Ships With Holes Will Sink (Lea/Dianna)
Name: Ships With Holes Will Sink (1/3)
Pairing: Lea/Dianna
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dianna has a significant urge to be anywhere else.
Author's Note: So, guys, I WROTE MY ANGST. There are two more parts, too, so this isn't the only burst of angst you'll get. It isn't a part of the I First Saw You on a Sunday universe, so don't expect marriage woes or anything like that when I say angst. Because I could never write marriage angst for Achele, okay? Okay. Anyway, the title is from We Were Promised Jetpacks, who are an awesome band of Scottish awesomeness.
Things are not going well for Dianna, in general. Currently, she has a hat tucked low and her sunglasses don't seem at all dark enough. She knows that this is necessary, or that several people other than herself think it's necessary. The only person who she cares about doesn't seem to care at all about this, so, she's here. She's stuck here, actually, because Chris drove her here and filled out her paperwork with her mom on the phone and suddenly she's following a woman back to a simple office.
She sits down on the leather couch (her brain adds that it looks like her leather couch, which triggers a tremor down her spine). The woman seems to notice Dianna's slight shake and guides her down onto the couch and looks at her simply, and Dianna does not appreciate that at all.
"So why are you here?" she finally asks, and Dianna just isn't having this.
"Because my co-workers seem to think I'm depressed. The fuck if I know, really," she mutters, looking out the tinted window. It's sitting over the valley, and Dianna would be in awe if the smog weren't hanging around.
"Why do you think you're not depressed?" the woman asks, and Dianna turns to look at her with a glare that she normally reserves for Quinn Fabray, and even then only directed toward one person.
"And please take off your sunglasses," the woman adds, and Dianna takes them off disgustedly and shoves them in her coat.
"I am not depressed because I'm not. I'm not bleeding out in the bathtub, I'm not barfing up everything I eat. I am perfectly fine," she says forcefully, before she realizes that she sounds exactly like her character and tries to figure out how to shut that down before the woman thinks she's a total bitch.
"Why do they think you're depressed?" the woman asks, and Dianna doesn't answer.
//
Amber is the one who drives her the next day, and Dianna still isn't having this. She considers punching Amber and taking over the wheel, but she's pretty sure she would be arrested and then really be psychoanalyzed, so she nixes that thought process and tries to complain as much as possible.
Eventually Amber just turns and looks at her after pulling over to the side of the road, and Dianna looks back, a different hat and a different pair of sunglasses on. Amber doesn't seem to appreciate the sunglasses and pulls them off.
"Girl, you look like you haven't slept in weeks. So either tell us what's up or tell her or something, because you're working yourself to your bone, and you don't look good anymore. Sorry we give a damn about you," she says, and it's right on the verge of shouting, and Dianna has enough of herself firmly intact to realize that she should be chastised. She looks down at the console of Amber's car before looking back up, and it kills her to say it, but she does.
"Nothing's wrong," she stresses and Amber just shakes her head and pulls back onto the road, tossing the sunglasses into her lap.
When they finally get there, Amber just nods to the building and Dianna feels like she should feel guilty, but nothing about her brain waves seem to be working right anymore, so she just goes in and feels blank.
The doctor woman - whose name is Jen, as stressed to Dianna - leads her back and sees the same tremor in Dianna when she sees the couch, just guides her down again.
"You only do that when you come in," she remarks, and Dianna decides that just for that she's not going to meet Jen's eyes all meeting, even if it is two hours long. "Your medical reports mention nothing about low blood pressure or blood sugar. What is it about this room you don't like?" Dianna has to look at Jen for that, because that was pretty smart for a girl who can't figure out that Dianna doesn't think she should be here at all and insists upon trying to make Dianna talk about her imaginary problems.
"It's fine," she mutters, pointedly looking around the room and not looking at the couch she's sitting on.
"So, Dianna," Jen says, jotting something down and looking at her squarely in the eye. "You are on a television show."
Dianna's pretty sure that she didn't say that and neither did Chris because they drove all the way to the edge of the valley so no one would bother her about this, so she just stares at Jen until she clarifies.
"You're recognizable," Jen shrugs, "I've seen the show."
Dianna doesn't want to continue on this track.
"I don't know why this is relevant," she mutters, tugging at her sweatshirt's strings.
"The fact that you claim it isn't relevant points to its relevancy," Jen says, and Dianna decides she's done once more with this.
//
Naya is on 'drive-Dianna-to-life-saving-counselling-she-doesn't-need' duty the next day, and she isn't even pretending she's not pissed.
