Dave Strider never missed his school's annual talent show, although virtually none of the acts actually interested him. There were always an abundance of singers, and they had a lot of talent among them, but they honestly just put Dave in the mood for a nap. There were a handful of dancers each year, some good and some lame by his estimation. Their school thespian group always put on a song and dance number at the end, which Dave typically ranked somewhere between the singers and the dancers in terms of coolness. Each year at least one guy would juggle, or show off his skills with lightsticks or a yoyo, which were all considerably cooler, at least in Dave's opinion, than all the singing and dancing. Dave happened to be one of the most popular guys at his school, though it wasn't something he strove for and despite how meaningless and irritating he found the distinction and the expectations that came along with it. He watched the talent show each year with his normal group of friends, determinedly ignoring their little jabs and laughter at the expense of the participants. He may have been disinterested in the majority of their acts, all but one in fact, but he could appreciate and respect the courage it took to get up there and display their talents for everyone. He never even considered doing that, himself.
It was mid-March of Dave's senior year, and he and his friends were attending their final talent show. Dave had passed the time during the less interesting acts by exchanging quiet commentary with his group, so it didn't escape their notice when he suddenly tuned them out. He moved the dark sunglasses he almost never took off to the top of his head, where they held his wispy white-blonde bangs away from his face and, more to the point, the unusual scarlet-red eyes that almost none of them had ever even seen before. They exchanged glances and made a few half-hearted attempts to regain Dave's attention, to verify that they really had lost it in the first place, and they had. He waved every whispered comment off without bothering to process any of them and his gaze never left the smallish bespectacled boy onstage. The boy was John Egbert, a nerdy fellow senior who Dave's friends had never paid any particular attention to. He was normally pale but a bit flushed at the moment, with very dark, perpetually messy hair and wide, ocean-blue eyes behind his thick rectangular frames. He was wearing black dress pants and a crisp white button-up with a bright blue bow tie, suspenders and a magician's hat. He was putting on a magic act.
Dave remained riveted throughout all of John's card and levitation tricks and optical illusions. He wasn't particularly interested in sharing this bit of information, but John Egbert's annual magic acts were the sole reason for his unwillingness to miss the talent show. He had been dragged along during his freshman year and he'd spent every minute longing to leave until the admittedly dorky brunette took stage, his first performance ever, nearly paralyzed with stage fright. That time, he had known only a few card tricks as well as the classic rabbit-in-the-hat trick and he had made several small blunders, hands shaking, but Dave had thought he was awesome even back then. He had watched him improve every year since, admiring his creativity and skill and the courage it must take for him to continue performing at every talent show. This year, Dave was stunned by John's improvement and just how professional he seemed, like he could be at some super legit magic venue actually charging people for the pleasure of watching his performance. The rest of the audience seemed to agree with Dave, judging by the way they were reacting, other than his friends of course. "-such a moron." Dave tore his gaze away from the stage, his attention finally caught, staring directly into the eyes of the dirty-blonde linebacker, Tyler Jackson.
Tyler's laughter faded out under Dave's ice-cold gaze, the rest of the group rapidly following suit, and Dave turned back to the stage, watching the rest of John's act with a thoughtful expression. He clapped harder than anyone else in the audience when John was awarded first place by the judges, leaving the auditorium immediately afterward, sparing the group he had been sitting with only a small wave over his shoulder as he exited the building. He spent the weekend following the talent show mentally preparing himself for his first conversation with John Egbert on Monday, which he had high hopes for. He was still angry about the way his friends had behaved, but it had given him the push he had been awaiting for entirely too long, the push to finally introduce himself to the person he already admired above anyone else. It was time for him to make friends-maybe something more than friends-with someone he considered genuinely cool, unlike the people he was currently stuck with, people he could not even consider real friends. He wouldn't have admitted just how nervous he really was, but he had never felt so motivated in his life. That talent show had been his last; if he didn't make some kind of change before the end of the year, he was likely to lose any chance he'd ever had of befriending John Egbert. It would serve him right, he thought, for being such a coward. He'd had three years.
Dave woke up two hours earlier than usual on Monday morning and found himself too anxious to fall back asleep. He played with his turntables in an attempt to both calm and distract himself but failed at both and gave up trying after just a little while. He spent the rest of the time he had left over after showering in his room, avoiding his older brother and working on organizing his thoughts and constantly mentally editing and re-editing his parts of the conversation he hoped to have with John in the courtyard before school started. He managed to show up at school about fifteen minutes earlier than usual, a little over half an hour before school started. He tried to keep to himself and watch out for the arrival of John to the side of where everyone else was congregating, opting to stand in the grass rather than on the concrete where everyone liked to gather and talk. The attempt was not successful, and it took almost no time for a group of acquaintances to form then steadily grow around him. After ten solid minutes of ignoring the people surrounding him to the best of his ability, a certain brunette wandered into his peripheral vision rather slowly, most of his attention firmly focused on some comic book he was holding in both hands and reading as he walked past the bustling crowd. John made his way slowly over to the wall, where he promptly leaned and continued reading, never so much as glancing at any of the other people outside. No one paid any attention to him, either. No one but Dave Strider.
