Broken Strings (one-shot)
Title: Broken Strings
Author: memoryofamemory
Rating: R for implied situations
Pairing: Lea/Dianna, Dianna/Alex Pettyfer, implied Lea/Theo
Summery: "The problem with new beginnings is they require for something else to end." (Gossip Girl) Alex Pettyfer watches from the outside as his relationship with Dianna falls apart. The cause? Lea Michele.
Out of the whole cast, Lea Michele is the one Dianna tells you about the least.
She talks about her close friendship with Chris, about how lucky Glee is to have Amber, about how in many ways Naya is the show’s best kept secret. She tells you about Cory and the pranks he plays on everyone, about how different the show would be if Mark hadn’t auditioned, about how Heather makes her want to be a better dancer. They are a close group, and although they try their very best, you still felt like an interloper every time you visit Dianna on set.
“You can’t fake that kind of friendship,” Dianna had once told you, and you see the truth in those words.
You can’t deny the way Dianna’s face lights up when one of the cast members walks into her trailer, or the way her smile is just a little bit brighter when you’re both out one day and one of them calls. They make her day better just by being in it, and you have come to accept that.
And yet, she rarely talks to you about Lea.
You downplay it at first, choosing to believe that the rumors of Lea being a diva were true. Lea is the complete opposite of Dianna, it’s natural, expected even, that their personalities would clash. Dianna is soft-spoken, polite, a blend of Californian and Southern charm; Lea is ambitious, a New Yorker by blood who believes the stage is hers by right. They have no choice but to be fighting, or so you convince yourself.
But you have trouble justifying the way Dianna looks at her, because it’s not the look of someone who hates their cast mate. There is no look of jealousy, or anger, or bitterness, or resentment. It is a look of longing. It is the look of someone who had it all but had it taken away from them, and is now forced to look at it from the outside.
You ignore the voice in your head telling you that in all the time you’ve been involved, Dianna has never looked at you the way she looks at Lea Michele.
& & &
Dianna comes home in the middle of the night, drunk and smelling of a perfume that isn’t hers. You want to ask her what she’s doing, it is completely out of character for her to come home this intoxicated, and this early in the morning.
“I just want to forget,” she murmurs, crushing her lips against yours before you have a chance to say anything. “That’s all I want to do, Alex, I just want to forget.”
There’s a part of you that wants to resist her, that wants to step back and figure out what’s bothering her, but there’s another part, mainly her really, that’s pressing up against you, and you were never good at resisting temptation in the first place.
She leaves before you wake up, her scent lingering on your sheets. You stare at where she was, still trying to understand her long after she’s left. Later, your publicist calls and asks if you’ve seen the news. You tell her you haven’t, and turn on the TV, wondering if it has anything to do with Dianna. Rumors of Lea Michele’s engagement to her boyfriend dominate the wires.
You try to convince yourself the two events are unrelated.
& & &
Moments like this, when you’re at a ski resort and the snow is falling outside, this is when you believe in soul mates, in being with someone for the rest of your life. You’re with Dianna, and that’s all you need. Here, in the mountains, you feel like nothing else matters.
Either no one recognizes you at the resort, or the most likely scenario, no one really cares that you are here. You get the odd glance, and occasionally people look at Dianna for a little too long, but it’s more out of misplaced curiosity than anything else.
You manage to find a quiet little restaurant, secluded and intimate, exactly the type that Dianna likes. You take her there and she smiles at you like she’s proud of you for remembering the little details, and all you can think of is, this girl has got to stay in my life.
“Nice ring,” the waiter tells Dianna, and she smiles before looking away.
“Thank you,” she says. “It has a huge sentimental value for me.”
You glance at her hand, suddenly confused. She isn’t wearing the ring you gave her. You struggle to remember when you’ve seen it before, and then it comes to you. Lea had given it to her.
& & &
You should know better than to ask, but you were never that good about thinking things through. Truth be told, you just wanted to know. You were so certain that the conversation would go your way. You should have known better than to question that kind of friendship.
“What’s going on with you and Lea?”
“It’s complicated.”
You want to argue that it isn’t; in fact, it should actually be really fucking simple. You want her to tell you Lea is just her best friend, only a cast mate, that she’s never been involved with her. You want her to claim Lea was just someone she lived with for six months, nothing more. You want her to yell at you, demand that you stop being so absurd.
You’ll take anything other than “it’s complicated.” Because those two words mean everything. They mean there was something there, and you don’t know if there still is, in some ways Dianna doesn’t know either.
If it were over, she would have said so. But she didn’t.
And now you don’t know where you stand anymore.
& & &
You’ve taken to watching her when she’s around Lea.
You don’t know why you keep doing this to yourself, you’re only setting yourself up for heartbreak, but you can’t stop. There’s a part of you that just wants to know, just wants to understand what the intrigue is with someone who is the complete opposite of Dianna.