"Look, Di, we're your friends, and you're treating us like dirt. We don't know what's wrong, and you won't tell us, and when we ask, you act like a bitch, like you're suddenly above us all. Whatever the fuck happened to you? Has made you a worse person. So fix your goddamn self before someone kills you, and do it by telling someone about it. Honesty being the best policy," she's saying, and Dianna is just looking out the window. Normally she'd be entranced by the rain hitting the sidewalk, but right now she's trying to avoid turning on Naya and yelling.
"I mean, what the hell could it be? Did you get your fragile little doe-eyed heart broken? Dianna. Dianna!"
Dianna looks over at her, after they've pulled into the parking lot of the psychologist's and knows her eyes are probably red-rimmed, probably shined with tears, because she isn't made of stone, not like everyone thinks. She feels like an ever-shifting dam, with a crack the size of the one in her heart running down it, the point of weakness constantly shifting, and today, Naya hit it squarely.
"Dianna?" Naya asks, quietly, and Dianna makes a run for it through the pouring rain into the building before Naya can even get a grip on Dianna's cold hand.
Jen doesn't ask why Dianna's breathing so heavily or why she can't stop rubbing at her eyes, not until she leads Dianna into a room and Dianna crashes into the couch, shaking.
Jen doesn't ask, she just hands over a box of tissues and lets Dianna cry, not until Dianna notices the couch she's curled up on.
"This isn't my couch," she mutters, right before another round of sobs overtakes her, and Jen writes something down before she's sliding her chair over to Dianna and hands her a picture of her entire cast.
"Tell me about them," she says, and Dianna takes a sweeping glance over the picture before she can't see straight again, shaking her head and curling into herself tightly, and she's done again.
//
Mark doesn't say anything to her, just grips her hand and she almost rips it away because she can't stand it, but she lets him have his comfort if it makes him feel better. She's more prepared for this meeting, and she didn't have to go in today either, so she doesn't feel so wiped out.
"I'll be here when you're done," is all he says, and Dianna only nods before she gets out of his truck and trudges in, trying to keep her iPhone away from the still-there rain.
She follows Jen down the hallway to the same room as yesterday, and she's lucid enough to say what she had meant to yesterday.
"This isn't your office," she mutters, looking around. Two of the walls are paneled with almost floor-to-ceiling windows, still tinted. Jen nods, looking at Dianna simply.
"It's extra. We sometimes use it when we want the patients away from our offices for whatever reason. It's more calming, at the very least," she says, and Dianna cringes at the word patient, because it's so wrong, and she can't help but say that.
"I don't need to be here," she says, looking Jen in the eye. The other woman doesn't say anything, just pulls out the same picture and hands it to Dianna.
"Prove it to me," she whispers, and Dianna holds the picture like it's a sparkler and it's the fourth of July, like she did as a child, looking at it with awe and still with trepidation.
"Well. Um, Jane is hilarious," she finally starts, and Jen nods, her head on her chin.
"Who of these people know you're here?" Jen asks, cutting to her own special goddamn point.
"Mark drove me here today," she says, her white fingers tracing his outline, "and Naya drove me yesterday, and Amber before that, and Chris before that. Jenna and Kevin and Cory all know, too. And Heather, but she isn't in this picture. And...yeah," she says, handing the picture over, wanting it out of her hands because she can feel the heat coming down quickly and she doesn't want to get burned more than she already is.
Jen looks down at the picture, and runs her hands along the people. Dianna prays she doesn't notice who she left out.
Jen doesn't notice, thank the lord, and says this: "I want to meet them."
//
They're all in Mark's truck now, with Chris following behind, and Dianna is having regrets about grudgingly agreeing to allowing half of her cast into her psychologist's office. They treat it seriously, and Cory's the one holding her hand when they walk in, his grip loose enough that she doesn't feel pressured by it, but there enough that she feels like she could start going the wrong direction and he'd pull her back.
Jen leads them all to the same room, the one she and Dianna have spent the last two days in. But Dianna notices the difference immediately, her eyes catching on the couch, which looks like it's been dragged into the bigger room from Jen's office, and she feels the shake run through her, but Jen doesn't get up and sit her down, Cory pulls her down and remarks that it looks like her couch.
"In the past few days Dianna has been coming here, she's made it especially obvious that she doesn't believe she should be here," Jen says once everyone in the room is settled in various places. Dianna can hear Mark snort, sees Naya roll her eyes and finally watches Cory as he says, "Please," like he's an elderly black woman.
"Okay, Cory, right?" Jen says, sliding her chair up to face him, tugging his hand away from Dianna's and gripping them in her own. "Why do you think Dianna needs to be here?" she asks, and Dianna has an urge to make a break for the door, but Kevin is sitting against it, arms crossed.
