A/N: Today marks something kinda crazy: a return to a four day schedule!

This was requested multiple times in various ways as something on April + anxiety. I hope I've covered all of them.

People wonder why April is the way she is; and why she likes being weird, and for a long time she had no real answer for it. Some strange, intangible mess in her head was, and is, impossible to explain to people, especially people that simply don't care. The easiest thing to do is to be that crazy persona and wear it like an armor, happy to accept every glare and confused, sometimes disgusted, look because they would focus on the slanted words and angry comments rather than the chinks in the armor.

Even to herself, it's difficult what to call it. Sometimes getting to work is a hassle just because she's thinking more about the idea that someone's going to talk to her and ask her questions, and potentially want real answers to them, instead of the reality which is always the same: day in, day out, there isn't much to speak of. It's not that it bothers her, and paradoxically she should be happy that no one says a word to her. In fact, contrary to her initial fear the isolation and sense of abandonment - that cold pick digging harshly into her stomach when she wonders if she should even bother with anything or with caring at all when people clearly didn't care - slide into place and worry at her; they gnaw, not dig. They claw and peck, puncturing little wound-marks into the vitals of her armor.

Every day.

Every day, something different yet it's the same. She orders coffee and thanks the barista when he asks how she's doing. It was a silly mistake, but for hours after April keeps repeating it under her breath.

"Thank you," she repeats and closes her eyes, the embarrassing mishap a tiny little thing that literally does not matter but still repeats in her head. "Thanks. What the hell... whatever, my day is fine. Not thanks."

She mutters to herself, trying to burn out that oddly empty sinking feeling in her chest. It didn't matter. That guy would forget about it because he's going to see however many other people in his day and hearing someone say something that stupid wasn't going to be his highlight. But maybe it would be? Maybe he'd tell all his friends about this stupid girl who said thank you, and they'd laugh and go tell their friends. It might end up coming back to some people, and then it might reach even Andy and then he'd think she's weird. Which he already does, of course, but he'd laugh at her. Obviously.

Then her brain kicks into high gear and she builds herself back up. It last for only a moment though, rebuilding the reality and logic of the situation and thinking that no one actually cares and she shouldn't care whatsoever, before she thinks about what he'll say when he hears it and realizes she's crazy. Of course, April never tells him a word of this. Instead she just lets her weathered and battered, broken thick skin take over. It's easier that way, anyways.

She knows no one picks up on it, either way. Why would they? They all focus on themselves, like they should. The only time that April needs to be in the center of it all and bearing the weight of six or seven pairs of eyes that have no place on her is when she's being ridiculous; gross, sick, and weird. All of those things she can be if it means to dissuade them all from staring at her once more, those eyes not a hammer crushing the plates of her armor but little, thin blades slipping into joints where she's weakest and cutting her into pieces; and those shreds can't hold themselves up without the foundation of sarcasm and feigned disdain.

There's one pair of eyes she accepts, and one she'll ask for and want, but he doesn't need to, nor should he. In reality, April knows to let him go because the more little peeks he takes into her mind and soul the more he'll see what she really is. It's a disgusting, pathetic thought and she knows it. She knows she's worth something - she's smart, independent, fun when she wants to be and Andy makes her want to be that, and good looking on top of it all. It should drive her mad, this indecision and confusion, but it all makes a peculiar sort of sense that is indescribable and she never wants to speak of, ever.

Yet she can't shake it, that feeling, and the strong despair-wrought grip it has on her. What happens when he sees her, truthfully? Does he run? Does he stay? Will he be there to smile and laugh when she's bared wide open, standing with those plates on the ground and touching his hand to the real heart beating underneath it all?

The question is too daunting to ask and wonder, so April tucks it neatly away.

"Please stop trying to talk to me," April hisses, closing the door to their bedroom with a loud slam.

"But, honey-"

"I said stop," she says hoarsely, "and please, babe, just... stop."

"You said you'd go-"

"I'm not going to the stupid bar to see your stupid band, okay?" she interrupts once more in a cruel lash, regretting her words the moment they leave her mouth. "I didn't mean that."

"Oh, yeah. Totally, of course," Andy says in that almost pouting voice, disappointed but for some reason natural. Almost like he expects it. "Um, d'you wanna go out somewhere else then?"