You want to know why she looks at Lea like the brunette’s smile is the best part of her day and why she never looks at you like that.
You want to look away when you see how Dianna’s eyes darken with something she shouldn’t be feeling for her best friend and the only comfort you can find is that it hurts Dianna even more that she isn’t supposed to touch her.
You’re both miserable in this relationship, lusting after someone you can’t have, but at least you’re miserable together.
& & &
There are marks on her body and on her neck when you both get home from the Golden Globes.
You weren’t the one who left them on her.
Neither of you mention it.
& & &
The next morning, you see the video on Hollywood Extra and feel sick as you watch Dianna physically restrain herself from drunkenly molesting Lea Michele on camera.
It’s not fair.
You want to lash out, demand how she could do this to you, you thought she loved you, you thought you were going to spend the rest of your lives together… You want to yell, but instead, all you can do is watch in horrified silence as the interview goes on, and the lust in Dianna’s eyes has never been clearer to you.
She’s drunk, you justify to yourself, Dianna sometimes gets like this when she’s drunk. It doesn’t mean she actually slept with Lea during the Golden Globes.
But then you remember. You remember the marks on her body, marks you hadn’t left. You remember how you had gone looking for her after the awards show ended but couldn’t find her.
You remember how happy she looked when she left the event.
The nausea comes back in full force.
& & &
“I love you,” you tell her one night. “Do you know that?”
“Of course I know,” she says. “And I love you, too.”
“Do you?” You press. “Do you really? Am I the only one you love?”
“Yes!” She exclaims, becoming frustrated with you. “Alex, where is this coming from?”
“I know you have feelings for me,” you say quietly. “But do you have feelings for Lea, as well?”
“Alex…” She trails off.
“Because it’s ok, you know, if you do,” you rush. “I’m not asking you to choose, I’m really not. I know what you had with Lea, it’s complicated, you told me so yourself. And, and I get that, I really do understand.”
“It’s just…” You hesitate. “I know you love Lea, too, and that’s ok, it’s ok if you love two people at once. But do you love me more than you love her?”
Dianna hesitates. She doesn’t answer immediately. She doesn’t have to. Her silence says it for her.
“It’s a different kind of love,” she eventually settles on. “You can’t really compare the two.”
You notice she never actually said if she loved you the most.
& & &
It was just supposed to be a meet and greet. It was just supposed to be a simple fan event, something to promote the upcoming movie.
It was supposed to be about you and Dianna, about “I Am Number Four”, and the chemistry you two share. There’s a part of you that wants to believe the romance between John and Sarah is real because what you feel for Dianna is completely pure.
You don’t hear the original question, but you hear Dianna’s answer. You hear how her voice becomes a little lower, more intimate; you see how shy she becomes, as if she’s sharing a secret with the fan, and you know, without having to be next to Dianna, that the question somehow involved Lea.
You resent the way her whole face lights up when she talks about her coworker, and you resent the way she never looks like that when she’s talking about you.
& & &
You begin to notice a shift in Dianna’s relationship with Lea.
Like how she looks at her costar for a second too long to be appropriate. Like how now Lea is beginning to look back. Dianna hasn’t realized that yet, but it’s just a matter of time before she notices it.
You begin to notice how Dianna craves physical contact with Lea. How a simple touch on the arm has transformed into a caress and how that transformed into a hug, and how the hug now lasts for too long for them to be called just friends.
It used to just be Dianna. It used to just be Dianna pining after someone she couldn’t have anymore, someone who had moved on to someone else -someone better? But something has changed, and now Lea is starting to want her again, and that terrifies you.
It was easier to cope with Dianna’s lust towards her costar when the attraction was one-sided.
I’m losing her, you think desperately. I’m losing her and I don’t know how to stop it.
That night, you take Dianna out to an expensive restaurant in the hopes of winning her over again. For the most part, it works, but then Lea calls just as you’re getting ready to leave.
Dianna looks like the call was the best part of her night.
& & &
Another day, another “I Am Number Four” event.
You take a moment, sitting backstage, watching as Dianna mingles with the staff. She is a private person by nature but is also incredibly professional, and you know what you’re seeing right now, the networking, is a mixture of both.
“Everything ok?” Teresa asks as she sits down next to you.
“I’m fine,” you mope, still watching her. Teresa doesn’t say anything for a while, just sits there with you, and you appreciate the quietness and the company.
“It’s like she’s there but she’s not,” you say quietly, looking at the ground. From the corner of your eye you see Teresa turn to look at you. “Like she’s there, she’s with me, but there’s a part of her that hears someone else’s voice when I’m talking. Like she’s imaging someone else saying they love her, but there’s a part of her that’s compromising, or settling with me.”
“She does love you,” Teresa tells you. “You know that. Anyone can see that she loves you.”
“I know,” you sigh. “I know that.”
“So what’s the problem?” She asks.
