Loving You is Easier Than Breathing (Lea/Dianna)
Name: Loving You is Easier Than Breathing
Pairing: Lea/Dianna
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Fixing what is not quite broken is harder than you know.
Author's Note: I'm apparently disgustingly weak-willed, because this is a companion piece to I First Saw You on a Sunday. But I like this one more. I even got some angst in! And, I'm not going to post again until...at least two days from now. BREAK TIME. Mwhahaha. Also, title is from the Alexander Fairchild song Dianna told people to 'jump on,' Easier Than Breathing. It is very good. I advise you acquire it.
Dianna Agron has known for a long, long time that she's gay. It was made astoundingly obvious since about her tenth birthday, really, and so she doesn't think much of it when Lea Michele walks into the read-through of this brand new show Glee and she can't help but stare at the girl, because, yeah, she's absolutely gorgeous, even though she looks a little harried (explained when Lea gives a humorous anecdote about L.A. traffic). Lea's legs are long, and Dianna's always had that weakness, really. But she really doesn't even think about it, because it's just a, "Hey, that girl's cute," knee-jerk reaction and she ignores it because she does that all the time.
But the cast goes to dinner right after the read-through and while everyone's feeling everyone else out, Lea sort of looks sad, and so Dianna has the very strong urge to spread cheer, so she starts talking about one of her favorite things.
"Lea, right?" Dianna asks, pretending like she doesn't have Spring Awakening in a prominently-placed playlist on her iPod. Lea nods, looking over Dianna, and Dianna decides to return the favor, letting her eyes linger where they didn't earlier.
Lea's dressed simply, in a pair of very tight jeans, and a v-neck t-shirt that allows Dianna a teasing glace at a deep purple lace bra that barely peaks over the edge of the shirt, and Dianna doesn't need to dwell on that, because she's spreading cheer.
"Have you ever seen a rainbow here in L.A?" Dianna asks, like this conversation topic is not at all unexpected. Lea looks confused, but she indulges Dianna and shakes her head.
"You probably wouldn't. When it rains here, it usually brings a big fog bank with it. And even when it doesn't, sometimes the smog kills it. But when you see a rainbow here, it's so amazing. Because, L.A. is so unglamorous sometimes, you know? And when a rainbow shows up in the sky, and the sun is shining, it's kind of like, "there is something pure here," you know?" Lea is now looking at Dianna with marked interest, one dark brow furrowed in thought.
"I'm Dianna, by the way. Dianna Agron," she says, extending her hand to Lea, even though the girl's sitting right next to her. Lea finally smiles, and it's gorgeous, and it reminds Dianna of what she was just talking about, about rainbows and about how hard it is to find pure things in this city.
"Nice to meet you, Dianna," Lea says, and grips Dianna's hand and doesn't let go for just a second too long.
//
Two months later and Lea's her new roommate, and as celebration, Dianna has dragged her down to Long Beach to the aquarium there. She realizes that Lea would probably rather go see a play or something, but Dianna hasn't been to the aquarium in at least five months, and she begs, and Lea relents.
After a good ten minutes of pouting at the constant no-flash photography signs all over the place, Dianna starts taking pictures of Lea, because the fish won't stay still long enough but Lea will. And the more and more Dianna takes pictures of Lea, the more and more she realizes that somewhere beneath the obvious lust for this girl, there's a growing like because Dianna's noticing things all the time.
Lea can barely function without coffee, loves to drive around the city singing at the top of her lungs, and she seems to like letting Dianna get her way - whether it's over who gets the last cup of orange juice or this right now, coming to the aquarium. It's sweet.
And sometimes, Dianna thinks Lea might actually like her, because the girl sometimes looks at her with an intensity that she's pretty sure a straight girl wouldn't be exuding. She doesn't exactly know, of course, because, hello, not straight, but she's pretty sure.