"Because she's different," he finally says, and half the room nods. Jen notices this and rolls backwards toward the far window opposite the leather couch.
"Different from what?" Jen asks, and Dianna feels like her head is being wrapped up by a snake, it hurts so much. She looks down at her now-shaking hand and wishes the person she really wanted to hold it would burst through the door and hold her.
"Different from what she used to be. After the award season and her trip to Europe, she's looked like...this. Di, you just don't seem so happy anymore, like you're running on fumes," Heather is saying, and Dianna doesn't feel like she needs to look because her chest is tight.
"You snap at random people around the studio, you hardly talk about octopi anymore, and you just look...sad," Jenna adds, and Jen pulls out a piece of paper from a stack, looking at it.
"You look upset everywhere you go, on set or at your apartment," Mark says, and everyone looks over at Jen or at Dianna and neither of them acknowledge the attention.
"Cory," Jen finally says, "Did you say the couch you're sitting on looks like Dianna's?" and Cory nods, and Jen looks over at Dianna with a strange look on her face.
"Dianna, every time you see that couch, specifically, you start shaking."
The room is silent for a moment, while Dianna and Jen just stare at each other, Dianna feeling the pressure tightening almost too much, too much for her to breathe around. Naya suddenly starts shaking her head and stands up, pulling the sheet from Jen's hands and looking down at it with confusion.
"Di," she says, kneeling in front of Dianna, who sees the picture on the sheet clearly and starts shaking, but this time it doesn't stop. "Di, I asked you whether your heart was broken and you cried," she says, looking at Dianna seriously. Behind Naya, Jen is looking with interest at the interplay, and the entire cast is mesmerized.
"When did Lea move out?" she asks to no one in particular, and even though no one answers, Dianna starts shaking even more.
"Dianna," Cory asks next to her, fully facing her, grabbing her hands off of her lap. "Lea?" he says, though it comes out more like a question. Dianna starts shaking her head violently, before Jen is pushing through the suddenly-there crowd, dragging Cory's hands away from her again.
"Dianna, why are you here?" she asks, echoing her very first statement upon meeting Dianna, and this time, Dianna has an answer.
"I ruined everything," she finally whispers, before doubling over and bursting into tears, shaking and moaning, while everyone moves in around her to comfort her, but she keeps saying it despite the soothing words, the picture of her and Lea dropping from her hands to the floor.
"I ruined everything."
Pairing: Lea/Dianna
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dianna has a significant urge to be anywhere else.
Author's Note: So, guys, I WROTE MY ANGST. There are two more parts, too, so this isn't the only burst of angst you'll get. It isn't a part of the I First Saw You on a Sunday universe, so don't expect marriage woes or anything like that when I say angst. Because I could never write marriage angst for Achele, okay? Okay. Anyway, the title is from We Were Promised Jetpacks, who are an awesome band of Scottish awesomeness.
Things are not going well for Dianna, in general. Currently, she has a hat tucked low and her sunglasses don't seem at all dark enough. She knows that this is necessary, or that several people other than herself think it's necessary. The only person who she cares about doesn't seem to care at all about this, so, she's here. She's stuck here, actually, because Chris drove her here and filled out her paperwork with her mom on the phone and suddenly she's following a woman back to a simple office.
She sits down on the leather couch (her brain adds that it looks like her leather couch, which triggers a tremor down her spine). The woman seems to notice Dianna's slight shake and guides her down onto the couch and looks at her simply, and Dianna does not appreciate that at all.
"So why are you here?" she finally asks, and Dianna just isn't having this.
"Because my co-workers seem to think I'm depressed. The fuck if I know, really," she mutters, looking out the tinted window. It's sitting over the valley, and Dianna would be in awe if the smog weren't hanging around.
"Why do you think you're not depressed?" the woman asks, and Dianna turns to look at her with a glare that she normally reserves for Quinn Fabray, and even then only directed toward one person.
"And please take off your sunglasses," the woman adds, and Dianna takes them off disgustedly and shoves them in her coat.
"I am not depressed because I'm not. I'm not bleeding out in the bathtub, I'm not barfing up everything I eat. I am perfectly fine," she says forcefully, before she realizes that she sounds exactly like her character and tries to figure out how to shut that down before the woman thinks she's a total bitch.
"Why do they think you're depressed?" the woman asks, and Dianna doesn't answer.
//
Amber is the one who drives her the next day, and Dianna still isn't having this. She considers punching Amber and taking over the wheel, but she's pretty sure she would be arrested and then really be psychoanalyzed, so she nixes that thought process and tries to complain as much as possible.