For the longest time, you don’t say anything. It’s not that you can’t find the right words - they’re sitting there at the tip of your tongue - but rather because you don’t want to accept the reality of your relationship with Dianna if you do say them out loud.
“I’m not the only one she loves,” you answer eventually. “And I’m not even convinced I’m the one she loves the most. That’s the problem.”
& & &
You kiss Dianna hello one night when she gets back from set and her lip gloss tastes different.
You pretend not to notice how she keeps her sweatshirt on even though it’s close to 70 degrees outside. You pretend not to notice how her hair is a little too messy, or how the buckle of her belt is just one notch too loose, or how the watch she is wearing isn’t hers.
You pretend not to notice and just like the night of the Golden Globes, Dianna doesn’t say anything. You’re actually ok with that.
After all, her silence doesn’t hurt you as much as the truth would.
& & &
You don’t know how you ended up at a bar with Lea Michele’s boyfriend, but you’re both sitting on bar stools staring at the almost empty Scotch bottle as if it holds the solution to all your problems.
You’ve met a couple of times, simply because when you’re both involved with Glee cast members sometimes you end up at the same events, but you would hardly describe the two of you as friends. Usually Dianna and Lea are there to act as buffers, and you realize, not for the first time, just how much easier life is when Dianna is around.
“Sometimes I think you have it the easiest out of all of us,” Theo says quietly, still staring at the Scotch bottle.
“What do you mean?” You ask gruffly. “My girlfriend spends her day on set lusting after your girlfriend. How does that mean I have it the easiest?”
“Dianna has always wanted Lea,” he says eventually. “That much hasn’t changed in years. Lea has just always been there. It’s simple, really. Whoever Dianna is with just has to learn to share.”
“Isn’t that the same with you and Lea?” You press, annoyed at how simple he is making all of this.
“There was a time when Lea wanted only me,” Theo snipes back. “There was a time when I was enough. I was the only one Lea wanted. But now…” He trails off.
Neither of you say anything. The Scotch burns your throat. You welcome the sensation. It’s better than the bitter loneliness that’s taking over your soul.
“But now she wants Dianna again,” Theo continues. “And the worse part is Lea doesn’t have to say anything. She doesn’t even have to do anything, but I’ve known her long enough that I can tell when she’s dreaming of someone else.”
“I don’t even know if they’re sleeping with each other,” you confess. “I want to believe Dianna wouldn’t do that to me, or even that Lea wouldn’t do that to you. But sometimes, Dianna comes back from set, and she smells of someone else’s perfume, or her kiss just tastes a little different, and I just know, something happened. But then there’s other times, when she just looks at me, and I try to convince myself that as long as she looks at me like that everything will be ok.”
“Her smile is brighter when she’s talking to Dianna,” Theo tells you, his voice completely void of emotion. “I would give anything for her to smile at me like that again. It’s not really asking for much, is it? I’m not being unreasonable; I just want her to look at me again.”
“It sucks, doesn’t it,” you drawl, not bothering to hide the bitterness in your voice. “Knowing the girl you love is falling for someone else.”
“They don’t tell you that,” he says. “That falling in love means learning to share with someone else.”
Theo doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even do that much except to signal the bartender for a refill.
The Scotch continues to burn your throat. It still beats the loneliness.
& & &
It’s an accident.
You weren’t consciously looking for Dianna’s phone, you really weren’t. But she had been in such a rush to get out the door to meet the cast for a dinner celebration - “cast only,” she breathed - that she just forgot her phone in the chaos that followed.
And now it’s staring at you on the kitchen counter, and you know you should resist, know you should just pretend that you had never seen it, know you should just walk away.
But you were never that good at resisting temptation in the first place, and so you pick up the phone. Just one look, you convince yourself, just one look at the texts messages, that’s it, then you’ll put it down, you’ll pretend you never saw her phone. Just one look.
There’s a reason curiosity killed the cat though, and now that you’re reading the texts, you can’t seem to put them down.
There is nothing explicit in her outbox, but there’s a part of you that wishes the contrary. You wish Dianna had laid out in detail the graphic things she wants to do to Lea’s body because that would be easier to take than the subtle hints of a conversation you were not privy to and yet you find yourself understanding anyway.
You want to stop, you shouldn’t be doing this to Dianna, you shouldn’t really be doing this to yourself either, but you can’t stop yourself. Just one look, you tell yourself, just one look at the pictures, just to know. That’s it. Just one look.
There aren’t any explicit pictures, but Dianna is too private, too cautious, to be caught with something like that on her phone. You scroll through the pictures, but there’s nothing to suggest she is having an affair with Lea.
And yet somehow you’re even more convinced she is.
& & &
You know Dianna is home because her car is in the garage but you can’t find her anywhere in the house.
It’s only when you step into the back yard that you can make out the two figures in the pool. Dianna is there, and based on the mass of hair, you’d guess that Lea is the other figure. You hover under the cover of the darkness, just watching them. They haven’t noticed you yet and you make no effort to alert them to your presence.
