The city below looked like it had been scattered by hand—millions of tiny lights strewn across the earth, glittering in slow, steady pulses. From their high vantage point in the hills, Los Angeles seemed distant and silent, less like a city and more like a dream made visible. Headlights traced lazy arcs along the winding streets below, like veins pumping life into something vast and unknowable.
Alex sat cross-legged on the hood of The Blue Ghost, the metal still radiating the fading warmth of the drive up. The pizza box they'd picked up hours earlier rested unopened behind them, its smell barely noticeable now, lost to the sharp scent of eucalyptus and cool asphalt and the soft whisper of night wind. The earlier hysteria—the euphoric scream, the shattered silence of hearing Youth on the radio—had given way to a slower, quieter kind of joy. One that sank deeper.
Leo was stretched out beside him, hands tucked behind his head, legs dangling just off the edge of the hood. His usual energy was gone, replaced by a rare stillness that made Alex feel like breathing too loudly might break the spell.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. There was no need. The silence wasn't awkward. It felt earned.
"You know," Leo said at last, his voice hushed, as though he was worried the city might overhear him, "I'm never going to forget that sound. The second that synth kicked in…" He exhaled slowly, almost reverently. "It felt like something cracked open inside my chest."
Alex didn't answer right away. He just nodded, staring out into the dark. "Yeah. It didn't feel real. Not at first. Like maybe I imagined it. Like maybe it was a dream I was about to wake up from."
"But it wasn't." Leo turned his head, his eyes catching a glint of starlight. "It was real. It is real."
The certainty in Leo's voice made Alex feel like he could almost believe it, too. That maybe this moment, this night, was a hinge the whole future could swing from. Maybe everything was finally shifting.
Leo sat up suddenly, energized by a thought. "Okay, okay—listen to this." He pointed down toward the shimmer of downtown. "First we sell out the Troubadour. Easy. That place is, what, 500 people? You'll sell it out in five minutes. Then, tour. West Coast first—Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. Then we hit the East Coast. New York, baby. Brooklyn Steel. Terminal 5. After that? Europe. Small clubs in Paris, London, Berlin. You'll be jet-lagged out of your mind and still play like your life depends on it."
Alex laughed softly. He wasn't mocking—it was the sound of someone who wanted to believe. Leo's voice was full of that same bright, relentless momentum that had carried them both this far, even on the days when Alex's own faith had crumbled.
"And then?" Alex asked, playing along.
"Then?" Leo grinned. "Grammys. Obviously. Best New Artist is a lock. 'Youth' gets Song of the Year. Then you drop a full album—self-produced with Finneas, duh—and that gets Album of the Year. You show up to the ceremony in some wild, artsy outfit everyone pretends to understand, and I'm backstage making TikToks about how I knew you before you were cool."
Alex let himself drift into the fantasy. He pictured the stage, the lights, the roaring applause. He imagined holding the gold gramophone statue, imagined his name being called out to a sea of strangers who somehow all knew his voice. And behind it all, there was Leo—filming it, cheering, wearing one of those cheap lanyard passes that said "GUEST" in bold block letters like it wasn't obvious who he was.
"You'd be there?" Alex asked quietly, not entirely sure why he needed the reassurance. But he did.
Leo didn't hesitate. He bumped Alex's arm with his shoulder. "Dude. I'm your Day One. I'll be at every show, front row. I'll scream louder than the drunkest girl in the crowd. Even the sad acoustic sets in towns nobody's ever heard of—I'll be there."
He leaned back again, folding his hands behind his head. "I'll be the guy yelling the lyrics nobody else remembers. Even the ones you wrote when you were, like, thirteen and too embarrassed to claim now."
A lump rose in Alex's throat, sudden and uninvited. "Thanks, man."
Leo's voice softened. "You don't have to thank me. I'm not doing you a favor. I'm just… proud of you, is all."
The city seemed to glow brighter, or maybe Alex was just seeing it differently now. He tilted his head toward the sky. It was one of those rare LA nights when you could see the stars. Not a lot, but enough. Enough to remind you the sky was still vast, that the world was still turning.
"You think it'll stay like this?" Alex asked. "The way it feels right now?"
Leo was quiet for a beat. "No," he said finally. "Probably not. It'll change. Stuff always does. Some days it'll suck. Some days we'll be broke, tired, and totally over it. But… that's not the point."
Alex looked at him. "Then what is?"
"The point," Leo said, "is that we're here. Right now. And we made it here."
Alex nodded slowly. "Yeah. We did."
They sat in silence again, the kind of silence that only happens between people who've been through things together. Who've held each other up through failures no one else saw, through fears they never spoke aloud. And now, finally, through a victory that mattered.
Eventually, Leo pulled out his phone, held it up, and snapped a blurry photo of the skyline. "We'll need this for the documentary one day."
Alex chuckled. "You're assuming I let anyone film me."
"You won't have a choice," Leo grinned. "You'll be too famous."
Alex rolled his eyes but didn't argue. For once, it felt okay to not argue. It felt okay to hope.
Below them, Los Angeles stretched out like a promise. And above them, the stars—quiet and constant—blinked in gentle approval.
Tonight, they didn't need the music.
Tonight, the silence sang.