36 Questions: A Joanne Fanfiction

Question Seventeen:

What is your most treasured memory?

It was Paso week. Initially, Joe had expected to enjoy this dance, with its strong powerful movements and its dramatic turns but he was struggling to feel the strength he needed to demonstrate. Dianne, bless her heart had been trying to convince him that he was strong enough, but so far it had been proved useless, so the pair were grateful for the distraction of it takes two that evening.

Zoe had just left them, shutting the door behind her, after a quick catch up and run through over the events of the coming hour and a half, so the two had a little while to relax. Rather than try to convince Joe that despite having the body of a twelve year old he did have the power to portray a matador for the fifth time, Dianne decided to try and take Joe's mind off of the dance. "Joe?" she asked, who was currently sat on the sofa beside her, scrolling through his phone absentmindedly.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to do another question?"

"Sure. These are taking us a lot longer than I had expected us to, if I'm being honest," he said, putting his phone down to pay his full attention onto his dance partner.

"Yeah true. I thought we'd finish them by week four, but I guess we actually are really busy." She joked. "Is it your turn or mine to go first?" she asked, before adding "please say yours."

He laughed "nope, it's your turn!"

She pouted in disappointment. "Go on then, what's my question then?" she smiled, clearly not minding that she would go first as much as she had initially let on.

"Hang on a second," he said picking up his phone and finding the questions with a practiced ease. He cleared his throat before beginning to read. "What is your most treasured memory?"

She smiled, clearly having an immediate answer to this question. However, a flash of hesitation crossed her face before she grinned. "Okay I've got one, but you're going to tell me off for it."

He looked at her, confused. "Why would I tell you off? It's your memory not mine?" he asked.

"It's because it's dance related." She explained to him, watching as his face relaxed as he came to an understanding.

He spoke quickly and apologetically. "If that's your most treasured memory then who am I to take that from you? As long as it is your most treasured memory then I can't argue with that."

"No, you can't." she laughed.

"Go on then, we haven't got all day." He joked.

"Okay so my most treasured memory is winning this competition with my brother for the first time."

"Ahh that's nice, why is it your favourite memory though?"

She smiled absentmindedly, her mind clearly going off into a dreamland. "There's a lot of reasons to be honest. One of them was the fact I won it with Andrew. He wanted to win so much, and I knew how important it was to him, which made it even more special that I was able to do that with him. I've always been close to my brothers now and as a kid. At then and still now I really look up to him as a dancer, I always wanted to be able to dance as well as him. So to do that and for me to be on the same level as him was nice for me. It was also one of our first big competitions so it was really good for me, it taught me that it was the right idea for me to go and pursue dance, despite it definitely not being the most sensible option for me. It showed me that all the work I put into it was so worth it, and it's the reason I'm still dancing. I've competed in other things, and it's not the only time I've won but it's really special to me. It made me feel like I was good at something and for the first time, I felt good enough to be dancing on stage with my brother. He's a few years older than me so I'd always be in the class below him or whatever so to be at his level was really important to me."

"Aww that's cute. I love that as your most treasured memory." He smiled at her.

"Thank you. I suppose that wasn't really about the dance was it?"

"No, no it wasn't. It was about finally feeling good enough for your brother." He said, and she blushed at his ability to read her so well.

She looked down, no longer facing him.

"Hey look at me." He said gently, and she looked up at him hesitantly. "You are so much more than enough Dianne. I'm so lucky to be able to work with you, and hearing that story has made me understand more about the importance of dance to you. It's also quite nice to know that even you didn't feel good enough at dance too. It give me a bit of hope, you know?" he joked, finishing his more serious point with a lighter tone.

"It should. You will get there Joe, I promise."

He smiled weakly. "Hopefully yeah."

"Okay that's enough of that." She said decidedly, not wishing the conversation to come back to their current struggles with dance. "Your turn to answer."

"Answer what?" he teased.

"The question. What is your most treasured memory Joe?" she said, rolling her eyes in fond exasperation.

"Oh right." He laughed. "I'm not sure I'll say it's the most treasured, but something I remember really fondly is filming the first Joe and Caspar hit the road, and the whole process of creating it. It's something that I really enjoyed at the time, it felt like I was seventeen again, travelling through Europe with one of my best mates but this time getting paid to do it. I got to try a lot of stuff that I would never have dreamt of, and make something really cool that I'll be able it look back on in the future. It's something I'd show to my kids or whatever."

She interrupted him quickly. "That's lovely Joe, but I can't help but feel like that is what your job is like a lot of the time. Like, you can watch any of your videos back, not just that. What about that experience makes you pick that over anything else?" she asked innocently, and he smiled, seeing exactly where she was coming from.

He paused for a moment to think, before deciding. "I think it's so special to me because the whole experience to me felt so surreal. Like we had our own leister square premiere for crying out loud. I think that's when it hit me how big this YouTube thing had gotten. And yeah, it was a great summer, and I had a really good time. I guess I treasure it so much because it's something I enjoyed so much, and can still enjoy so much, which allows me to treasure it even more, because it is not something I'm about to forget, not that I would want to forget it."

"That makes a lot of sense to me." She replied.

"Thank goodness, I felt like I made absolutely no sense in that whatsoever."

"To be able to do that with Caspar too must have been pretty cool right?" asked Dianne, knowing that the pair were close from the few times that she'd met him in the past after the show finished, or at Joe's.

"Yeah, it was amazing." He said, his eyes softening at the memory.

"Well that's sweet of you to say." She smiled.

"What's sweet?" asked Zoe, who again, had entered the room without them realising. She smiled as they jumped slightly in shock.

"Oh nothing." They chorused simultaneously.

"If you say so. We're on in five." She said, before leaving them be again. The two appeared to be a lot closer than your average strictly pairing but she knew that she'd never get it out of them if anything was to arise. She sighed, walking onto the set. Despite working for strictly, there was still a lot she didn't know, which she understood but, by now that pair in particular  were covered in rumours, and like anyone, she was itching to know exactly how close they were to becoming true.