You don’t quite know what you are looking at, except that you can’t look away.
You take a step or two closer, trying to make out their hushed whispers.
“I love the way you feel against me,” Dianna murmurs, and her voice is so low, so husky, she hasn’t sounded like that when she talked to you in months.
Lea doesn’t respond verbally - you know first hand how hard it is to formulate words when Dianna is talking to you like that - but she leans back slightly, running her hand through Dianna’s hair.
“This could be so easy,” she says quietly, “you and I. It could be so easy.”
“It could,” Dianna agrees, and you wonder if this is it, this is the moment when Dianna finally chooses Lea over you.
“Maybe in another lifetime, huh,” Lea muses. “Everything would be so much simpler in another lifetime.”
Dianna ducks her head, and you assume she’s just breathing in Lea’s scent. You feel that you are on the verge of witnessing something very special, very intimate. You walk quietly back into the house. You don’t think you can take watching them together anymore.
The Scotch doesn’t bring you as much comfort as you thought it would.
& & &
You have trouble falling asleep that night. You hear Dianna come back into the house, and the smell of chlorine takes over her side of the bed. It’s comfort in a manner that it probably shouldn’t be. You just like knowing she’s there, instead of having left with Lea.
She brushes her lips against your forehead, and it takes all of your concentration to pretend to still be asleep. You want to cherish this moment forever, when it feels that despite everything, she really is choosing you over Lea.
But then she gets up from the bed, and you hear voices coming from the living room, and you realize you were wrong in your original assessment. Lea never left, and Dianna never chose you over her best friend.
You fall asleep listening to words you can’t quite make out.
& & &
“You have to pick me.”
You don’t mean to blurt it out like to her in the middle of the red carpet at the “I Am Number Four” premiere, but there’s too much adrenaline and emotions rushing through your body to think rationally.
Dianna’s body stiffens instantly, and you know she heard you.
“Please,” you beg quietly, “you have to pick me, I’ll do anything, just please, pick me. I love you, you have to pick me, I love you so much…”
I love you more than Lea does, is what you want to say. I would never choose someone else over you, you want to tell her, and Lea is constantly choosing Theo over you, I would never do that to you, please pick me…
You have a whole speech planned out, a whole argument meant to persuade her that she belongs with you, that the two of you could build a life together. The words are there, you could say them if you want. You have a whole speech planned out, and you’re about to say it, you really are, but then you notice she’s wearing Lea’s ring again.
Dianna doesn’t say if she picks you, and you drop it for the rest of the night.
& & &
It’s taken you a while, but you’ve gradually been able to tell the difference between when Dianna is being Dianna and when Dianna is being Quinn. It’s a subtle change - Dianna is a little more confident when she is Quinn - and for the most part, you let it slide.
It’s not like Dianna is suffering from a split personality, it’s just that she finds some things easier to deal with as Quinn than as Dianna. You know, for instance, that when photographers get a little too rough, she taps into the part of her that is the head cheerleader, and it gives her enough strength and courage to deal with the constant onslaught of flashes going off in her face.
But then one day Dianna comes home from set, but it’s not Dianna in front of you, it’s Quinn.
“This isn’t easy for me,” she begins, and you just wish Dianna was having this conversation instead of Quinn.
“I love you,” you tell her. “Why can’t you just love me back?”
“If love was enough…” She falters slightly, Dianna slipping in through the cracks before Quinn takes control again. “If love was enough, it’d be you. It’d be you every time… I wouldn’t even hesitate.”
“But it can be,” you plead, “it can be enough, we can make it, I swear. I can change for you, if that’s what it takes.”
“They make me better,” she says quietly. “You get that, don’t you? Being around someone and they make you better? That’s what they do for me. They saved me. She saved me.”
“It’s not that I don’t love you enough to make it work,” she continues, and you’re suddenly not sure if you’re talking to Quinn or Dianna or a hybrid of both. “It’s just that I love them too much.”
“But it’s always been you,” you argue. “It’s always been you for me, can they say the same? Can you really look me in the eyes and tell me Lea will never leave you for Broadway? Or that one day Heather won’t say, enough is enough and will just walk out of your life? Can you guarantee me Cory will never choose Hollywood over Glee?”
“I can’t,” she sighs. “I can’t tell you that. And you’re right. Maybe one day Lea will decide that she loves Broadway more than me. But in the here and now, we are the ones she loves the most.”
“She doesn’t love you like I do!” You exclaim.
Dianna takes a step back. Then another, and another, and another, until she is at the door.
“It’s a different kind of love,” she tells you. “That’s the problem. It’s a different kind of love.”
The door shuts quietly behind her.
