Untitled

[bubbleguppiewars]

THE INTERVIEW

SUMMARY- The world fell in love with Michael Jackson. She fell in love with the little boy from Gary long before anyone else did. 2 years later after their breakup, she finally speaks about him. He never expected to hear his name in her voice again.

cw: angst, heartbreak, grief, mentions of relationship rumors, mentions of D*ana R*ss if you squint really hard, emotional themes, fame, bittersweet ending. This is my first time ever writing something like this so BARE WITH ME PUHLEASE. Its a little long so i hope yall don’t mind!!

Pairings: Thriller era!michael jackson x high fashion model/singer reader

Across America, televisions flickered to life.

By the next morning, every newspaper would print the same headline.

Nobody, not the reporters, not the viewers, not even Michael Jackson himself, knew that three words were about to become the most talked-about sentence in the world.

PREVIOUS DAY…

Westlake Recording Studios

Los Angeles, California

January 24, 1983

The room smelled faintly of coffee, magnetic tape, and exhaustion.

Outside the control booth, engineers adjusted dials while musicians laughed over conversations that had nothing to do with the history they were unknowingly helping create.

Michael sat quietly at the piano, distractedly tapping his fingers against the polished wood as another playback echoed through the speakers.

No one noticed the small television humming in the corner of the room.

No one paid attention to the afternoon talk show filling the silence between takes.

No one.

until a familiar laugh floated through the television speakers.

Michael’s hands stopped moving.

Burbank Studios

Burbank, California

January 24, 1983

2:05 P.M.

… “What would you say inspires you most right now? Is it a person? A song, or a-”

“Um honestly… I can be truly inspired by anything.

It can be a song, a movie, uh but.. at the moment I can say I am inspired by my… self”

She laughs softly. “By my heart, and my spirit and this new sense of…” gesturing with her hands she thinks for a moment.

“ ease and expansion that I’ve discovered within myself. Which just naturally has brought in more…” she gestures towards herself.

“I dont know, more of an energy that I haven’t experienced before I would say.” She states softly with a small smile on her face.

The interviewer hums softly “What does that look like to be inspired by yourself?”

She lowered her gaze to her lap, letting the silence settle between them as she gathered her thoughts.

After a moment, she lifted her eyes to meet the interviewer’s, a quiet vulnerability flickering across her face.

“It’s like a feeling… I dont know honestly it’s hard to put into words. But its a lot of feeling”

She laughs letting her gaze fall onto the small audience for a moment.

The interview listens intently before asking away again. “Are you an optimist?” she asks curiously.

“Yes. Yeah” she laughs shyly “I am an optimist. I am. And I believe… I do believe in the power of” she trails off for a moment.

“I guess kindness and people, seeing each other and connecting”

She gestures with two fingers from her eyes to the interviewers.

“ And yeah theres a lot of pain and ego and all that stuff which we all deal with.

But theres so much beauty within each and every one of us. And if we just…drop into that and like take a breath and just have a little more.. I don’t know compassion?”

she smiles softly

“Then yeah I have hope.” she trails off compassionately.

The interviewer listens intently before speaking

“ You’re such an intelligent and radiant young lady.” she laughs

Giving a laugh back she speaks “I try to be” she answers honestly while sighing softly.

“You seem very content with where you are in life now. Do you think you’ve found your happy ending? And… if you don’t mind me asking… about your first love or your love life at the moment?”

She lets out the smallest laugh, almost as if the question had found a place inside her she hadn’t visited in years.

She looks down at her hands before looking back up.

“My first love…”

Another quiet smile.

“It’s funny. People always ask me about who I’m with now… but nobody ever asks about the person who taught me what love was in the first place.”

“So thats an interesting question” she states raising her eyebrows slightly.

She pauses.

“We met when we were kids. Long before any of this.” She gestures toward the cameras, the lights, the studio. “Before fame had a way of changing everything.”

“He wasn’t just my boyfriend. He was my best friend. My safe place. My first everything.”

“I grew up with him. Some of my earliest memories have him somewhere in the background, so by the time we were old enough to fall in love… it almost felt like we’d been finding our way back to each other all along.”

