They laid in the grass beside each other and stared up at the twinkling stars. The moon was already halfway through the sky. The crown rested by their feet, discarded minutes earlier due to discomfort.
“It's been a crazy night, hasn't it?”
It was a breezy evening when they agreed to go together. Since it was the penultimate month of spring, the sun set later in the evening, but the air cooled long before the pinks and oranges brushed against the horizon. The two boys sat in the stretch of grass in between their yards, watching as the last of the small children disappeared into the neighboring houses for dinnertime.
Jonny shivered lightly as one blond-haired boy carelessly threw his bicycle to the ground and ran up the steps to his house. He and Chris had been seated there, silently, for precisely three hours and forty-seven minutes. Almost four hours. That was the longest he had ever been around someone and not talked (and he wondered how Chris wasn't filled to bursting with speech at the moment), yet he was completely comfortable with that fact. There were often days when he felt like he shared some sort of telepathic bond with Chris.
“What's today?” Chris abruptly asked, though he knew very well that it was the sixth of May. His body had a plan which it had kept secret from his brain, from the tiny rational portion of himself. True to the scheme, his brain was out of the loop even now, in what his body had dubbed the 'execution phase.' Chris let himself talk, though the vibrations shaking his vocal chords felt like someone else's.
“It's the sixth.”
“Do you want to go to prom with me?”
Jonny had certainly not expected it. He turned to gawk at Chris, but he ultimately answered, “Yes.” Chris smiled without meeting Jonny's gaze, felt his heart and other internal organs swell inside his torso. His brain was starting to be incorporated in the ordeal, since his body had found a satisfactory reply. It would all go downhill, he knew.
“Will they allow it?”
– But his body was still in control; although his brain demanded that he speak the words he remained silent, grinning, and only kept his worries to himself for the moment. After all, he had spent his entire life worrying about this. Now was the time for joy.
The first task was to inform their parents. It was bound to happen anyway, as Chris's mother had taken to inquiring every single day if he had found a nice girl to go to prom with yet; on the seventh, he kindly told her, “No, but I have a date.”
“Well, who?” she followed up in an overly excited tone. “What's her name, what does she look like? Where does she live?”
Chris briefly reflected on all the various and lengthy ways he could respond to his mother's questions. He decided instead that simplicity was best.
“Jonny.”
His mother reacted by giving him a confused look and then glancing over her shoulder as if Chris had just seen the boy somewhere in the background and was calling out to him. When she turned back to her son she looked no less baffled. “Jonny?”
“Jonny,” Chris plainly repeated. He was in no mood to disclose further.
With a sharp inhale and a look of sudden understanding, his mother replied, “Oh! Oh. Jonny. Oh. Well, then I guess I know what your date looks like.”
“And you know where he lives.”
His mother absentmindedly nodded. “Yes, that as well. Hmm. Jonny.”
Chris watched his mother stare into space and he scratched the back of his neck. “So, that's a good thing, right?”
“What's a good thing, dear?”
“You know, Jonny... he is nice. He's not a girl, but he's nice and I really like him.”
“Sure.” His mother appeared to return from the other world she had been momentarily trapped in. “You two have known each other your whole lives.”
Chris smiled a little. “Yeah. He's my best friend.”
“Jonny is a good choice.”
Chris's smile grew wider. One down, most likely a hundred more to go.
After the parents (all of whom almost immediately accepted their arrangement and were even thrilled after a short while) came the school. Chris had tried to hold back as much anxiety over the entire situation as he could, but this was simply one obstacle that they could not just ignore.
Apparently it wasn't enough for Chris and Jonny to sign up separately for the prom and therefore unofficially be each other's date; boys going to prom together was boys going to prom together whether or not one blue sheet of paper listed their names in the same row. But it wouldn't have been a problem if they could have kept it quiet until the actual event.
Somehow a few students had found out that the two boys were going with each other and, as bits of high school gossip sometimes do, this news had made its way to several parents who were not so keen on the idea. Chris's mother became heavily involved in defending their plan – much to Chris's surprise, though really she just wanted her son to be happy – and she attended several meetings with the parents who had complained and the principal of the school.
It took a rather long and heartfelt speech from Chris to do the trick; a week before the dance, the final meeting took place. Not only were Chris's mother and the principal in attendance, but of course Chris himself, the teacher who also served as the head of the planning committee for prom, and the parents of a girl whose name was something like Emily. Chris wasn't sure he knew her.