Disclaimers:
- Don't own Glee and am in no affiliated with the show or the actors
- Title is taken from the song "Broken Strings" by James Morrison
- Special thank you to Erika for looking it over
Author: memoryofamemory
Rating: R for implied situations
Pairing: Lea/Dianna, Dianna/Alex Pettyfer, implied Lea/Theo
Summery: "The problem with new beginnings is they require for something else to end." (Gossip Girl) Alex Pettyfer watches from the outside as his relationship with Dianna falls apart. The cause? Lea Michele.
Out of the whole cast, Lea Michele is the one Dianna tells you about the least.
She talks about her close friendship with Chris, about how lucky Glee is to have Amber, about how in many ways Naya is the show’s best kept secret. She tells you about Cory and the pranks he plays on everyone, about how different the show would be if Mark hadn’t auditioned, about how Heather makes her want to be a better dancer. They are a close group, and although they try their very best, you still felt like an interloper every time you visit Dianna on set.
“You can’t fake that kind of friendship,” Dianna had once told you, and you see the truth in those words.
You can’t deny the way Dianna’s face lights up when one of the cast members walks into her trailer, or the way her smile is just a little bit brighter when you’re both out one day and one of them calls. They make her day better just by being in it, and you have come to accept that.
And yet, she rarely talks to you about Lea.
You downplay it at first, choosing to believe that the rumors of Lea being a diva were true. Lea is the complete opposite of Dianna, it’s natural, expected even, that their personalities would clash. Dianna is soft-spoken, polite, a blend of Californian and Southern charm; Lea is ambitious, a New Yorker by blood who believes the stage is hers by right. They have no choice but to be fighting, or so you convince yourself.
But you have trouble justifying the way Dianna looks at her, because it’s not the look of someone who hates their cast mate. There is no look of jealousy, or anger, or bitterness, or resentment. It is a look of longing. It is the look of someone who had it all but had it taken away from them, and is now forced to look at it from the outside.
You ignore the voice in your head telling you that in all the time you’ve been involved, Dianna has never looked at you the way she looks at Lea Michele.
& & &
Dianna comes home in the middle of the night, drunk and smelling of a perfume that isn’t hers. You want to ask her what she’s doing, it is completely out of character for her to come home this intoxicated, and this early in the morning.
“I just want to forget,” she murmurs, crushing her lips against yours before you have a chance to say anything. “That’s all I want to do, Alex, I just want to forget.”
There’s a part of you that wants to resist her, that wants to step back and figure out what’s bothering her, but there’s another part, mainly her really, that’s pressing up against you, and you were never good at resisting temptation in the first place.
She leaves before you wake up, her scent lingering on your sheets. You stare at where she was, still trying to understand her long after she’s left. Later, your publicist calls and asks if you’ve seen the news. You tell her you haven’t, and turn on the TV, wondering if it has anything to do with Dianna. Rumors of Lea Michele’s engagement to her boyfriend dominate the wires.
You try to convince yourself the two events are unrelated.
& & &
Moments like this, when you’re at a ski resort and the snow is falling outside, this is when you believe in soul mates, in being with someone for the rest of your life. You’re with Dianna, and that’s all you need. Here, in the mountains, you feel like nothing else matters.
Either no one recognizes you at the resort, or the most likely scenario, no one really cares that you are here. You get the odd glance, and occasionally people look at Dianna for a little too long, but it’s more out of misplaced curiosity than anything else.
You manage to find a quiet little restaurant, secluded and intimate, exactly the type that Dianna likes. You take her there and she smiles at you like she’s proud of you for remembering the little details, and all you can think of is, this girl has got to stay in my life.
“Nice ring,” the waiter tells Dianna, and she smiles before looking away.
“Thank you,” she says. “It has a huge sentimental value for me.”
You glance at her hand, suddenly confused. She isn’t wearing the ring you gave her. You struggle to remember when you’ve seen it before, and then it comes to you. Lea had given it to her.
& & &
You should know better than to ask, but you were never that good about thinking things through. Truth be told, you just wanted to know. You were so certain that the conversation would go your way. You should have known better than to question that kind of friendship.
“What’s going on with you and Lea?”
“It’s complicated.”
You want to argue that it isn’t; in fact, it should actually be really fucking simple. You want her to tell you Lea is just her best friend, only a cast mate, that she’s never been involved with her. You want her to claim Lea was just someone she lived with for six months, nothing more. You want her to yell at you, demand that you stop being so absurd.
You’ll take anything other than “it’s complicated.” Because those two words mean everything. They mean there was something there, and you don’t know if there still is, in some ways Dianna doesn’t know either.
If it were over, she would have said so. But she didn’t.
And now you don’t know where you stand anymore.
& & &
You’ve taken to watching her when she’s around Lea.
You don’t know why you keep doing this to yourself, you’re only setting yourself up for heartbreak, but you can’t stop. There’s a part of you that just wants to know, just wants to understand what the intrigue is with someone who is the complete opposite of Dianna.