By the time they make their way out to the car, Lea with a hold on Dianna's wildly unnecessary scarf so Dianna doesn't wander off in the wrong direction because she's looking through the pictures, Dianna realizes that in between every occasional picture of a sea urchin or an eel, there's at least ten of Lea, some of them candid, some of them completely unknown to Lea. She doesn't know what to do with this information, and she doesn't want to delete the pictures, so she just tells Lea that she didn't get any good shots, really, and Lea smiles at her sympathetically and grabs Dianna's hand on her thigh, and Dianna doesn't realize she never lets go until they're home and her hand feels cold.
//
Another month later and Lea wakes Dianna up at six in the morning when there's not an early call to set, and Dianna's about to let out a stream of curse words that her mother would scold her for until Lea throws open the big window of their apartment and points happily up into the sky.
"Di, there's a rainbow!" she says excitedly, and Dianna's lethargy drains away, because Lea remembers and Dianna's never had someone remember so much about her, really, no one who applied so much focus in learning so much about her, and Dianna can't even speak. She kind of actually wants to cry, and her grip on Lea's hand tightens when she turns to face the shorter girl.
Lea immediately catches onto the mood change, and her smile dims down to a frown as she frantically backtracks over her words and actions, wiping away a few stray tears from Dianna's face.
"Oh no, Di, I'm sorry, whatever I..." Lea's cut off when Dianna shakes her head, and draws in a shaky breath, trying to think of something to explain what's going on.
But she gives up, because Lea's giving her a look like she herself is about to cry because she thinks she's made Dianna cry, and she just kisses her, and Dianna for a moment wishes she could have an out-of-body experience because she's sure that this would look beautiful, with the big window and the rainbow in the background. But when Lea reacts and starts kissing back, Dianna's pretty sure she'd never leave this moment if she had a choice.
//
And so they fall into this thing, this thing Dianna refuses to call love until Lea tells her she loves her (which takes a grand total of a week, anyways), and it's so nice. Dianna's dated around before, but it's kind of strange falling in love with your best friend/roommate. It makes things so much easier. You can't run and hide when there's an argument, and you know so much about the other person before you fall into bed (which takes a week, also, because it happens right after Lea tells her), and it's the strangest feeling.
Because she's exactly the opposite of what everyone thinks she is when she's with Dianna, so soft and sweet and loving, but Dianna loves it too when she's brash and fiery, because she loves every part of Lea, even the part of her that loves trashy reality shows when Dianna wants to watch Planet Earth, even though she's seen it so many times that she knows exactly when to close her eyes to avoid seeing the gazelle being dragged into the water by the crocodile.
Because Dianna sort of looks into her future and sees Lea there, right at her side, and Dianna makes her decisions with Lea in her thoughts. Dianna sort of feels like Lea's all she'll ever need, and Dianna loves it when she acts the same way, when she says it sometimes when she thinks Dianna's asleep next to her, when she says it when Dianna's very much awake and she can barely focus on her words because Lea is kind of amazing in bed, and even when she's whispering it in Dianna's ear in the middle of a red carpet.
Things start going wrong when Lea admits that she's afraid.
//
Dianna doesn't know what to say, because Lea looks so forlorn and heartbroken, but part of Dianna's brain wants to kick her girlfriend in the face and the other half wants to hold her until she can't remember being sad.
"I know he was joking, but Di...I don't want to risk this. I don't want to ruin your career because I can't...I don't know, control myself in public. I don't want to make the network more upset than they already are. I just...want to...I want to protect you, and this is the way to do it," she says, looking imploringly at Dianna, but Dianna just looks blank, staring at her openmouthed.
"Lea, I don't think you moving out is - "
"Than what else is there?" Lea cuts Dianna off, her hands and voice shaking, and Dianna almost quits this line of questioning and kisses her, but she wouldn't be able to forgive herself if she didn't ask, not ever, and so she does, voice quiet.
"Would it be so bad if everyone knew?" she asks, and Lea is now the one openmouthed, and neither of them moves until Lea's phone rings and she grabs it with her shaking hand and answers it. Dianna feels like this is the beginning of the end, and she sits back against the couch with her head in her hands.