“We just don't want our daughter exposed to this sort of thing,” Emily's mother was saying. To her right, her husband sat, nodding firmly.
“Oh, please, your daughter is almost eighteen years old,” Chris's mother retorted. “Not only is she almost an adult, she has probably already been exposed to far worse.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“There is no reason why my son-” Chris's mother began to argue, but her voice was drowned out by Emily's mother shouting back. Nothing either of them said was coherent.
After roughly ten seconds, the principal cleared his throat. Surprisingly, he managed to be loud enough to silence the two women.
“Are we quite done here?” the teacher asked in a bored tone.
The principal looked around at the occupants of the room and sighed. “We have to come to some sort of final decision. Preferably in a peaceful manner and without any more shouting.”
The man rubbed his forehead, clearly exhausted. Chris bit his lip. When five seconds had passed without anyone else speaking, Chris gathered some oxygen in his lungs and spoke up. “C-Can I say something?”
All eyes turned towards Chris: Emily's parents glared at him, the principal and teacher looked passive, and Chris's mother gave him a pleasant smile.
“By all means,” the principal told him. Chris fidgeted and prepared what he was going to say.
“Uh,” Chris began, his throat suddenly very dry. He swallowed and started over. “Well, prom is a big deal for a lot of people. I mean, for some students it's, like, the one thing that keeps them going through high school, you know?”
He didn't receive an answer. He hadn't expected to. He drew a deep breath and continued.
“It's not such a big deal for me. I think it's just like any other dance. But... I don't know how Jonny feels about it. To be honest, I'm not sure it really matters how he feels about it. That sounds harsh, I know, but... I just mean that...
“Well, Jonny and I have known each other all... all his life, I guess, since I'm older – but you know what I mean. We've been best friends since before we could even talk. We do almost everything together. I even... I haven't even chosen where I'm going to college yet, because I'm not sure where Jonny's going and I don't want to go anywhere without him. I know that probably makes me pathetic, but I guess that's what I am then. I...”
Chris paused. The silence in the room and the intense stares from the others made him feel even more nervous. A large part of him was glad that Jonny wasn't in the room. He stared at the ground and forced himself to go on.
“All I want is to have one night to show him how much he means to me. I guess it doesn't have to be prom, but...” Chris shrugged his shoulders. “... I just thought maybe it could be. At least then I'd have a good excuse to spend a lot of money.”
Chris let out a small, nervous laugh. After that, the only sound in the room was the squeaky noise the principal's chair made when he sat back, looking rather ponderous.
Very few students actually watched when they walked into the room, hand in hand. For the most part, they were all too busy dancing or talking among themselves to notice or even care that Chris and Jonny had entered – which was just as well, since it allowed for the boys to focus on enjoying the evening.
Chris was particularly glad for it, not just because of all the trouble they had gone through in the prior weeks, but also because the hours before he left his house to fetch Jonny had been among the most hectic and nerve-filled in his entire life.
The first thing that went wrong was that he lost his tie. The worst part about it was that the tie did not actually belong to him. It was a tie that his father had let him borrow for the night, a nice plain black tie that looked like it must have cost a small fortune. And Chris lost it within an hour of receiving it. He searched his room from top to bottom and still came up empty-handed. He checked every crook and crevice in the living room in case he had left it behind after speaking with his father. Eventually, he found it, resting on top of the suit jacket lying on his bed. He cursed the matching colors and set off to ask his father how the hell he was supposed to actually tie the tie.
Then came the shoe fiasco. One of his greatest fears was that the shoes would fit perfectly until the night of the dance, when suddenly he would find that his feet had somehow swelled like balloons and could no longer fit into the shoes. Luckily, no such thing happened; however, he did have a run-in with a nasty patch of mud just outside the front door of the house. He cursed the spring rain and went back inside to clean off his shoes.
Consequently, he was nearly ten minutes late when he finally walked over to Jonny's house. He knocked on the door and hoped that the worst of his luck had already passed. He felt no better when Jonny opened the door, looking effortlessly perfect. He cursed his own ineptitude and the tight feeling in his chest.
“Sorry I'm late,” Chris spewed, feeling rather embarrassed afterward. Jonny shook his head.
“No, it's fine. I actually only just finished getting ready. And I was afraid that you would show up too early and it would take me forever to finish and you'd have to wait around and you'd get bored and I'd lose something and I wouldn't be able to find it and...” Though the timid tone in Jonny's voice was quite clear, Chris could just barely detect it. It wasn't until Jonny continued with, “Well, the past few hours have just been kinda... hectic,” that he realized maybe Jonny's perfection wasn't so effortless after all.
