on Marvin. Her foot had stopped tapping, but her pulse hadn't. The song still hummed under her skin, leaving her chest tight with that steady, dangerous kind of wanting.
Marvin had not just played the song.
With his anomalously mature Incubus voice, the hypnotic groove of the guitar, and the subtle magic that made every line feel personally directed, he had turned "The Boy Is Mine" into something far more potent — a slow-burning claim that settled deep inside the listener and refused to let go.
And Beyoncé… was thoroughly, dangerously affected.
"New song?" she whispered.
Marvin set the guitar gently against the edge of the table. His face was open and bright in a way that she had not seen from him before today—unguarded in the highly vulnerable way that musicians are briefly unguarded immediately after finishing something they deeply care about, right before the armored presentation of the industry reassembles itself.
"Brand new," Marvin purred softly. "What do you think, my lady?"
She sat up straight, entirely animated now, the talented artist in her fully engaged.
"Marvin, it's... it's absolutely fantastic," Beyoncé said, gesturing with her hands the way she always did when she was thinking out loud rather than performing a thought. "It's classic in its bones, but it's not old. It sounds like something that has always existed out there in the ether, but no one had the genius to find it yet! The guitar is doing everything by itself right now, but if you brought in a rolling bassline... maybe some synthesized strings just at the resolution... the effect would be atomic. The rhythm is perfect. It's not pushing. It's more like..." she searched for the word, her eyes shining. "Like ripples. Like something heavy moving beneath still water. Alive, but deadly."
Marvin was watching her with quiet attention. "You heard the architecture exactly right," he said, his blue eyes gleaming with pride.
"Where did you get the idea for it?"
A pause hung in the candlelight. Marvin looked at the guitar for a moment, then back at her. "Someone incredibly brilliant told me something today," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave. "About discovered songs versus built ones. About the difference between finding a true thing in the universe and cynically constructing one in a boardroom."
He held her gaze, the Incubus charm wrapping around her like velvet. "This one, Beyoncé... this one was found."
She looked at him. Something in his expression was doing *that thing* again—the thing where there was an ocean of meaning beneath his words that his age could not possibly account for.
"When did you write it?" she asked softly.
"I finished the arrangement last night," Marvin said smoothly. "I started exactly one week ago, when I was sitting in my study, planning a day I wanted to be entirely worth remembering for a certain lady."
It was an exquisite lie. Marvin, utilizing the cheat code of a transmigrator, had simply plucked one of the R&B duets in history directly out of the future timeline. It hadn't even taken his mind thirty seconds to transcribe the chords. But the intention behind the borrowing was genuine.
The room was very quiet.
Beyoncé looked at the guitar, and then back at his handsome face. The thing that had been assembling itself in her understanding all day finally arrived, fully formed. She felt it settle in her chest with the weight of a realization that permanently changes the shape of a relationship.
"Marvin," she said slowly, her voice trembling slightly.
"Yes."
"Did you... did you write this song for me?"
Marvin didn't answer verbally. He simply reached into the velvet-lined interior pocket of his guitar case and produced a small, thick envelope. It was cream-colored, sealed with a sliver of wax, and her name—*Beyoncé Knowles*—was written across the front in a flowing calligraphy that was precise, elegant, and nothing like a child's handwriting.
He set it on the table between the flickering candles and pushed it toward her with two fingers.
"Happy birthday, Beyoncé," Marvin whispered.
She opened the envelope with extreme, trembling care. She used the focused attention of someone who had learned that some things in this brutal world deserve to be revered rather than torn into.
Inside was a single sheet of folded parchment paper.
It was the music sheet. The full arrangement notation, the complex chord progressions, and the vocal melody mapped out in a hand that intimately knew what it was doing. And at the very bottom of the page, written separately from the rest of the ink, were two simple lines:
*This song was written for your voice. It belongs to you.*
*— M.*
She read it twice. The words blurred slightly as a hot prickle of tears threatened the corners of her eyes. She looked up at him, her mouth slightly open.
"This is my true birthday gift," Marvin said, before she could even formulate a protest. "Not the chaotic arcade. Not the oversized bear or lion, who I sincerely hope will make for an adequate roommate. Not the Ferris wheel, though I do hope the view was at least somewhat satisfactory."
He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on the white linen, perfectly mirroring the attentive posture she had held while he played.
"This song, Beyoncé, is what I made for you,"
Marvin declared, his voice ringing with sovereignty. "Specifically for you. For your incredible range. For your fierce phrasing. For the exact way you shape a note in the upper register that is entirely your own, and that this track was structurally engineered around." A pause. "I want you to record it. It is your first single."
Beyoncé looked at the paper in her hands. Looked at him. Looked back at the paper.
"Marvin, I can't take your song," she breathed, her industry-trained brain panicking. "This is a hit. A massive hit. You could record this yourself and go Platinum again."
"It isn't my song," Marvin said simply, waving a dismissive hand. "It was never my song. I found it in the ether while thinking about you, which means it belonged to your soul before I even put the ink to the paper. Taking credit for it would be like..." he tilted his head, considering the analogy, "...like finding a diamond that a queen dropped, and claiming ownership simply because I was the peasant who picked it up."
"Marvin, don't say that. You aren't a peasant, and this is—"
"It is a gift," he interrupted gently, his eyes burning into hers. "And gifts between royalty are not negotiations."
"It's too much. My father would have a heart attack if he knew the publishing value of this sheet of paper."
"It is exactly the right amount," Marvin corrected smoothly. "Which is a fundamentally different thing from 'too much.'"
He held her gaze with that particular steadiness that she had completely stopped being able to look away from sometime around the second roller coaster.
"You said earlier that a song should feel like it was discovered rather than built," Marvin purred, his Incubus charm washing over her, silencing her doubts. "This one was discovered while I was looking for you. That seems like enough reason for it to be legally and spiritually yours."
She looked down at the parchment in her trembling hands again. At the careful, brilliant notation. At the melody she could already vividly hear playing in her head—and she could hear it, specifically, in *her* own powerful voice.
This was the thing that completely undid her last, stubborn line of resistance. Because the little man was right. The song sat perfectly in her vocal range with a precision that was not coincidental. It had been built around the unique instrument of her voice the way a master locksmith builds a key around a vault door.
"Beyoncé," Marvin said quietly.
She looked up.
"I have a feeling," Marvin said, speaking with a careful, deliberate, and weight that she inherently understood was a prophecy, "that you are going to spend a significant portion of your early career being handed things by this industry that are vastly less than what you actually deserve. And they will demand that you be grateful for those scraps anyway."
He reached across the table, his fingertips brushing against hers.
"I would like, at least once in your life, for you to simply receive something that is perfectly right for you... and feel no guilt or obligation about it whatsoever." A pause hung in the candlelight. "Can you do that for me?"
*****
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