//
Even though Dianna feels like she's trying to hold sand in a sieve (she's reading Fahrenheit 451, because it's so melancholy and desperate that she can't help but feel the story, deep in her chest), she still kisses Lea every morning when they're both in the trailer, and she still touches and holds Lea, because she loves her, even if she is afraid to be who she is now.
But when Lea takes Theo to the SAG awards, Dianna can't quite say she knows who this new Lea is anymore, and so she starts distancing herself, even though she wants to pull her as close as possible.
//
When Lea comes back from New York, she is a moving hurricane of what seems like panic and indecision, and she's constantly on the phone with this girl named Erin, listening more and talking less, rubbing at her forehead and looking at Dianna like she's about to throw up.
Dianna doesn't know what to think about all these things, and she feels like she's the one being pushed away now, because Lea can barely stand to be in a room with her sometimes, and others she seems intent upon going out of her way to make Dianna happy. It's confusing and not normal for Lea to be so bipolar - it was always the same Lea for Dianna, always the same girl she would wake up to in the morning.
One day, she's walking around Paramount, looking for Mark and Cory because Ryan needed them for a scene, and no one could find them and they somehow assumed Dianna could find them best. She's gone through their trailers, everyone's trailers, really, and no one's in them, and it's starting to freak her out a little. She feels left behind, and when she finally does find them all, she almost cries, because she has been left out.
They're in a dark-ish room that she was pretty sure was a set, and Mark is strumming something and they're all humming along, each of them watching Jon as he kind of walks around in a circle, ordering them to do things to make them sound better at whatever they're singing. Lea's watching him pace around with a tense, tight smile on her face, one hand holding her phone aloft and the other holding a piece of paper with music on it, it looks like. It's Chris who spots her first and it feels like such a slap in the face when he immediately kicks forward to get Lea's attention, catching her on her calf, and nods over toward the door. The sting of it gets even worse when they all stop whatever kumbaya moment they're having and look around the room like they haven't been excluding her and that it's normal to sit in darkened sets observing architecture. Lea's hand folds up the sheet and puts it in her back pocket and she tries to smile at Dianna until Dianna is backing away, shaking her head, then turning and running.
//
One night, she wakes up for some reason, and expects Lea to be there, because she had been there when she had fallen asleep. She feels sort of stupid, like she's that girl, the girl she's always hated, the one who forgives everything because she knows the boy loves her (except, it's a girl), that they'll always be together. But it isn't really like that, not really, because Dianna only can deal with Lea when Lea can look her in the eye, and most of the time she can't. They still say they love each other, and for Dianna that's true, because even though she feels like she's losing the final battle, she can't help but see sunshine when she looks at Lea. But Lea's not there.
She gets up quickly enough, and wanders into her living room where Lea has her head flat on the kitchen table, and she's shaking, like she's having a panic attack, and her hands are clenching and unclenching, stretched out in front of her. Dianna almost calls 911 immediately, but Lea seems to notice she's there and turns her head on the table to see Dianna, wide-eyed, in the middle of the space between the kitchen and her bedroom.
"I love you, baby," she whispers, and Dianna's heart literally clenches, because Lea's eyes are bright red with tears, and her hands keep shaking and all of a sudden the girl is in her arms, shaking and crying, and Dianna has no idea what is going on in her girlfriend's head, not anymore, and she feels like everything is her fault.
Because, she was the one who let Lea leave, she was the one who pushed Lea away.
And so she just pulls Lea closer, while Lea repeats it over and over, "I love you."
//
She catches the entire cast leaving a different set than the last one, with Mark and Jon debating a note progression of some sort and Lea looking sleepy and nervous, then stopping short when she sees Dianna in the middle of the hallway. Jenna actually runs into her, she stops so quickly, and Chris whispers something in Lea's ear that Lea nods at quickly, and Cory grabs her hand once and smiles before letting go and continuing on down the hallway. Once everyone is dispersed, Lea steps forward slowly, looking down at the ground.