Dave took several deep, fortifying breaths and started toward the wall John was leaning against, trying to look inconspicuous. Halfway to his target, he knelt down briefly to pick up a bright purple piece of paper that he had almost stepped on. It was a flier for the school's upcoming prom, to be held on the fifteenth of April. Dave had missed the prom during his junior year, hadn't even thought much about going since he hadn't had a date and the thought of going alone had struck him as supremely lame. He had feigned total disinterest to everyone who had mentioned it back then and again when his friends had mentioned it this year, claiming that prom itself, as an institution, was inherently lame. But did he really feel that way? He wasn't so sure. If he were going to have a date, he would probably love to go, lame or not. He examined the flier for another moment before returning his gaze to John, an idea forming in his mind. He quickly began walking again, wanting to fulfill this urge before he gave himself the chance to chicken out. Dave Strider had been waiting for more than three years to talk to John Egbert, and he had never been one to do things half-way. If he was going to finally make his move after such an agonizing wait, why not make it the biggest, flashiest move he could come up with? He would rather crash and burn, if it came down to it, than muster just a small spark and fizzle lamely back out of John's life in one fell swoop.
He folded and twisted the flier into a simple origami flower on his way and then stopped abruptly within five feet of where John was standing. "John?" John looked up from his book, slightly startled. "Uh, yeah, that's my name?" Dave produced his brightest smile, one he had actually never shown to any of the people who went to his school, pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head in public for the second time in four days, a new record. He took one more deep breath before continuing. "My name is Dave Strider, and I think your magic acts are pretty awesome, and that you're probably at least ten times cooler than anyone else in this town. I've been wanting to chill for like years-I'm being literal here-but I've only just now managed to man the hell up and introduce myself. If you think I might be worth getting to know, and if you don't have plans already, I'd like to ask you something." John glanced around at the groups of other people in the courtyard, many of them watching this entire exchange and attempting to be discrete about it, some not even bothering to hide their interest. He looked back at Dave, nodding when he saw that the other boy had been waiting for a response from him. "Okay, ask away then?" Dave promptly dropped down to one knee, holding the paper flower out to John. "Would you do me the honor of being my prom date? I'm pretty sure you have no competition for the title of 'coolest prom date in the history of this lame little school of ours.'"
John bit into his bottom lip, studying Dave's expression while trying to decide on an answer. "This isn't some kind of a joke, is it?" he asked tentatively and Dave immediately shook his head, prompting John to continue. "Well, I don't know you, and I've always imagined knowing my prom date ahead of time..." he paused. "But you know what? What the hell. I wasn't gonna ask anyone. I'll get to know you between now and then, and if you suck, I can still stand you up!" He laughed, and after a brief pause Dave laughed along with him. His adrenaline had bottomed out halfway through his proposal and he had been running on pure empty courage after that, but he was rewarded now with a strong surge of dopamine. He couldn't stop smiling if he had wanted to. John accepted the purple flower with a slightly shy smile and then helped Dave back to his feet. It was only then that they returned their attention to the crowd around them, and they found a mixed reaction in the surrounding faces. Most displayed various levels of surprise and curiosity, some girls were whispering and giggling amongst themselves, and Dave's friends were staring in open disbelief, most of them unsure what to make of the whole situation. Witnessing Dave asking someone to prom in front of such a large crowd was shocking enough on it's own, but then add in the facts that he couldn't have been at all sure of the answer he was going to get and had willingly subjected himself to a situation that easily could have ended in public humiliation, the person he asked was some nerd no one really even knew, and the person was also a dude, and most of them had no idea where to begin in terms of a reaction.
Dave, for his part, was beyond caring what his "friends" might think of him. Maybe this would knock him off of his pedestal in terms of popularity, or maybe it would somehow boost him up even further, but either way he could say in all honestly that he did not care. He had spent far too long abiding by the unspoken rules of his peers despite the fact that their opinions had always been practically meaningless to him, and he had made the firm decision that it was ending today. He thought about grabbing John's hand and marching him away from the prying eyes of their peers without so much as a backward glance, and he may have done it, too, if it wouldn't have put the tiny bloom of friendship-maybe something more than friendship-he had just painstakingly created at risk. In that moment, Dave wouldn't have risked that small, fragile bloom for anything in the world. Instead, he gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. "Wanna go wait in my car until class starts? We could even skip first period and have some breakfast, my treat, but I'm not gonna pressure you on that one." John grinned and nodded without a second thought. "Alright! I'll accept both offers. I've got lit first period, and I finished the project we're working on last night. I could go for a waffle!" with that, John allowed Dave to lead him to his candy-red Trans Am and they rode off into the sunrise.
Less than a month later, they would arrive at prom together in that same Trams Am as full-fledged boyfriends, at least as happy together as any other couple there. John even allowed Dave a perfect kiss in the middle of the dance floor without a single complaint about all of the open stares they were receiving. Three and a half years after that, the Trans Am would deposit Dave outside of John's family church on their wedding day, where they would share another single perfect kiss, having by that point memorized the shapes and tastes of each other's lips. The path from the front door of their new apartment to the bed they would share afterward was lined before their arrival that night with a trail of tiny purple paper flowers.