Chapter Text
It was only a day into the State Thespians festival, and Jack Kelly was already cursing himself that he hadn't attended one before his last year of being able to go.
Sure, he hadn't gotten a ton of sleep so far, with the bus getting to the hotel from the convention center so late, as well as having Race and Charlie as roommates. They were great, but putting the three of them in a room together meant they went on talking for a while. Until one in the morning to be exact, with their alarms set for eight to get to breakfast in time.
After getting something to eat and getting done with his first acting workshop of the day, though, Jack was not feeling as tired as he probably should've been. This many theater kids in one place was just too exciting.
The rest of the morning flew by, until Jack found himself sitting at a picnic table and having lunch with Charlie, Race and some guy from a different troupe named Spot that Race seemed to already know.
"Honestly, everything's been great," Charlie was saying, "I just wish all the buildings weren't so far apart, y'know? It's a lot of walking just to get from one place to the next. Especially for me, with the whole… yeah." He gestured to his leg, and the others at the table nodded.
"Right? I mean, I don't relate all the way, a'course, but I'm already wiped from the dance workshops." Race added.
Spot hummed, finishing his bite of lunch before talking.
"Well, we get a break in a bit, at least. The mainstage show is next, yeah?"
Oh, yeah. Jack had nearly forgotten about that. They had all already seen the first mainstage show the previous night, though due to the timing with the busses as well as how late the show had gone for, it had been a bit of a blur.
The next one was going to be a play rather than a musical though, which would be pretty interesting. The director of Jack's troupe was so partial to musicals that he hadn't done an actual play since sophomore year, so he wasn't actually too familiar with any plays.
"Yeah," Charlie said, looking on his phone at the schedule, "actually, shit, I think we ought'a get going!"
The rest of the group checked the time on their respective devices, and also realized that they were running the risk of being late. They quickly got their stuff together, before heading out on the overly-long walk to the theater.
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The show was fantastic. That made sense, considering it was selected to be performed at the State Festival, but still, it went above and beyond Jack's expectations.
And really, he should probably be focused on the entire cast's acting, or how good the tech and props were (and the show certainly had a lot of tech elements), but that's not where his mind kept going.
No, instead, Jack couldn't stop thinking about one of the leads.
He had no idea who the guy was outside of the fact that he was clearly a phenomenal actor, but his brain didn't seem to care. The guy had been absolutely gorgeous, with dark hair and a bright expression, a voice that was amazing to hear, and perfect line delivery and comedic timing.
Jack Kelly didn't know this guy.
But he was head over heels anyways.
It was all he thought of for the rest of the day, and hell, for the rest of the entire festival.
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Charlie and Jack were sat next to each other on the bus back to town, which would normally be great.
The current problem was that Charlie knew Jack a little too well, and could tell immediately that he was thinking about something, rather than just staring out the bus window and listening to music.
He could also tell when Jack was thinking about something that was making him smile to himself like an idiot.
"Heya, Jack? What's got you so smiley?" Charlie asked with a laugh.
"Oh, uh, ya'know. Festival was fun! I enjoyed it, and I was jus'… thinkin' bout it. Yeah."
Charlie raised an eyebrow, and Jack knew he should probably just come out with it.
"Alright, alright. Fine. Y'know the second show we went to see?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Well, I was just thinkin' that the lead was, like, really good. The one playin' the detective guy? And I was also thinkin' that he was… I dunno… good lookin'. I guess."
Jack was somewhat expecting Charlie to laugh at that, but instead he just nodded.
"For once, I think I actually see where you're comin' from with a guy. Not my type, seein' as he's a he, but I get it."
Jack laughed a bit to himself. At least for this passing crush, someone at least got it. Sorta. But before Jack could make a joke, Charlie was talking again.
"Wanna see if we can find him on Insta?"
"Oh, absolutely."
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In the entire two and a half hour bus ride, Jack and Charlie didn't find a single trace of the guy. And it most certainly wasn't for lack of trying.
First of all, they had to find the school that actually put on the production, which was easy enough to do with the help of the festival schedule. Putting it into a map, the mystery guy's high school was about three-ish hours from where Jack's was, which was a bit… far.
Still, that was only the first step.
Next to be found was the official Instagram page for the thespians troupe of that high school, which the guy had to be a part of if he was at State Thespians at all.
There were a few posts on the page where mystery guy appeared, which made Jack a bit flustered to see somehow, but the guy was never actually tagged in anything, even when other actors were.
In a deep dive of the page, Jack and Charlie actually managed to find the cast list of the show. It felt a little bit creepy, at this point, but Jack wouldn't say no to learning the guy's name.
Mystery guy turned out to actually be David Jacobs, part of his troupe's theater board and a senior, like Jack.
But David seemed to have no presence on Instagram whatsoever, even with the added bonus of knowing what name to look for. That was about as far as internet stalking was going to get, and so Jack decided to give it a rest and hopefully get over the guy soon enough.
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That… did not end up happening. About a day after getting home from the festival, Jack caved to an idea he had thought up earlier, which was simply looking up the guy's name.
It was a fairly common name, though, so Jack added on the name of David's high school to the end. He probably wasn't going to find anything, but-
A Pinterest link stood out in the mix of useless links or Linkedins of people who clearly weren't the David Jacobs he was looking for.
Hesitantly, Jack clicked on it, and found a wholly unremarkable Pinterest account with the username daveyjacobs. Honestly, this could be anybody, but…
The account had a board titled with the name of the play Jack had just seen. Looking into it further, the account had many boards for different shows, including lighting and choreo inspo, costume design, as well as just pictures from other productions of the show.
This could be any theater kid's Pinterest account. But interestingly enough, all the show boards matched up to shows that the high school had done within the past four years.
It was becoming clear that this was him. Not just some other David (or, Davey, if the username was anything to go by), but the beautiful, talented actor that Jack had seen that weekend.
Still, finding someone on Pinterest was fucking ridiculous. Nobody in their right mind would text someone on Pinterest, and if they did, they would probably get blocked.
Jack Kelly was probably going to get blocked.
But it was late enough at night that he didn't really care much, and sent Davey a text anyways. Over Pinterest. What was his life anymore?
"Hey so I know that reaching out on Pinterest is kinda insane but I just wanted to say that I saw Play That Goes Wrong at thespians and it was great! You did a good job"
Jack went to bed shortly after that to avoid getting anxious about it.
But, much later in the evening, a response was sent back:
"Thank you so much!! And no worries about reaching out on Pinterest, it's the only social media I have. What troupe are you with? Any shows of yours that I could come see?"
Well. That was certainly interesting.