"Please trust me," she whispers, and Dianna almost wants to say no, that she can't trust Lea anymore because she can't even know what Lea does with her friends, their friends anymore. But the girl looks so on edge, and Dianna can't say no, so she doesn't.
She nods, and Lea smiles, not as bright as she used to, but almost sadly, then reaches forward to hold Dianna's hand.
Dianna doesn't realize that Lea just walked through the entirety of the Paramount complex holding her hand until Lea is walking away from her, towards her bedroom set, and Dianna just stands there, no longer knowing much of anything anymore.
//
The day they go to Ellen, Lea seems ready to collapse most of the time. She woke up far before Dianna (something Dianna noticed when she heard her shower come on at four in the morning), and she was tapping her feet, already into her fourth cup of coffee when Dianna finally got out of bed. By the time Dianna was dressed and ready to leave, Lea couldn't seem to drag her eyes away from her shoes, and Dianna started to become resigned to the fact that this was going to be one of those days with Lea, the ones where it just seemed like they were strangers trying to be polite.
By the end of the day, however, she has a diamond ring on her finger and Lea is suddenly Lea again, and when they get home after so many congratulations that Dianna is starting to question the origin of the word, she tells the entire story, and everything makes sense again, Lea makes sense again, and right before the sun sets, between two good, great, spectacular rounds in bed, they eat dinner in nothing but their underwear and t-shirts, and Dianna realizes that there's a rainbow outside (it must have rained at some point while Dianna was teasing Lea to within an inch of her life, smiling while Lea practically sobbed with frustration).
Lea looks up when she realizes her girlfriend (fiance, Dianna's brain reminds her, and her gaze can't help but momentarily part with the rainbow to look down at her hand before it bounces back up) isn't speaking or kissing at the space behind Lea's ear, and spots the rainbow and smiles, before leaning over and kissing Dianna's bruised neck (it was not Lea's fault at all that Dianna's skin was so pale that she could barely nip at it and it would bruise like she had punched the girl).
She doesn't know what to say, once more, and Dianna locks eyes with Lea and smiles, and Lea smiles back, and Dianna knows, once more, that she would never give up this moment, not ever.
the end.
Pairing: Lea/Dianna
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Fixing what is not quite broken is harder than you know.
Author's Note: I'm apparently disgustingly weak-willed, because this is a companion piece to I First Saw You on a Sunday. But I like this one more. I even got some angst in! And, I'm not going to post again until...at least two days from now. BREAK TIME. Mwhahaha. Also, title is from the Alexander Fairchild song Dianna told people to 'jump on,' Easier Than Breathing. It is very good. I advise you acquire it.
Dianna Agron has known for a long, long time that she's gay. It was made astoundingly obvious since about her tenth birthday, really, and so she doesn't think much of it when Lea Michele walks into the read-through of this brand new show Glee and she can't help but stare at the girl, because, yeah, she's absolutely gorgeous, even though she looks a little harried (explained when Lea gives a humorous anecdote about L.A. traffic). Lea's legs are long, and Dianna's always had that weakness, really. But she really doesn't even think about it, because it's just a, "Hey, that girl's cute," knee-jerk reaction and she ignores it because she does that all the time.
But the cast goes to dinner right after the read-through and while everyone's feeling everyone else out, Lea sort of looks sad, and so Dianna has the very strong urge to spread cheer, so she starts talking about one of her favorite things.
"Lea, right?" Dianna asks, pretending like she doesn't have Spring Awakening in a prominently-placed playlist on her iPod. Lea nods, looking over Dianna, and Dianna decides to return the favor, letting her eyes linger where they didn't earlier.
Lea's dressed simply, in a pair of very tight jeans, and a v-neck t-shirt that allows Dianna a teasing glace at a deep purple lace bra that barely peaks over the edge of the shirt, and Dianna doesn't need to dwell on that, because she's spreading cheer.
"Have you ever seen a rainbow here in L.A?" Dianna asks, like this conversation topic is not at all unexpected. Lea looks confused, but she indulges Dianna and shakes her head.