Eventually Amber just turns and looks at her after pulling over to the side of the road, and Dianna looks back, a different hat and a different pair of sunglasses on. Amber doesn't seem to appreciate the sunglasses and pulls them off.
"Girl, you look like you haven't slept in weeks. So either tell us what's up or tell her or something, because you're working yourself to your bone, and you don't look good anymore. Sorry we give a damn about you," she says, and it's right on the verge of shouting, and Dianna has enough of herself firmly intact to realize that she should be chastised. She looks down at the console of Amber's car before looking back up, and it kills her to say it, but she does.
"Nothing's wrong," she stresses and Amber just shakes her head and pulls back onto the road, tossing the sunglasses into her lap.
When they finally get there, Amber just nods to the building and Dianna feels like she should feel guilty, but nothing about her brain waves seem to be working right anymore, so she just goes in and feels blank.
The doctor woman - whose name is Jen, as stressed to Dianna - leads her back and sees the same tremor in Dianna when she sees the couch, just guides her down again.
"You only do that when you come in," she remarks, and Dianna decides that just for that she's not going to meet Jen's eyes all meeting, even if it is two hours long. "Your medical reports mention nothing about low blood pressure or blood sugar. What is it about this room you don't like?" Dianna has to look at Jen for that, because that was pretty smart for a girl who can't figure out that Dianna doesn't think she should be here at all and insists upon trying to make Dianna talk about her imaginary problems.
"It's fine," she mutters, pointedly looking around the room and not looking at the couch she's sitting on.
"So, Dianna," Jen says, jotting something down and looking at her squarely in the eye. "You are on a television show."
Dianna's pretty sure that she didn't say that and neither did Chris because they drove all the way to the edge of the valley so no one would bother her about this, so she just stares at Jen until she clarifies.
"You're recognizable," Jen shrugs, "I've seen the show."
Dianna doesn't want to continue on this track.
"I don't know why this is relevant," she mutters, tugging at her sweatshirt's strings.
"The fact that you claim it isn't relevant points to its relevancy," Jen says, and Dianna decides she's done once more with this.
//
Naya is on 'drive-Dianna-to-life-saving-counselling-she-doesn't-need' duty the next day, and she isn't even pretending she's not pissed.
"Look, Di, we're your friends, and you're treating us like dirt. We don't know what's wrong, and you won't tell us, and when we ask, you act like a bitch, like you're suddenly above us all. Whatever the fuck happened to you? Has made you a worse person. So fix your goddamn self before someone kills you, and do it by telling someone about it. Honesty being the best policy," she's saying, and Dianna is just looking out the window. Normally she'd be entranced by the rain hitting the sidewalk, but right now she's trying to avoid turning on Naya and yelling.
"I mean, what the hell could it be? Did you get your fragile little doe-eyed heart broken? Dianna. Dianna!"
Dianna looks over at her, after they've pulled into the parking lot of the psychologist's and knows her eyes are probably red-rimmed, probably shined with tears, because she isn't made of stone, not like everyone thinks. She feels like an ever-shifting dam, with a crack the size of the one in her heart running down it, the point of weakness constantly shifting, and today, Naya hit it squarely.
"Dianna?" Naya asks, quietly, and Dianna makes a run for it through the pouring rain into the building before Naya can even get a grip on Dianna's cold hand.
Jen doesn't ask why Dianna's breathing so heavily or why she can't stop rubbing at her eyes, not until she leads Dianna into a room and Dianna crashes into the couch, shaking.
Jen doesn't ask, she just hands over a box of tissues and lets Dianna cry, not until Dianna notices the couch she's curled up on.
"This isn't my couch," she mutters, right before another round of sobs overtakes her, and Jen writes something down before she's sliding her chair over to Dianna and hands her a picture of her entire cast.
"Tell me about them," she says, and Dianna takes a sweeping glance over the picture before she can't see straight again, shaking her head and curling into herself tightly, and she's done again.
//
Mark doesn't say anything to her, just grips her hand and she almost rips it away because she can't stand it, but she lets him have his comfort if it makes him feel better. She's more prepared for this meeting, and she didn't have to go in today either, so she doesn't feel so wiped out.
"I'll be here when you're done," is all he says, and Dianna only nods before she gets out of his truck and trudges in, trying to keep her iPhone away from the still-there rain.
She follows Jen down the hallway to the same room as yesterday, and she's lucid enough to say what she had meant to yesterday.
"This isn't your office," she mutters, looking around. Two of the walls are paneled with almost floor-to-ceiling windows, still tinted. Jen nods, looking at Dianna simply.
"It's extra. We sometimes use it when we want the patients away from our offices for whatever reason. It's more calming, at the very least," she says, and Dianna cringes at the word patient, because it's so wrong, and she can't help but say that.
