36 Questions: A Joanne Fanfiction

Question Twenty-One:

What roles do love and affection play in your life?

They had survived the samba, just. In fact, by the Saturday it would have been impossible to tell just how much the pair were struggling throughout the week. Meanwhile, Dianne's feelings for Joe were only multiplying. She found herself daydreaming about him, imagining his reaction to every little event, going to sleep only to be consumed by thoughts of him. It was no use. However much she tried to push these feelings aside, spending almost all her time with him certainly wasn't helping the matter in the slightest.

The pair were meanwhile waiting for the rest of the professional dancers to join them. As it was Blackpool week, Dianne had really stepped it up, partly due to the special occasion, but partly due to her nervousness at actually managing to get Joe to his goal.

"Di, do you want to do the next question?" he asked her, from the other side of the room. Internally, she sighed, knowing that by their very design, the questions, or rather his answers were likely to make her fall for him deeper than before.

Outwardly, she grinned. "Yeah, sure! It's my go first right?" she asked, walking towards him and settling on the floor next to him.

"Yeah," he said, slightly distracted as he found the question, smiling as he found it. "What roles do love and affection play in your life?" he asked her, curiously.

"Umm that's a good question." She said. She took a few minutes, thoughtfully mulling over her answer as Joe waited expectantly. "I think they play big roles for sure, I mean if I'm honest they'll probably rule my life someday? I'm quite an affectionate person I think, so I guess that means they're important?" she said, blushing slightly as she spoke. "I think I fall for people quite easily, but it takes a lot for me to trust someone enough to let them love me, and let myself truly love them." She sighed, frustrated. "This is harder than it looks. Do you think that sounds right for me?" she asked her friend.

"Are you seriously asking me to answer the question for you?" he questioned, amazed.

"Yep." She grinned, suddenly nervous at how he'd answer.

"Umm alright then. Yeah I think that love and affection play a big role in your life. You clearly have a lot of love and affection to share and you're definitely a very affectionate, tactile person, although I guess that comes from being a dancer?" he said, slightly insensitively.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, trying her best not to sound annoyed.

He trailed off awkwardly, sensing that his answer was clearly not satisfactory for some reason or another. "I don't know, that all of you dancers are so comfortable with other people's bodies that you're not afraid to be overly tactile or whatever, you tend to touch and flirt with people way more than a normal person would because-"

"Because what Joe?" she asked, eyes blazing. "Because we're sluts? What because we're dancers that makes us easy? Because the fact we dance in close proximity to members of the opposite sex for a living means that we're overly affectionate? Because we're used to moving our hips for an audience makes us nothing more than flirts? I thought you were different, I thought you were better than that." she said, raising her voice and standing up in shock.

He stood up too, frantic to reassure his partner that this was certainly not the case. "No no no I didn't mean it like that. That's not what I was saying at all I'm sorry Dianne but-" he said quickly, hurt evident in his tone at the way Dianne was speaking to him, and that she would think so little of him to imagine him thinking this way.

"Save it." She said, her voice cold and her eyes frosty. Joe had never seen her like this before, the warm, welcoming Dianne he knew had changed into someone he truly didn't recognise. The fact that his actions had caused her turn to this hurt him more than he realised it could. The fact that he had made her upset enough for her to completely block him out was ripping him to shreds, especially when this was clearly a misunderstanding. He realised at this moment that he thought the world of the beautiful girl who was given the job of teaching him to dance, and that the effect of her emotion on his own could only mean one thing.