"You probably wouldn't. When it rains here, it usually brings a big fog bank with it. And even when it doesn't, sometimes the smog kills it. But when you see a rainbow here, it's so amazing. Because, L.A. is so unglamorous sometimes, you know? And when a rainbow shows up in the sky, and the sun is shining, it's kind of like, "there is something pure here," you know?" Lea is now looking at Dianna with marked interest, one dark brow furrowed in thought.
"I'm Dianna, by the way. Dianna Agron," she says, extending her hand to Lea, even though the girl's sitting right next to her. Lea finally smiles, and it's gorgeous, and it reminds Dianna of what she was just talking about, about rainbows and about how hard it is to find pure things in this city.
"Nice to meet you, Dianna," Lea says, and grips Dianna's hand and doesn't let go for just a second too long.
//
Two months later and Lea's her new roommate, and as celebration, Dianna has dragged her down to Long Beach to the aquarium there. She realizes that Lea would probably rather go see a play or something, but Dianna hasn't been to the aquarium in at least five months, and she begs, and Lea relents.
After a good ten minutes of pouting at the constant no-flash photography signs all over the place, Dianna starts taking pictures of Lea, because the fish won't stay still long enough but Lea will. And the more and more Dianna takes pictures of Lea, the more and more she realizes that somewhere beneath the obvious lust for this girl, there's a growing like because Dianna's noticing things all the time.
Lea can barely function without coffee, loves to drive around the city singing at the top of her lungs, and she seems to like letting Dianna get her way - whether it's over who gets the last cup of orange juice or this right now, coming to the aquarium. It's sweet.
And sometimes, Dianna thinks Lea might actually like her, because the girl sometimes looks at her with an intensity that she's pretty sure a straight girl wouldn't be exuding. She doesn't exactly know, of course, because, hello, not straight, but she's pretty sure.
By the time they make their way out to the car, Lea with a hold on Dianna's wildly unnecessary scarf so Dianna doesn't wander off in the wrong direction because she's looking through the pictures, Dianna realizes that in between every occasional picture of a sea urchin or an eel, there's at least ten of Lea, some of them candid, some of them completely unknown to Lea. She doesn't know what to do with this information, and she doesn't want to delete the pictures, so she just tells Lea that she didn't get any good shots, really, and Lea smiles at her sympathetically and grabs Dianna's hand on her thigh, and Dianna doesn't realize she never lets go until they're home and her hand feels cold.
//
Another month later and Lea wakes Dianna up at six in the morning when there's not an early call to set, and Dianna's about to let out a stream of curse words that her mother would scold her for until Lea throws open the big window of their apartment and points happily up into the sky.
"Di, there's a rainbow!" she says excitedly, and Dianna's lethargy drains away, because Lea remembers and Dianna's never had someone remember so much about her, really, no one who applied so much focus in learning so much about her, and Dianna can't even speak. She kind of actually wants to cry, and her grip on Lea's hand tightens when she turns to face the shorter girl.
Lea immediately catches onto the mood change, and her smile dims down to a frown as she frantically backtracks over her words and actions, wiping away a few stray tears from Dianna's face.
"Oh no, Di, I'm sorry, whatever I..." Lea's cut off when Dianna shakes her head, and draws in a shaky breath, trying to think of something to explain what's going on.
But she gives up, because Lea's giving her a look like she herself is about to cry because she thinks she's made Dianna cry, and she just kisses her, and Dianna for a moment wishes she could have an out-of-body experience because she's sure that this would look beautiful, with the big window and the rainbow in the background. But when Lea reacts and starts kissing back, Dianna's pretty sure she'd never leave this moment if she had a choice.
//
And so they fall into this thing, this thing Dianna refuses to call love until Lea tells her she loves her (which takes a grand total of a week, anyways), and it's so nice. Dianna's dated around before, but it's kind of strange falling in love with your best friend/roommate. It makes things so much easier. You can't run and hide when there's an argument, and you know so much about the other person before you fall into bed (which takes a week, also, because it happens right after Lea tells her), and it's the strangest feeling.