You want to know why she looks at Lea like the brunette’s smile is the best part of her day and why she never looks at you like that.
You want to look away when you see how Dianna’s eyes darken with something she shouldn’t be feeling for her best friend and the only comfort you can find is that it hurts Dianna even more that she isn’t supposed to touch her.
You’re both miserable in this relationship, lusting after someone you can’t have, but at least you’re miserable together.
& & &
There are marks on her body and on her neck when you both get home from the Golden Globes.
You weren’t the one who left them on her.
Neither of you mention it.
& & &
The next morning, you see the video on Hollywood Extra and feel sick as you watch Dianna physically restrain herself from drunkenly molesting Lea Michele on camera.
It’s not fair.
You want to lash out, demand how she could do this to you, you thought she loved you, you thought you were going to spend the rest of your lives together… You want to yell, but instead, all you can do is watch in horrified silence as the interview goes on, and the lust in Dianna’s eyes has never been clearer to you.
She’s drunk, you justify to yourself, Dianna sometimes gets like this when she’s drunk. It doesn’t mean she actually slept with Lea during the Golden Globes.
But then you remember. You remember the marks on her body, marks you hadn’t left. You remember how you had gone looking for her after the awards show ended but couldn’t find her.
You remember how happy she looked when she left the event.
The nausea comes back in full force.
& & &
“I love you,” you tell her one night. “Do you know that?”
“Of course I know,” she says. “And I love you, too.”
“Do you?” You press. “Do you really? Am I the only one you love?”
“Yes!” She exclaims, becoming frustrated with you. “Alex, where is this coming from?”
“I know you have feelings for me,” you say quietly. “But do you have feelings for Lea, as well?”
“Alex…” She trails off.
“Because it’s ok, you know, if you do,” you rush. “I’m not asking you to choose, I’m really not. I know what you had with Lea, it’s complicated, you told me so yourself. And, and I get that, I really do understand.”
“It’s just…” You hesitate. “I know you love Lea, too, and that’s ok, it’s ok if you love two people at once. But do you love me more than you love her?”
Dianna hesitates. She doesn’t answer immediately. She doesn’t have to. Her silence says it for her.
“It’s a different kind of love,” she eventually settles on. “You can’t really compare the two.”
You notice she never actually said if she loved you the most.
& & &
It was just supposed to be a meet and greet. It was just supposed to be a simple fan event, something to promote the upcoming movie.
It was supposed to be about you and Dianna, about “I Am Number Four”, and the chemistry you two share. There’s a part of you that wants to believe the romance between John and Sarah is real because what you feel for Dianna is completely pure.
You don’t hear the original question, but you hear Dianna’s answer. You hear how her voice becomes a little lower, more intimate; you see how shy she becomes, as if she’s sharing a secret with the fan, and you know, without having to be next to Dianna, that the question somehow involved Lea.
You resent the way her whole face lights up when she talks about her coworker, and you resent the way she never looks like that when she’s talking about you.
& & &
You begin to notice a shift in Dianna’s relationship with Lea.
Like how she looks at her costar for a second too long to be appropriate. Like how now Lea is beginning to look back. Dianna hasn’t realized that yet, but it’s just a matter of time before she notices it.
You begin to notice how Dianna craves physical contact with Lea. How a simple touch on the arm has transformed into a caress and how that transformed into a hug, and how the hug now lasts for too long for them to be called just friends.
It used to just be Dianna. It used to just be Dianna pining after someone she couldn’t have anymore, someone who had moved on to someone else -someone better? But something has changed, and now Lea is starting to want her again, and that terrifies you.
It was easier to cope with Dianna’s lust towards her costar when the attraction was one-sided.
I’m losing her, you think desperately. I’m losing her and I don’t know how to stop it.
That night, you take Dianna out to an expensive restaurant in the hopes of winning her over again. For the most part, it works, but then Lea calls just as you’re getting ready to leave.
Dianna looks like the call was the best part of her night.
& & &
Another day, another “I Am Number Four” event.
You take a moment, sitting backstage, watching as Dianna mingles with the staff. She is a private person by nature but is also incredibly professional, and you know what you’re seeing right now, the networking, is a mixture of both.
“Everything ok?” Teresa asks as she sits down next to you.
“I’m fine,” you mope, still watching her. Teresa doesn’t say anything for a while, just sits there with you, and you appreciate the quietness and the company.
“It’s like she’s there but she’s not,” you say quietly, looking at the ground. From the corner of your eye you see Teresa turn to look at you. “Like she’s there, she’s with me, but there’s a part of her that hears someone else’s voice when I’m talking. Like she’s imaging someone else saying they love her, but there’s a part of her that’s compromising, or settling with me.”
“She does love you,” Teresa tells you. “You know that. Anyone can see that she loves you.”
“I know,” you sigh. “I know that.”
“So what’s the problem?” She asks.