Chris smiled and leaned in to place a soft kiss on Jonny's cheek. He didn't fail to notice the light flush just under Jonny's bright eyes and he took a few seconds to muster up the ability to speak again.
“Let's go,” he said in a near whisper. Jonny reached back for the door with one hand and forward for Chris's hand with the other.
Chris stepped in another mud puddle before they reached the sidewalk.
“OK, everyone, if I can please have your attention,” the girl on stage announced to the room. She was the head of the student council. She seemed to have an overly bubbly personality, judging by her tone of voice. The students in the room all turned their focus towards her. “The votes have been tallied and it's time to announce your prom King and Queen!”
There were a few joyful shouts and lots of clapping in response. Chris hooked his arm around Jonny's and rested his chin on the other boy's shoulder as they watched.
The girl on stage pulled an envelope seemingly out of nowhere. She turned to look towards the band behind her and said into the microphone, “Drum roll, please!”
The drums rolled and the girl on stage opened the envelope with quick fingers. She read the note and leaned into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to announce that your prom Queen is... Hannah Andrews!”
The room burst out in applause and several girlish shrieks as a dumbfounded girl in a powder blue dress climbed the steps to the stage. Chris stood up straight and released Jonny's arm to clap along. The girl on stage handed Hannah a fancy tiara and let Hannah take over the microphone.
“Uh... Wow,” Hannah said. “Uh... Thanks, guys. I... Thanks.”
Hannah gracefully placed the tiara on top of her neat hair and walked to the side of the stage. The crowd settled and the other girl resumed her position, this time with a brand new envelope in her hand.
“All right, so, we actually had a tie for this one. Under normal circumstances, we would have an impartial party pick one winner to be crowned King, but... well, you'll see. This is different.” The drums sounded again; the girl opened the envelope slowly, though it seemed quite clear she already knew what it would reveal. “OK. And now for your prom Kings... Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland!”
“Seriously??”
Somehow Chris's outburst had been heard by everyone in the room – he figured the crowd would have broken out into applause once more before he could shout properly. Alas, the students were silent and the girl on stage heard him loud and clear.
“Yes, seriously! Get up here, both of you.”
Chris and Jonny shared a nervous glance before embarking on the path towards the stage. The other students started clapping and cheering. Chris's heart was pounding at an alarming rate and his hands were trembling.
The girl on stage held a crown in her hands. When the two boys finally stood beside her she said into the microphone, “I'm not sure which one of you to give this to.”
Chris immediately reached forward and grabbed the crown from her. Then he turned and placed it on Jonny's head. Jonny smiled at him. There were several “aw”s emitted from the crowd.
“You guys are too cute,” the girl said with a wide grin. She turned a bit to address the entire room. “Now, since the winners have been announced, it's time for the first dance! Normally, it would be the King and Queen sharing the dance, but,” she briefly faced Hannah, “you don't mind giving it up, do you, Hannah?”
Hannah shook her head with indifference.
“Good. Although, I suppose if you'd like, you can bring your date onto the floor and join in. You are the Queen, after all.” She laughed a bit and addressed Chris and Jonny. “All right boys, it's your show now!”
Chris held his hand out to Jonny. Jonny grabbed it and they began to walk off the stage and into the clearing the crowd had made for them. As the band started to play, Chris slid his arms over Jonny's shoulders and Jonny placed his hands on Chris's waist.
Chris closed his eyes and smiled into Jonny's neck. He thought for a long time about whispering You're my king, Jonny, but could never find the courage to actually do it. He knew it was true and that was good enough for now.
Jonny sighed when he felt Chris bury his face in his neck. The crown on his head didn't fit quite properly over his hair and he knew that eventually he would have to take it off. But he still couldn't believe that he was lucky enough to be here with Chris, let alone to have been given such a title. He would gladly have given the crown to Chris instead, and had actually intended to deny Chris's gesture – but that look in Chris's eyes when he gave Jonny the crown was just too much to bear. Jonny had been incapable of moving then, and even now the mere thought of Chris's expression made his knees weak.
Jonny moved his hands to Chris's back and held on tighter.
They danced like that until the night was over, not paying attention to any of the other students, simply basking in the warmth of each other's company.
“Yeah. But I'm glad. I think this was the best night of my life.”
Chris turned his head. He could still see the crown shining atop Jonny's head, though it was not actually there any longer. He smiled.
“Mine too.”