Because she's exactly the opposite of what everyone thinks she is when she's with Dianna, so soft and sweet and loving, but Dianna loves it too when she's brash and fiery, because she loves every part of Lea, even the part of her that loves trashy reality shows when Dianna wants to watch Planet Earth, even though she's seen it so many times that she knows exactly when to close her eyes to avoid seeing the gazelle being dragged into the water by the crocodile.
Because Dianna sort of looks into her future and sees Lea there, right at her side, and Dianna makes her decisions with Lea in her thoughts. Dianna sort of feels like Lea's all she'll ever need, and Dianna loves it when she acts the same way, when she says it sometimes when she thinks Dianna's asleep next to her, when she says it when Dianna's very much awake and she can barely focus on her words because Lea is kind of amazing in bed, and even when she's whispering it in Dianna's ear in the middle of a red carpet.
Things start going wrong when Lea admits that she's afraid.
//
Dianna doesn't know what to say, because Lea looks so forlorn and heartbroken, but part of Dianna's brain wants to kick her girlfriend in the face and the other half wants to hold her until she can't remember being sad.
"I know he was joking, but Di...I don't want to risk this. I don't want to ruin your career because I can't...I don't know, control myself in public. I don't want to make the network more upset than they already are. I just...want to...I want to protect you, and this is the way to do it," she says, looking imploringly at Dianna, but Dianna just looks blank, staring at her openmouthed.
"Lea, I don't think you moving out is - "
"Than what else is there?" Lea cuts Dianna off, her hands and voice shaking, and Dianna almost quits this line of questioning and kisses her, but she wouldn't be able to forgive herself if she didn't ask, not ever, and so she does, voice quiet.
"Would it be so bad if everyone knew?" she asks, and Lea is now the one openmouthed, and neither of them moves until Lea's phone rings and she grabs it with her shaking hand and answers it. Dianna feels like this is the beginning of the end, and she sits back against the couch with her head in her hands.
//
Even though Dianna feels like she's trying to hold sand in a sieve (she's reading Fahrenheit 451, because it's so melancholy and desperate that she can't help but feel the story, deep in her chest), she still kisses Lea every morning when they're both in the trailer, and she still touches and holds Lea, because she loves her, even if she is afraid to be who she is now.
But when Lea takes Theo to the SAG awards, Dianna can't quite say she knows who this new Lea is anymore, and so she starts distancing herself, even though she wants to pull her as close as possible.
//
When Lea comes back from New York, she is a moving hurricane of what seems like panic and indecision, and she's constantly on the phone with this girl named Erin, listening more and talking less, rubbing at her forehead and looking at Dianna like she's about to throw up.
Dianna doesn't know what to think about all these things, and she feels like she's the one being pushed away now, because Lea can barely stand to be in a room with her sometimes, and others she seems intent upon going out of her way to make Dianna happy. It's confusing and not normal for Lea to be so bipolar - it was always the same Lea for Dianna, always the same girl she would wake up to in the morning.
One day, she's walking around Paramount, looking for Mark and Cory because Ryan needed them for a scene, and no one could find them and they somehow assumed Dianna could find them best. She's gone through their trailers, everyone's trailers, really, and no one's in them, and it's starting to freak her out a little. She feels left behind, and when she finally does find them all, she almost cries, because she has been left out.
They're in a dark-ish room that she was pretty sure was a set, and Mark is strumming something and they're all humming along, each of them watching Jon as he kind of walks around in a circle, ordering them to do things to make them sound better at whatever they're singing. Lea's watching him pace around with a tense, tight smile on her face, one hand holding her phone aloft and the other holding a piece of paper with music on it, it looks like. It's Chris who spots her first and it feels like such a slap in the face when he immediately kicks forward to get Lea's attention, catching her on her calf, and nods over toward the door. The sting of it gets even worse when they all stop whatever kumbaya moment they're having and look around the room like they haven't been excluding her and that it's normal to sit in darkened sets observing architecture. Lea's hand folds up the sheet and puts it in her back pocket and she tries to smile at Dianna until Dianna is backing away, shaking her head, then turning and running.