She smiles to herself.

“We talked every single day. About absolutely everything. And I mean everything”

She emphasizes the words “everything” with a laugh.

“I loved him with everything I knew how to give.”

“When you’re young, you don’t know how to love cautiously. You don’t calculate it. You don’t keep pieces of yourself hidden in case things fall apart. You just hand someone your whole heart and trust they’ll be gentle with it.”

She exhales softly.

“I think that’s why your first love never really leaves you. Not because you’re still in love with them…” She shakes her head gently. “…but because they’re the first person who teaches your heart what it’s capable of feeling.”

The interviewer stays quiet.

“Growing up asks things of you that love alone can’t always answer.”

“As his career kept growing… so did the noise around it. Every week there seemed to be another headline. Another magazine cover. Another rumor. There was always a certain name people wanted to attach to his.”

Her eyes drift for only a second.

“He always looked me in the eyes and told me there was nothing there.”

A bittersweet smile crosses her face.

“And I believed him.”

Another pause.

“Or maybe…” she corrects herself quietly, “…I wanted to believe him more than I wanted to listen to the little voice inside me that kept asking questions.”

She folds her hands together.

“Looking back now, I don’t think I was protecting our relationship. I think I was protecting the version of him I couldn’t bear to lose.”

The room is silent.

“But I don’t blame him too much, because how could I? y’know?” she laughs.

“We were just kids trying to carry something that suddenly belonged to the entire world.”

“People think heartbreak happens all at once. It doesn’t.”

“Sometimes it happens slowly. In conversations that get shorter. In phone calls that become less frequent. In learning how to miss someone who’s still right there… until one day they aren’t.”

“Eventually, we had to become two separate people instead of one shared future.”

“We stopped talking.”

“And that…” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, “…I think was the hardest part.”

“Not the breakup.”

“Or the silence.”

“Going from telling someone every thought that crossed your mind… to wondering if they even think about you anymore.”

She smiles again, though this one doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Walking away from someone who’s been part of your life since childhood feels like grieving someone who’s still alive.”

“You don’t stop loving them overnight.”

“You just slowly learn how to carry the love somewhere they can’t see it anymore.”

The interviewer hesitates before asking softly,

“Do you ever think about him now?”

She laughs under her breath.

“Sometimes?”

Another small laugh.

“I’d be lying if I said only sometimes.”

“The world’s watching him now.”

“He’s… incredible.”

She smiles with unmistakable pride.

“Everywhere you go, people are talking about him. His new album’s changed everything. You can’t turn on the television without hearing his music. You can’t walk into a record store without seeing his face.”

She shakes her head with quiet admiration.

“I always knew he was going to become someone big. And extraordinary.”

“I just never imagined I’d have to watch it from so far away.”

She blinks away the emotion before continuing.

“People assume that because someone becomes famous, you stop remembering who they used to be.”

“But I don’t think of the records.”

“I don’t think of the screaming crowds.”

“I don’t think of the headlines.”

“I think of the boy who’d steal my fries when we were kids.”

She laughs softly.

“The boy who’d call just to tell me about a melody he’d written because he couldn’t wait until morning.”

“The boy who loved so quietly that the whole world never got to meet him.”

Her eyes glisten.

“That’s the man I’ll always know.”

She takes a slow breath.

“And people around me always ask if I’d change what happened.”

“But honestly… I’d say no”

“Because even though losing him broke my heart in ways I didn’t know were possible… loving him taught me that the deepest relationships aren’t always the ones that last forever.”

“Sometimes they’re simply the ones that shape you.”

“And I think a part of me will always belong to the little girl who grew up beside the little boy from Gary.”

She smiles through emotion.

“And I hope… wherever life takes him…”

“…he knows that there will always be someone in this world who’s quietly cheering for him.”

“Not because he’s become the biggest star on the planet.”

“But because at one point in time”

“…he was just a boy who held my hand.”

“…and for a little while…”

“he was home.”

The interviewer waits a moment before speaking.

“…Do you think,” she asks carefully, “that you’ve ever really gotten over him?”

She smiles.