For the longest time, you don’t say anything. It’s not that you can’t find the right words - they’re sitting there at the tip of your tongue - but rather because you don’t want to accept the reality of your relationship with Dianna if you do say them out loud.
“I’m not the only one she loves,” you answer eventually. “And I’m not even convinced I’m the one she loves the most. That’s the problem.”
& & &
You kiss Dianna hello one night when she gets back from set and her lip gloss tastes different.
You pretend not to notice how she keeps her sweatshirt on even though it’s close to 70 degrees outside. You pretend not to notice how her hair is a little too messy, or how the buckle of her belt is just one notch too loose, or how the watch she is wearing isn’t hers.
You pretend not to notice and just like the night of the Golden Globes, Dianna doesn’t say anything. You’re actually ok with that.
After all, her silence doesn’t hurt you as much as the truth would.
& & &
You don’t know how you ended up at a bar with Lea Michele’s boyfriend, but you’re both sitting on bar stools staring at the almost empty Scotch bottle as if it holds the solution to all your problems.
You’ve met a couple of times, simply because when you’re both involved with Glee cast members sometimes you end up at the same events, but you would hardly describe the two of you as friends. Usually Dianna and Lea are there to act as buffers, and you realize, not for the first time, just how much easier life is when Dianna is around.
“Sometimes I think you have it the easiest out of all of us,” Theo says quietly, still staring at the Scotch bottle.
“What do you mean?” You ask gruffly. “My girlfriend spends her day on set lusting after your girlfriend. How does that mean I have it the easiest?”
“Dianna has always wanted Lea,” he says eventually. “That much hasn’t changed in years. Lea has just always been there. It’s simple, really. Whoever Dianna is with just has to learn to share.”
“Isn’t that the same with you and Lea?” You press, annoyed at how simple he is making all of this.
“There was a time when Lea wanted only me,” Theo snipes back. “There was a time when I was enough. I was the only one Lea wanted. But now…” He trails off.
Neither of you say anything. The Scotch burns your throat. You welcome the sensation. It’s better than the bitter loneliness that’s taking over your soul.
“But now she wants Dianna again,” Theo continues. “And the worse part is Lea doesn’t have to say anything. She doesn’t even have to do anything, but I’ve known her long enough that I can tell when she’s dreaming of someone else.”
“I don’t even know if they’re sleeping with each other,” you confess. “I want to believe Dianna wouldn’t do that to me, or even that Lea wouldn’t do that to you. But sometimes, Dianna comes back from set, and she smells of someone else’s perfume, or her kiss just tastes a little different, and I just know, something happened. But then there’s other times, when she just looks at me, and I try to convince myself that as long as she looks at me like that everything will be ok.”
“Her smile is brighter when she’s talking to Dianna,” Theo tells you, his voice completely void of emotion. “I would give anything for her to smile at me like that again. It’s not really asking for much, is it? I’m not being unreasonable; I just want her to look at me again.”
“It sucks, doesn’t it,” you drawl, not bothering to hide the bitterness in your voice. “Knowing the girl you love is falling for someone else.”
“They don’t tell you that,” he says. “That falling in love means learning to share with someone else.”
Theo doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even do that much except to signal the bartender for a refill.
The Scotch continues to burn your throat. It still beats the loneliness.
& & &
It’s an accident.
You weren’t consciously looking for Dianna’s phone, you really weren’t. But she had been in such a rush to get out the door to meet the cast for a dinner celebration - “cast only,” she breathed - that she just forgot her phone in the chaos that followed.
And now it’s staring at you on the kitchen counter, and you know you should resist, know you should just pretend that you had never seen it, know you should just walk away.
But you were never that good at resisting temptation in the first place, and so you pick up the phone. Just one look, you convince yourself, just one look at the texts messages, that’s it, then you’ll put it down, you’ll pretend you never saw her phone. Just one look.
There’s a reason curiosity killed the cat though, and now that you’re reading the texts, you can’t seem to put them down.
There is nothing explicit in her outbox, but there’s a part of you that wishes the contrary. You wish Dianna had laid out in detail the graphic things she wants to do to Lea’s body because that would be easier to take than the subtle hints of a conversation you were not privy to and yet you find yourself understanding anyway.
You want to stop, you shouldn’t be doing this to Dianna, you shouldn’t really be doing this to yourself either, but you can’t stop yourself. Just one look, you tell yourself, just one look at the pictures, just to know. That’s it. Just one look.
There aren’t any explicit pictures, but Dianna is too private, too cautious, to be caught with something like that on her phone. You scroll through the pictures, but there’s nothing to suggest she is having an affair with Lea.
And yet somehow you’re even more convinced she is.
& & &
You know Dianna is home because her car is in the garage but you can’t find her anywhere in the house.
It’s only when you step into the back yard that you can make out the two figures in the pool. Dianna is there, and based on the mass of hair, you’d guess that Lea is the other figure. You hover under the cover of the darkness, just watching them. They haven’t noticed you yet and you make no effort to alert them to your presence.