//
One night, she wakes up for some reason, and expects Lea to be there, because she had been there when she had fallen asleep. She feels sort of stupid, like she's that girl, the girl she's always hated, the one who forgives everything because she knows the boy loves her (except, it's a girl), that they'll always be together. But it isn't really like that, not really, because Dianna only can deal with Lea when Lea can look her in the eye, and most of the time she can't. They still say they love each other, and for Dianna that's true, because even though she feels like she's losing the final battle, she can't help but see sunshine when she looks at Lea. But Lea's not there.
She gets up quickly enough, and wanders into her living room where Lea has her head flat on the kitchen table, and she's shaking, like she's having a panic attack, and her hands are clenching and unclenching, stretched out in front of her. Dianna almost calls 911 immediately, but Lea seems to notice she's there and turns her head on the table to see Dianna, wide-eyed, in the middle of the space between the kitchen and her bedroom.
"I love you, baby," she whispers, and Dianna's heart literally clenches, because Lea's eyes are bright red with tears, and her hands keep shaking and all of a sudden the girl is in her arms, shaking and crying, and Dianna has no idea what is going on in her girlfriend's head, not anymore, and she feels like everything is her fault.
Because, she was the one who let Lea leave, she was the one who pushed Lea away.
And so she just pulls Lea closer, while Lea repeats it over and over, "I love you."
//
She catches the entire cast leaving a different set than the last one, with Mark and Jon debating a note progression of some sort and Lea looking sleepy and nervous, then stopping short when she sees Dianna in the middle of the hallway. Jenna actually runs into her, she stops so quickly, and Chris whispers something in Lea's ear that Lea nods at quickly, and Cory grabs her hand once and smiles before letting go and continuing on down the hallway. Once everyone is dispersed, Lea steps forward slowly, looking down at the ground.
"Please trust me," she whispers, and Dianna almost wants to say no, that she can't trust Lea anymore because she can't even know what Lea does with her friends, their friends anymore. But the girl looks so on edge, and Dianna can't say no, so she doesn't.
She nods, and Lea smiles, not as bright as she used to, but almost sadly, then reaches forward to hold Dianna's hand.
Dianna doesn't realize that Lea just walked through the entirety of the Paramount complex holding her hand until Lea is walking away from her, towards her bedroom set, and Dianna just stands there, no longer knowing much of anything anymore.
//
The day they go to Ellen, Lea seems ready to collapse most of the time. She woke up far before Dianna (something Dianna noticed when she heard her shower come on at four in the morning), and she was tapping her feet, already into her fourth cup of coffee when Dianna finally got out of bed. By the time Dianna was dressed and ready to leave, Lea couldn't seem to drag her eyes away from her shoes, and Dianna started to become resigned to the fact that this was going to be one of those days with Lea, the ones where it just seemed like they were strangers trying to be polite.
By the end of the day, however, she has a diamond ring on her finger and Lea is suddenly Lea again, and when they get home after so many congratulations that Dianna is starting to question the origin of the word, she tells the entire story, and everything makes sense again, Lea makes sense again, and right before the sun sets, between two good, great, spectacular rounds in bed, they eat dinner in nothing but their underwear and t-shirts, and Dianna realizes that there's a rainbow outside (it must have rained at some point while Dianna was teasing Lea to within an inch of her life, smiling while Lea practically sobbed with frustration).
Lea looks up when she realizes her girlfriend (fiance, Dianna's brain reminds her, and her gaze can't help but momentarily part with the rainbow to look down at her hand before it bounces back up) isn't speaking or kissing at the space behind Lea's ear, and spots the rainbow and smiles, before leaning over and kissing Dianna's bruised neck (it was not Lea's fault at all that Dianna's skin was so pale that she could barely nip at it and it would bruise like she had punched the girl).
She doesn't know what to say, once more, and Dianna locks eyes with Lea and smiles, and Lea smiles back, and Dianna knows, once more, that she would never give up this moment, not ever.
the end.