"I don't need to be here," she says, looking Jen in the eye. The other woman doesn't say anything, just pulls out the same picture and hands it to Dianna.
"Prove it to me," she whispers, and Dianna holds the picture like it's a sparkler and it's the fourth of July, like she did as a child, looking at it with awe and still with trepidation.
"Well. Um, Jane is hilarious," she finally starts, and Jen nods, her head on her chin.
"Who of these people know you're here?" Jen asks, cutting to her own special goddamn point.
"Mark drove me here today," she says, her white fingers tracing his outline, "and Naya drove me yesterday, and Amber before that, and Chris before that. Jenna and Kevin and Cory all know, too. And Heather, but she isn't in this picture. And...yeah," she says, handing the picture over, wanting it out of her hands because she can feel the heat coming down quickly and she doesn't want to get burned more than she already is.
Jen looks down at the picture, and runs her hands along the people. Dianna prays she doesn't notice who she left out.
Jen doesn't notice, thank the lord, and says this: "I want to meet them."
//
They're all in Mark's truck now, with Chris following behind, and Dianna is having regrets about grudgingly agreeing to allowing half of her cast into her psychologist's office. They treat it seriously, and Cory's the one holding her hand when they walk in, his grip loose enough that she doesn't feel pressured by it, but there enough that she feels like she could start going the wrong direction and he'd pull her back.
Jen leads them all to the same room, the one she and Dianna have spent the last two days in. But Dianna notices the difference immediately, her eyes catching on the couch, which looks like it's been dragged into the bigger room from Jen's office, and she feels the shake run through her, but Jen doesn't get up and sit her down, Cory pulls her down and remarks that it looks like her couch.
"In the past few days Dianna has been coming here, she's made it especially obvious that she doesn't believe she should be here," Jen says once everyone in the room is settled in various places. Dianna can hear Mark snort, sees Naya roll her eyes and finally watches Cory as he says, "Please," like he's an elderly black woman.
"Okay, Cory, right?" Jen says, sliding her chair up to face him, tugging his hand away from Dianna's and gripping them in her own. "Why do you think Dianna needs to be here?" she asks, and Dianna has an urge to make a break for the door, but Kevin is sitting against it, arms crossed.
"Because she's different," he finally says, and half the room nods. Jen notices this and rolls backwards toward the far window opposite the leather couch.
"Different from what?" Jen asks, and Dianna feels like her head is being wrapped up by a snake, it hurts so much. She looks down at her now-shaking hand and wishes the person she really wanted to hold it would burst through the door and hold her.
"Different from what she used to be. After the award season and her trip to Europe, she's looked like...this. Di, you just don't seem so happy anymore, like you're running on fumes," Heather is saying, and Dianna doesn't feel like she needs to look because her chest is tight.
"You snap at random people around the studio, you hardly talk about octopi anymore, and you just look...sad," Jenna adds, and Jen pulls out a piece of paper from a stack, looking at it.
"You look upset everywhere you go, on set or at your apartment," Mark says, and everyone looks over at Jen or at Dianna and neither of them acknowledge the attention.
"Cory," Jen finally says, "Did you say the couch you're sitting on looks like Dianna's?" and Cory nods, and Jen looks over at Dianna with a strange look on her face.
"Dianna, every time you see that couch, specifically, you start shaking."
The room is silent for a moment, while Dianna and Jen just stare at each other, Dianna feeling the pressure tightening almost too much, too much for her to breathe around. Naya suddenly starts shaking her head and stands up, pulling the sheet from Jen's hands and looking down at it with confusion.
"Di," she says, kneeling in front of Dianna, who sees the picture on the sheet clearly and starts shaking, but this time it doesn't stop. "Di, I asked you whether your heart was broken and you cried," she says, looking at Dianna seriously. Behind Naya, Jen is looking with interest at the interplay, and the entire cast is mesmerized.
"When did Lea move out?" she asks to no one in particular, and even though no one answers, Dianna starts shaking even more.
"Dianna," Cory asks next to her, fully facing her, grabbing her hands off of her lap. "Lea?" he says, though it comes out more like a question. Dianna starts shaking her head violently, before Jen is pushing through the suddenly-there crowd, dragging Cory's hands away from her again.
"Dianna, why are you here?" she asks, echoing her very first statement upon meeting Dianna, and this time, Dianna has an answer.
"I ruined everything," she finally whispers, before doubling over and bursting into tears, shaking and moaning, while everyone moves in around her to comfort her, but she keeps saying it despite the soothing words, the picture of her and Lea dropping from her hands to the floor.
"I ruined everything."