36 Questions: A Joanne Fanfiction

Question Twenty-Three:

How close and warm is your family? Do you feel that your childhood was happier than most other people's?

It was the morning after, and the pair were on the train home.  Despite being absolutely exhausted, they were content, each quietly consumed by their own thoughts, lost in their own worlds. After the events of the previous night, they were both feeling slightly nostalgic, mostly due to their lack of sleep, but also partly due to the fact that they knew that the events like that didn't come around often. Dianne stared aimlessly out of the window, lost in her mind, a soft smile on her face. Joe glanced down at his partner fondly, as he reflected on the previous evening. He felt so, so lucky and grateful to be partnered with her, and to have danced with her, and to get the reward they did.

Dianne's mind was trailing down a similar path. By contrast, her fond memories were tainted by a twinge of homesickness. Times like this were when she missed her family the most, as nice as it was to have Joe's family supporting them, she couldn't help but wish that her family could have experienced this with her. She sighed, knowing how happy they would have been, before reminding herself of the positives in their situation. Besides, she'd be seeing them soon enough. She turned to Joe, blushing gently when she caught him staring before he turned his face away, revealing what she saw as a matching blush rising up his neck. She laughed under her breath, before engaging him in quiet conversation, it was still fairly early, but the two wanted to go home so had taken an earlier train than the rest of the cast. In fact, it was so early that their carriage was virtually empty.

Eventually, Joe asked their usual question when they had a bit of time to occupy. "Do you want to do the next question?"

"Yeah, sure." She replied. "We must be over halfway now right?"

"Yeah." He replied, looking slightly sorry for himself. "Yeah, we've got two more questions of set two, and then there's only set three left."

"Woah." She said, as she thought about how long ago it was since the first questions were asked and answered. They'd learnt a lot since then, going from two people that had barely known each other, to ones that could read other like they were open books. She smiled, a faraway look in her eyes.

Joe smiled, before taking her out of her thoughts. "So, Dianne, how close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most people's?"

"Well in distance we couldn't be further apart," she began, laughing at her joke softly. "But no, we're really close, in fact I think living on the other side of the world to them has only made us closer, and has allowed me to value them more, although I do still find it difficult to be apart from them. But it's worth it. As for warm, yeah I'd say we are. I'm close to them all, and I care about them all a lot. My family mean the most to me, which I think you can already tell."

He smiled, knowing this was true. "Yeah I love that you love your family so much." He said, and she blushed, slightly embarrassed by the compliment. "No it's really good, I really respect that about you." He clarified quickly.

"Aww thanks Joseph," she said smiling. "Umm as for the second part of the question, I think my childhood in like, my home life was so much better than most people. I mean, I've always gotten on pretty well with my brothers, I lived in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I feel so lucky to grow up with such a strong network of family around me. But school life wasn't as easy for me, and in the sense of school life I didn't have a happier childhood than most." She said, ending her response to the sentence quickly, not wanting to dwell on the subject of school for too long.

Joe, by contrast, had other ideas. "Why didn't you like school Dianne?" he asked, his gentle eyes showing curiosity, not judgement.

She sighed to herself, fiddling with her fingers whilst trying to formulate a response. Joe looked at the top of her head, internally hitting himself in case he had pushed the topic too far. They'd both had an eventful few days so he didn't want to make anything worse. He was then interrupted by his friend speaking slowly, as if great care had been chosen with her words. This was unlike her, Dianne normally used the first words that came to her, her direct manner of speaking was something that Joe had always admired, so to see her like this was new to him. "There's a lot of reasons why, I think. Looking back on it, there was no way I was going to end up actually enjoying it. I was constantly distracted, whether it was with dance, messing around or just simply staring out at the sea, it's no wonder that I can't spell. I was never academic so I didn't really enjoy most of my lessons, aside from Indonesian." She said, causing them to share a laugh.

"It's weird now I think about it, being dyslexic and everything I'm surprised I enjoyed it learning it. I was diagnosed with dyslexia during my early childhood and I wasn't very confident at school." she explained quickly, brushing past the topic with an ease that could only come with practice.

"I wouldn't say I was bullied, but I was certainly teased a bit, and that started in my late childhood, just before secondary school and wasn't very fun." She said trailing off and staring out of the window once more.

"I'm sorry for bringing that up." Said Joe quietly, squeezing her hand gently as he joined her in gazing out of the train, despite the pretty uneventful scenery they were passing.

She turned to him, feeling comforted by his presence. "No, it's okay. I just wasn't one of the cool girls in the playground but that's alright."

"I think you're pretty cool."

She laughed. "Thanks Joseph. I think it's your turn to answer now though."

He sighed dramatically in response, before speaking. Dianne took this opportunity to glance at her partner, for he spoke facing the seat in front of them, rather than by looking to her. She smiled, noticing the way his Adam's apple bobbed before he began, and his hair, whilst being messy looked perfect for running her hands through, like she'd watched him do so many times in the past. It was needless to say that she was struggling to hide her attraction for Joe, but she knew it was unprofessional so had so far, managed to keep this to herself. That didn't mean she couldn't look, right? Hastily, she snapped out of her little daydream, as she noticed that Joe had started to speak.

"Umm right. I'm close to all my family members individually if that makes sense? We don't tend to have big family gatherings anymore, after my parent's divorce it would be a bit weird to. But yeah, I'm close to my family, well closer in distance than you anyway," he joked, smiling softly when Dianne hit him in response.

"Sorry, I-uh yeah. I wouldn't describe us as 'warm' exactly but they're all great. My dad has a great sense of humour, and I'm closer than most to my grandparents. They're most of the reason I decided to do this, but you know that already." He said smiling.

"I do." She said. "Go on, tell me about Joe as a child. What was your childhood like?" she asked, curiosity making her eyes sparkle.

"I had a good childhood. I spent a lot of time with Zoe, living so far away from anything and everyone meant that I only really saw my friends at school. I had a big imagination, I was constantly playing make-belief games in the garden. I wanted to be an archaeologist, can you imagine that?" he asked her, laughing slightly at his past self.

"Not really," she replied honestly, and they both laughed together.

"Exactly. But yeah, I had a better childhood than most people, for sure. I wouldn't change it for the world. I was really lucky." He said sincerely.

Dianne grinned, happy that he had been also blessed with a good childhood and that he was now comfortable enough with her to openly admit it. The fact that he was grateful for what he had been blessed with was more important to her than she had realised. Her eyes lit up suddenly. "Go on, tell me about how you wanted to become an archaeologist!" she said excitedly, wanting to know the whole story.

So he did. The two carried on talking of their childhoods the whole way home, swapping embarrassing stories and laughing at each other's misadventures. Time passed quickly within the other's company, so they found themselves back in London quickly.

"See you tomorrow." He said hugging her goodbye.

"See ya," she grinned and left him, her red hair shining gently in the sunlight as they stepped off the train to head in different directions.