Leo adjusted the magenta colored tie around his neck, feeling nervous even though he didn’t really have any reason to be. Sure, there was a very pretty girl that had all but demanded that he attend her prom and dance with her when he had told her about some of the other students’ plans to crash, and sure he had even gotten excited about it, to the point that he had matched his suit tie and gotten a corsage for her that he knew would match. But yeah, definitely no reason to be nervous whatsoever. Nu uh. Not one. He and Kinley had been friends for a fair amount of time now, but there was something about this that felt different to him, that felt somehow more significant. Enough so that he had gotten a pinkish-purple tie and a corsage to go around her wrist, the way that a good prom date would. Not that this was a date, but… he felt that she should have a chance to observe all the proper prom traditions. Including getting treated like a princess by someone who enjoyed being around her.

There was definitely no crush here. Nope. Nu-uh. None. And if you believed that, then you were about as stupid as he felt sometimes.

He was already in the school when he laid eyes on her for the first time, standing next to his best friend. However, the second that he looked at her, he was pretty sure that he forgot how to function at all. She looked amazing, whether it was because she was all dressed up or the fact that he had never really appreciated how beautiful she was before it literally smacked him upside the head, he wasn’t sure. His lips parted as he stared at her, and eventually a slightly dopey smile managed to fix itself to his lips. “Kinley… you look… you’re…” He cleared his throat, reaching up with one hand to rub over the back of his neck and maybe to avoid the embarrassment that he could feel showing in the redness of the tips of his ears. “You look beautiful.” He finally managed to get the words out, and he hoped that she realized he meant them.

Leo had been so distracted by seeing her that he had nearly forgotten the small box in his hand until he looked down and saw it there. “Oh, uhm,” he straightened up a bit, smiling that little half grin that he usually reserved especially for her. “I got something for you.” He held the box carefully in one hand and slid the top half off with the other, revealing the wrist corsage that had magenta orchids surrounded by twisting bunches of baby’s breath. The whole effect was, in his opinion, beautiful, but he wanted to see Kinley’s reaction to it all the same. “Figured you should get the whole experience, even if I’m the only one to give it to you. Wait, am I the only one to give it to you?” He hadn’t even thought to ask if she had a date to the prom, and he was frantically checking her wrist for another corsage, and then her face for any signs that he had tread into territory that he shouldn’t have. After all, he was nowhere near good enough for her, but that didn’t stop him from trying.