It’s almost impossible to tell whether she’s smiling because she’s happy… or because she’s trying not to cry.

“I don’t think first loves are something you ‘get over.” She emphasizes with her fingers making bunny ears.

She shakes her head.

“I think you grow around them.”

“They stop hurting the way they used to.”

“You wake up one day and realize you can finally hear their name without feeling like someone knocked the air out of your lungs.” She laughs softly.

“But every now and then…”

“…a song comes on.”

“You drive past a place that reminds you of them.”

“You hear someone laugh the way they did.”

“And for just a second…”

“…you’re seventeen again.”

The interviewer nods slowly.

“If he happened to be watching this interview right now…”

“Oh gosh I hope he isn’t!” she laughs hiding her face with her hands out of embarrassment.

“…what would you want him to know?”

For the first time all afternoon…

she doesn’t answer immediately.

She looks down into her lap.

Her thumb traces the edge of the ring on her finger.

When she finally speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper.

“I hope he knows…”

“…that I never hated him.”

“No matter how much people think that’s what heartbreak turns into.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Not always.”

“Sometimes heartbreak is just love with nowhere left to go.”

Her eyes shine beneath the studio lights.

“I hope he stopped blaming himself.”

“I hope he sleeps.”

A tiny laugh escapes her.

“He never slept enough.”

“I hope he remembers to eat when he’s working.”

Another laugh.

“He’d forget.”

The audience laughs gently with her.

Then she’s quiet again.

“And…”

She swallows.

“I hope, despite everything…”

“…someone loves him gently.”

“Because the world never really did.”

The room falls completely silent.

The interviewer clears her throat.

“One last question.”

“If he walked through that door today…”

“…what would you do?”

She looks toward the studio entrance.

Almost instinctively.

As if part of her expects it.

Then she smiles.

“I don’t think I’d say anything.”

The interviewer raises an eyebrow.

“No?”

She shakes her head.

“I think…”

“…I’d just hug him.”

A long pause.

“And I’d thank him.”

“For what?”

“For giving a little girl a love so beautiful…”

“…that even all these years later…”

“…she still believes it exists.”

The interviewer asks,

“Do you have anything that reminds you of him?”

She laughs.

“Actually…”

“I still have the little cassette tape he recorded over because he wanted me to hear a song he’d written.”

“Did he ever tell you that he loved you?”

She smiles.

“Every day.”

The interviewer nods.

“Do you think he meant it?”

“I sure hope he did cause I know I did.” She states truthfully and laughs softly.

Soon after the interview ends, the camera accidentally keeps rolling. She’s taking off her microphone.

She thinks filming is over.

The interviewer quietly says,

“You still love him.”

She freezes.

Long silence.

Then without looking up

“I never said that.”

Another silence.

The interviewer smiles.

“You didn’t have to.”

“THE WOMAN WHO BROKE THE WORLD’S HEART.”

“MICHAEL JACKSON’S FIRST LOVE SPEAKS FOR THE FIRST TIME.”

“SHE CALLED HIM ‘HOME.’”

“Sometimes heartbreak is just love with nowhere left to go.’”

Thats all television hosts would replay.

People who have never even listened to Michael Jackson are crying.

Radio DJs stop talking after reading the transcript because they get emotional too.

Women write letters saying,

“I’ve never related to anything more.”

Some men even admit it’s the first interview that’s ever made them cry.

Suddenly everyone has the same question.

Has Michael Jackson seen it?

Every reporter starts asking him.

Outside recording studios.

Outside award shows.

Leaving hotels.

Before concerts.

“Michael!”

“Did you see the interview?”

“What did you think of what she said?”

“Do you still love her?”

He doesn’t answer.

Not once.

Until one evening.

Someone catches him outside a limousine.

A reporter shouts,

“She said you were home.”

Michael stops walking.

Just for a second.

He looks down.

Smiles the smallest, saddest smile anyone has ever seen.

And then finally answers what everyones been dying to know.

a/n: like i said before this is my first fic soo please let me know if you liked this. i hope this is a good plot and not too wack but anywho lmk how i did and give me some tips to improve!! this interview was also inspired a little by alexa demies interview😉😉