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"Ask him to dance with you!" The room was dark apart from glistening decorative colored lights that danced along the walls, one of which Jeremy was hunched against trying to avoid the very concept of dancing that his friend Cry was suggesting emphatically. "Come on, you gotta ask!"
"Dude, I can't!" Jeremy insisted, staring past Cry to the boy in question, and he felt his heart thudding hard in his chest at the very thought of approaching him.
"And why not," Cry used wild hand gestures to articulate how strongly he felt about his comment.
"Look at him! He's remarkable and I'm...repulsive. Hes smart and cute and nice and I'm just a waste." Jodie Dallas, his almighty crush, was in all honors classes, president of the national honors society, the baseball team's shortstop, and had recently made the school gossip by coming out as gay in an interview with the school newspaper. He was everything Jeremy dreamed of wrapped up nicely in a short, cute, curly-haired package.
"Jeremy, you are cute, you are funny, you are charming and you are going to dance with him. "
"Cry, I just don't think its a good ide-AHH!" Cry took an opportunity to seize Jeremy by the arm and start to drag him over to where Jodie stood by the concessions. By the time Cry parked him in front of Jodie, Jeremy could feel his face burning.
"Hi, you don't know me but my name is Cry and my friend Jeremy here has the hots for you but hes too nervous to ask you to dance himself so I'm doing it for him, mmkay?" Jeremy squirmed as Cry spoke, feeling like he was slowly being murdered via embarrassment but knowing it would be extremely rude to take off and hide in the bathroom like he felt like doing.
"Oh," the boy looked a bit startled, but not necessarily displeased. Cry tended to have that effect. "S-sure. I'd be happy to." Jeremy felt like his heart was going to leap out of his chest.
Cry flashed him a thumbs up before prancing off into the crowd, leaving a trail of purple glitter from his tux behind and then, there it was. Jeremy was on his own and face to face with Jodie Dallas.
"Im so sorry," he found himself rambling, "My friend, well, hes a little eccentric sometimes, you don't have to do anything with me, if you don't want to."
"Why would you assume I dont want to?" Jodie asked, his eyebrows furrowing together in confusion in a way that was utterly adorable.
"We arent exactly in the same hemisphere. You're soaring in the sky and I'm kinda below the ground."
Jodie laughed softly and glanced at the ground, "Im not perfect, Jeremy."
"Coulda fooled me," Jeremy avoided Jodie's eye, tugging anxiously at the sleeve of his suit jacket.
"Come on," Jodie whispered, laying a hand on the back of Jeremy's neck, "Lets dance."
"O-okay," Jeremy swallowed hard, trying to remember what the hell he was doing. He placed a hand on the small of the other boy's back and the other he let fall to Jodie's hip as he frantically tried to remember everything he'd learned in dance classes ages ago. The contact was making him dizzy and bringing his mind to utter vacancy other than the thought shit this is happening.
After a few minutes of awkward swaying, Jodie stood on his toes to reach up to Jeremy's ear and whisper, with a grin on his face, "So, you like me or somethin?"
Jeremy felt his face start burning at the question, and tried to shrug it off with a chuckle, "Yeah, yeah I kinda do. A lot."
"Wow, never would have expected that..."
"What do you mean?"
Jodie turned his eyes to look over Jeremy's shoulder, his face red with embarrassment, "I don't know...I'm nothin' special." He smiled shyly and Jeremy's chest tightened with how adorable it was, "I mean...no," he chuckled, "I just never guessed that someone I liked would actually like me back. Especially someone who's so, well, someone as cool as you."
"Cool?" Jeremy snorted, "Oh my gosh, I am /so/ not cool. I'm a total dork, just ask Cr- wait did you just say you liked me?"
"Maybe..." Jodie pulled Jeremy closer, burying his face in Jeremy's shoulder, and before Jeremy could escape his state of reverie to say anything, Jodie said, "Shh, I like this song."
Jodie's hand clutched tighter on Jeremy's neck, and Jodie swayed slowly, guiding Jeremy in the back and forth movement. And then it came, little more than a hum, a vibration, but Jeremy was immediately entranced.
"Its a grand illusion..." Jodie was not a classically good or horridly bad singer, but the passion in his soft voice, the amount of raw emotion that drifted through, was unbeatably beautiful. It was a song that really meant something to the guy. "Deep inside, we're all the same.. " Jeremy didn't quite know what do to with this vulnerability, so he settled on wrapping an arm around Jodie's waist and holding him firmly.
As the song faded away, Jodie's face resurfaced, teary eyed. He gave a sad smile, "Sorry about that, I don't usually get emotional like that, its just--"
"Dude, don't worry about it..."
"No, its just...that song's gotten me through a lot. Its makes me feel less /different/. It was playing on repeat so much after I came out and everyone was..." he sucked in a breath through his teeth, "well, talking about me."
Jeremy didn't know what to say. He wasn't going to say he knew what he was like, because he was pretty sure he didn't. And 'I sympathize with your predicament' sounded lame as hell. So he said the only thing he could think of "I can- I can play it for you sometime, on my, um, guitar...if you'd like?"
Jodie smiled at him with that same raw emotion from earlier, "I'd love that."
He tucked his hands into Jeremy's front pants pockets and tilted his chin up, eyes silently asking permission. Jeremy answered by leaning forward and connecting their lips, feeling the heat radiating off of Jodie's cheeks. Jeremy cupped a hand over one of them and deepened the kiss.
The rest of the world faded away. Pour Some Sugar On Me was playing over the speakers now, and he saw in the corner of his eye that Cry was dancing spastically around his boyfriend Max.
All that mattered to Jeremy then was that he was kissing Jodie Dallas. He had his arms around Jodie Dallas, still swaying back at forth with Jodie Dallas. He was dancing with Jodie Dallas. His world had become Jodie Dallas.
He couldn't say that he minded in the slightest.