You don’t quite know what you are looking at, except that you can’t look away.
You take a step or two closer, trying to make out their hushed whispers.
“I love the way you feel against me,” Dianna murmurs, and her voice is so low, so husky, she hasn’t sounded like that when she talked to you in months.
Lea doesn’t respond verbally - you know first hand how hard it is to formulate words when Dianna is talking to you like that - but she leans back slightly, running her hand through Dianna’s hair.
“This could be so easy,” she says quietly, “you and I. It could be so easy.”
“It could,” Dianna agrees, and you wonder if this is it, this is the moment when Dianna finally chooses Lea over you.
“Maybe in another lifetime, huh,” Lea muses. “Everything would be so much simpler in another lifetime.”
Dianna ducks her head, and you assume she’s just breathing in Lea’s scent. You feel that you are on the verge of witnessing something very special, very intimate. You walk quietly back into the house. You don’t think you can take watching them together anymore.
The Scotch doesn’t bring you as much comfort as you thought it would.
& & &
You have trouble falling asleep that night. You hear Dianna come back into the house, and the smell of chlorine takes over her side of the bed. It’s comfort in a manner that it probably shouldn’t be. You just like knowing she’s there, instead of having left with Lea.
She brushes her lips against your forehead, and it takes all of your concentration to pretend to still be asleep. You want to cherish this moment forever, when it feels that despite everything, she really is choosing you over Lea.
But then she gets up from the bed, and you hear voices coming from the living room, and you realize you were wrong in your original assessment. Lea never left, and Dianna never chose you over her best friend.
You fall asleep listening to words you can’t quite make out.
& & &
“You have to pick me.”
You don’t mean to blurt it out like to her in the middle of the red carpet at the “I Am Number Four” premiere, but there’s too much adrenaline and emotions rushing through your body to think rationally.
Dianna’s body stiffens instantly, and you know she heard you.
“Please,” you beg quietly, “you have to pick me, I’ll do anything, just please, pick me. I love you, you have to pick me, I love you so much…”
I love you more than Lea does, is what you want to say. I would never choose someone else over you, you want to tell her, and Lea is constantly choosing Theo over you, I would never do that to you, please pick me…
You have a whole speech planned out, a whole argument meant to persuade her that she belongs with you, that the two of you could build a life together. The words are there, you could say them if you want. You have a whole speech planned out, and you’re about to say it, you really are, but then you notice she’s wearing Lea’s ring again.
Dianna doesn’t say if she picks you, and you drop it for the rest of the night.
& & &
It’s taken you a while, but you’ve gradually been able to tell the difference between when Dianna is being Dianna and when Dianna is being Quinn. It’s a subtle change - Dianna is a little more confident when she is Quinn - and for the most part, you let it slide.
It’s not like Dianna is suffering from a split personality, it’s just that she finds some things easier to deal with as Quinn than as Dianna. You know, for instance, that when photographers get a little too rough, she taps into the part of her that is the head cheerleader, and it gives her enough strength and courage to deal with the constant onslaught of flashes going off in her face.
But then one day Dianna comes home from set, but it’s not Dianna in front of you, it’s Quinn.
“This isn’t easy for me,” she begins, and you just wish Dianna was having this conversation instead of Quinn.
“I love you,” you tell her. “Why can’t you just love me back?”
“If love was enough…” She falters slightly, Dianna slipping in through the cracks before Quinn takes control again. “If love was enough, it’d be you. It’d be you every time… I wouldn’t even hesitate.”
“But it can be,” you plead, “it can be enough, we can make it, I swear. I can change for you, if that’s what it takes.”
“They make me better,” she says quietly. “You get that, don’t you? Being around someone and they make you better? That’s what they do for me. They saved me. She saved me.”
“It’s not that I don’t love you enough to make it work,” she continues, and you’re suddenly not sure if you’re talking to Quinn or Dianna or a hybrid of both. “It’s just that I love them too much.”
“But it’s always been you,” you argue. “It’s always been you for me, can they say the same? Can you really look me in the eyes and tell me Lea will never leave you for Broadway? Or that one day Heather won’t say, enough is enough and will just walk out of your life? Can you guarantee me Cory will never choose Hollywood over Glee?”
“I can’t,” she sighs. “I can’t tell you that. And you’re right. Maybe one day Lea will decide that she loves Broadway more than me. But in the here and now, we are the ones she loves the most.”
“She doesn’t love you like I do!” You exclaim.
Dianna takes a step back. Then another, and another, and another, until she is at the door.
“It’s a different kind of love,” she tells you. “That’s the problem. It’s a different kind of love.”
The door shuts quietly behind her.
Disclaimers:
- Don't own Glee and am in no affiliated with the show or the actors
- Title is taken from the song "Broken Strings" by James Morrison
- Special thank you to Erika for looking it over