"No, it's your... ugh, why is this door still closed," she complains, pulling it open and sitting back down on the bed. "Go to your concert, Andy. You really want to. I know you do! So just go, all right? I can read or something."

"Why don't you wanna go? You said you liked drinking and being my groupie," Andy says with a sly smile, walking over and sitting next to April. She simply sits there, listless and thinking. "You don't have to drink... you don't, y'know, have to be my groupie, either-"

"Shut up," April laces it with a little more anger than she first intends, but it comes out rightly when he shrugs his shoulders. "Don't be like that. I just... don't wanna go, what's so hard to understand about that?"

Andy looks down and his eyebrows do that annoying thing when he's actually thinking where they bump into each other and meet on his brow. "I dunno, you're just... um, are you feeling okay? Like, are you sick?" Andy scratches his chin and then shakes his head. "Never mind. That was dumb. You're doing awesome, you're great."

"Why d'you ask?" April whispers it, unsure where his sincere worry comes from. Really, she wonders where he came from at all: he's kind and caring and everything she pretends she doesn't want to be.

"I'm not sure. I sorta... get a weird feeling when you're like this. Something feels off," his face is marked with worry and jumps around emotions from worry that he's saying the wrong thing until she gives him a small smile, confusion like usual, and then that welcoming warmth coloring his eyes. "Are you okay?"

For a moment she tackles the question. This is really her chance to say something, and to finally, truly, open up. Not that she is closed off to him anymore, but giving this secret over and letting him touch the well-hidden, brittle fragments of her exterior isn't to be taken lightly. She's never done it for anyone, but she thinks that maybe Andy could handle it. Then her mind tickles with a thought that he'll give up, and that she might be walking the line too far and quickly, only to realize that his words aren't meaning the same thing. How could she show her face to him when he knows those scars? She'd be broken and lost in his eyes, and it doesn't matter how many passes her thoughts give to that and realize that he would be caring and considerate because there's a primal fear and intense, animalistic urge to run and hide from it all.

"Yeah," she lies, boldfaced and without a tremble in her voice. It's well-practiced, and her face doesn't show the intense, real and physical, turmoil in her stomach joined by her mind's somersaults to justify the feeble rebuke. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Then, something passes over his features. If April knew how to read him - and she did, honestly, by this point - it was different, and unusual. There wasn't an open question for her, or any blind happiness. Instead, something about his face felt distant and weakly submitting to the idea that she's okay.

"Um, okay, we should totally hang out then," Andy suggests, smiling brightly and washing away any sense of that prior emotion.

"Go to your show," she says half-heartedly, honestly thinking about him being right beside her and asking her questions she doesn't want to answer, stroking her hair and making her more comfortable than ever, and what she might tell him. "Just go. I'll be fine. What, d'you think I'm gonna cheat on you or something?"

"What? No," he laughs, apparently thinking the idea as incredulous as he should.

"Then go," she mumbles, "and I'll read or go online and watch foreign traffic accidents for six hours. I'll be fine."

"You sure?"

"Babe, just go," she chuckles without a sense of laughter in her meek noise.

"All right, if you say so," he leans over and kisses her lips quickly, barely making contact but it's so warm and a brief reminder she loves all too much. "Love you tons."

"Yeah, you too," she nods.

"Seriously, I mean it," he says as he makes his way out of the bedroom towards the car already packed with his gear, stopping to brush the door back and forth with it in his grip and staring at her. "I love you more than Pearl Jam and plaid and beer put together, and dogs. And guitars. Music, and, uh... nachos! I love you more than all of that and-"

"I get it," April stands and crosses the distance to him. "I love you that much too. More."

Without giving him a chance to answer, April stands high on her toes and kisses him deeper than before. Palm flush with the wall to her left, she watches him leave and the moment the door closes with her still there her heart sinks and the thought creeps up:

Why didn't you just go?

Work the next day is easy enough, at first. Andy came back home a little drunker than she expected, but it just makes him handsy when he's that gone and she really likes that. Even at her lowest she can't deny that it feels nice to be wanted so furiously and repeatedly, but it does make her miss being able to just go out and enjoy the night with him and get just as sloshed as he was. Now, though, she just wipes away the tiredness in her eyes and the weak feeling of grasping again at sleep, looking blankly at her laptop and wondering what it'd be like to just sit under her desk all day.

