𝐒𝐔𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐔𝐓 , choen

PROLOGUE

♪ "In my head, I play a supercut of us
All the magic we gave off
All the love we hadn't lost..."

What would it feel like to meet the right person at the wrong time?

Lights Out Tour began on a Saturday in Boston, 2019. The skies were awfully clear for a summer day. Noen's starstruck in a crowded SUV with peers he's looked up to for months, and now he'd be considered one of them.

It was a long ride to the hotel, and Noen's always been a daydreamer. A major issue back when all he knew was the weekday rotation of concerning grades and white-boards, but a perk now that he was a content creator.

His manager, (To this very day he misses the weekly meetings and poppy-seed bagels with her,) thought he was quite unique, someone who stood out amongst the typical frat-athlete types in his category. So during the opportunities, he'd like to ponder over all the philosophical what's and how's there could be in the universe. The sun retreats into a cloud overhead, and it's dark enough to let himself close his eyes for a few seconds.

Boston was charming, smelled of lilies and misted grass. The air is still something he'll never be able to describe, "very clear" and a laugh is all that was said whenever he'd try to bring it up. The houses were beautiful, the kind of houses that the family Christmas movies would be filmed in, and the scenery was like a dream. Boston was youth, hope, and cranberry bushes on ivory brick. He should've seen the warnings.

Chase swings an arm around him in the loud vehicle. He talks to the rest of the boys about how his mom used to pick him up from middle-school in a car just like this.

Noen didn't know what anything meant back then.

***

It was scorching hot in Dallas when tour ended on a Thursday. Chase waits outside the liquor store on the outskirts of the suburbs, (where they wouldn't be ID'ed) while Noen buys White Claws and popsicles for both of them. Chase liked raspberry and Noen liked blueberry. The explanation of the purple tongues would be a problem for future-them.

Chase and Noen had developed a mutual infatuation for each other during tour. It was inevitable pretty much, what with the shared hotel rooms and extensive time with the other. It felt like one of those complicated algebra equations Noen hated back in high-school. If there was one for the both of them, he thinks, he'd never be able to solve it, but the end product would always be the both of them.

A relationship, but spare the labels and titles. He's not sure when, but somewhere down the line they both had quietly agreed, like one of those things that needed to happen by law of universe, and who was to deny to universe after all? So they let it.

They sat in the parking lot in comfortable silence, having at their iced refreshments. It's so easy to be here with him and it's terrifying, terrifying how if Chase asked, Noen would sit here in this dead-end liquor store parking lot next to him until they turned into skeletons buried under end of time. Even if Chase didn't feel the same, it was more than enough being here beside him as mere mortals.

It was insane how just one week and half could feel like the only summer he needed. The summer of a life-time he'd yearned ages for. The summer that would change it all, and what would begin the end.