For some strange reason, Leslie keeps asking if she's okay. So what, she had said she loved her? That doesn't mean that Leslie gets to baby her constantly, and even worse when she actually has work to do and shouldn't be bothering herself with April's stupid grumbles and overall boredom.

Then it gets worse, much much worse.

Andy steps into the office, and it's usual enough. There isn't anything to indicate something weird other than maybe the way he looks at her but April's so tired - she stays up so late nowadays, and can barely even find the sleep anymore until it's around five in the morning already and she needs to be up in three hours - that she just sits there awkwardly when he moves a chair in front of her desk and those eyes meet her. The same ones from the night before. April should have known then, but Leslie appears as if out of nowhere beside her and it's all so enclosed and claustrophobic she wants to leave. For some reason the intense fixation on her by two of the only people she actually cares about is worse than being ridiculed or feared by her workmates.

"April-"

Leslie starts but she wants to get away already. It's like an odd tickling at her hands and feet, like she wants to grab her keys and run out of the building all at once just to get away from the scrutiny.

"What?" she interrupts quickly, her voice coming out shrill, "I mean... what's up?"

"Babe, I talked a lot with Leslie and... um, are you sure you're okay?" he asks in that small voice that's looking for the easy way out because Andy doesn't want to think of her like this. Obviously that's what it is. He wants her to be this perfect person he's put on the pedestal and not who she actually is. "It's okay, we made sure everyone's gone."

Looking around the room, she does notice that Ron and Jerry have left.

"April, it's okay. You can talk to us," Leslie sits down on her desk, only partially blocking her line of sight with Andy. "We've... Andy is worried about you."

"About what?" she sneers, faltering the moment she actually looks in his eyes. She can feel that first strap give way, and the little eyes cut past the clothes underneath. They reach into her skin. "What? About what, Andy? Why are you worried?"

"You're... I dunno, distant?" he looks up at Leslie, who nods back at him. "You always like hanging out with me and going to shows, and drinking at bars, and now you're, like-"

"Boring?" April tilts her head and his eyes take on the most innocent, fearful light in as quick a moment as the snap of her fingers. She already knows the answer to her question.

"No! Oh my God, no babe... I'm just scared," he admits and looks side-to-side. "I told Leslie-"

"Andy, no," she sighs, crossing her arms and scooting her chair further back by barely an inch.

"I told her about how you tried to get better once, and about the pills," Andy confesses, a look of shame on his face that snaps yet another clasp holding her thick, steely exterior in place.

"What did you tell her?" April demands, not bothering to look at Leslie. He broke her trust, and she needs to know what was so deserving of that crime. "Andy!"

Her loud cry jerks him up. "I'm so sorry, babe. I told her about the panic attacks and everything," he puts his head in his hands. "I'm the worst husband on the planet."

Leslie puts her hand on his shoulder and gives April a hard look. "He told me all of that because he cares, April," she tries to tell her but the betrayal is still burning red in her chest and making April want to scream, fight him, and cry all at once. "I practically had to beat it out of him. Well, not literally. That would be cruel, but he did come to talk to me and I basically got him to tell me. Forced him, kind of. Maybe a little."

"I don't wanna talk about this," April mutters, clutching her arms tighter and now looking away from the both of them. It hurts but she doesn't know why. She wants to tell them, she really truthfully does, but the fear that giving up the lie and letting it all sit plain as day for them to see is too much. "Please, don't make me."

"We don't want to make you do anything, April," Leslie says calmly, her voice soothing and honeyed but still worrisome.

"We love you," Andy adds, "and we want you to be happy. I wanna see you smile again, so bad babe. I mean, you do it obviously but I wanna see you go out with me and smile and I can say, hell yeah that's my wife."

April tosses it in her head once or twice. She lets the thought sit there and articulate itself into speech, and a potential argument that she wonders about and ponders for a moment before discarding as a waste of time, before she just shakes her head. The conclusion is simple: freedom is difficult and even if she does love and trust them both, the microcosm of possible derision and loathing tells her to clam up. Shut, Ludgate. Shut. Up.

She can't help it, so she recedes further back like she's not ready to leave her armor yet. Here he is now, and he's not alone, with his arms open and his smile wide, and she still can't seem to drop her pretensions to let him listen to her and allow herself to say things and divulge tiny, insignificant worries. Honestly, they don't matter and yet to her they stab at her and weaken her every moment of every day of every week, for every hour and every minute of each month before the years are all this indecipherable mess of homogenized fear. Of what? She's never been sure, just that she's afraid of it. Fear of the very things that make her afraid, and of the possibilities of every word and choice she makes.

"Babe, why did you tell Leslie?" April asks and means to sound indignant, and annoyed, but all that comes out is a weak, tired voice.

"We want you to get better," he reminds her with a soft tone, "and she's way smarter than me. You couldn't take the meds anymore, and you said you didn't like what they did to you."

"They made me... different," she nods.

"Yeah, and we know how you can get help without them," Leslie says with her hand on her thigh and a careful, furrowed brow. "There are people who can help. We can get people to help talk to you."

April's pretty sure she hears all of it, but she can't stop staring into the empty space beside Andy. Every second they're huddled back here like this strikes her anew with a fear that someone will walk in. Every bit of her protections slide away with those thoughts, and before long her eyes are wide and she can feel quick breaths that stop instantly for the blank space in front of her. Staring, simply staring.

"April, I'm here," a thick, deep voice tells her and she turns to see Andy crouching beside her. His hand slips into hers, all sweaty and irritable, and she finally breaks the stare with the nothingness in front of her. "Hey, babe, I love you. I'm here, and I'm sorry for telling Leslie but... I'm so scared. I want you to get better."

She can't come up with the words, confused why he would bother and trying to force back the urge to vomit and tell him to stop bothering.

"It doesn't even have to work out, but can you try it?" Leslie offers the compromise like it's some sort of trial run.

"M-Maybe," April stutters, still tightly balled up on herself because those metals and chains and links of her dead-eyed, bored persona are all gone now. "Maybe."

"You can try it with me first!" Andy says brightly, and she feels that need to cry again. That would draw too much ire, and too much attention, so April bottles it back up for later. Way later. "Just say stuff to me and I can wear goofy glasses and make you sit on a couch. Then you can just say what you want and if you like how it feels we... you can try it out for real!"

There it is.

She's sitting in that chair, the color of her blood running crimson along his hands as he digs further and further for her and still he smiles. He wants to go deeper, and to see what secrets are in those red and black chambers. Every ounce of life pouring through her is something he wants to know about, and understand, and still he smiles. Instead of a madman with a lust for her pain, he's warmth and hope and he just carves out an alcove where she can safely be and all those anxieties can be stripped clean.

April knows it isn't that easy. Hell, it might never work. To her, however, the fact that he's sitting next to her in the waiting room a week later and holding her hand while a million nerves and questions flare up in excited, eager frustration is enough. The way he lifts her up and spins her around when she says she'll go back the next week is worth it. Andy's feverish kisses after, and his celebration with beer and cheeseburgers, when she says she's trying a very mild prescription along with her therapy two months down the line are all worth it. It's all enough because, now, she doesn't need that armor so much anymore. It's nice to see, every once and a while, and to remember that it's there and part of her but with him she no longer needs its surrogate hide to close herself off from him. For others, she still needs something. The crazy, batshit, off-the-wall antics will stay because they're fun, first of all, and because they help deflect things she still isn't ready to consider.

A year later, and she no longer needs the now minimal prescription. Every week she goes to therapy, though, and every week it's like a weight being dumped off of her back. When she returns home, April can recount it all to Andy earnestly and let him know when she's uncomfortable in public and they need to go take a cab home instead of public transport. Even when she can't go inside a restaurant and he needs to order takeout for them, like always, he's there and it doesn't hurt anymore. April just knows what it is, and knows that it's going to be a part of her. She will fight it, and try to stop it from ruining the simplest joys she loves, but she can't let it go. It'll never leave, and just like that armor still hanging up waiting to be worn despite the flaws and imperfections in its craft so does April keep this part of her life not openly shown, but adorned within herself to remember and fight. Never to forget, but never to let it burrow and worm itself into her again.