Stardust and Moon Rust

[one] rooftop stumblings

[ n o t e ]

welcome to the very first chapter of stardust and moon rust!! i hope you guys like it omg this is so nerve wracking i've never written something like this b4 omg
that's castor up top btw he's sooo dreamy ahhhh

dedicated to avidsmiles bc literally mia is the greatest friend ever ok and like her works are so stunning and i'm truly grateful for her.

[ s o n g ]

with golden string
our universe was brought to life,
that we may fall in love
every time we open up our eyes.

sun, sleeping at last

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[ c h a p t e r     o n e ]

rooftop stumblings

IF PEOPLE WERE COLOR, Castor thought absentmindedly, then this girl would be a brilliant shade of amber.

Oddly enough, this was one of his tamer thoughts ― Castor Burke was, admittedly, a little bit off-kilter. That much was established by the entirety of Grover Beach, whose citizens had noticed his quirks almost immediately; they singled him out with the biting fondness that really only small town people had the capacity to do.

They were mean without being mean, snarky without the snark; kind of like the aunt you only ever saw during holidays and had nothing better to do than comment on your life decisions and the such. 

Castor had nothing personal against Aunt Beatriz, but it seemed that she did nothing but show up for the mandated Willingdon-Burke family gatherings, and that was it. He never saw her otherwise, save for the hastily scrawled Happy Birthday! cards he'd received with nothing more than a crumpled twenty dollar bill and a looping, Love, Auntie B.

The town of Grover Beach was tiny, and as one would expect, a beach town. The waves crashed onto the shores around noon, and receded by night; the air was constantly smelling of salt and sand and summer. To Castor, it smelled like memories, if that was a thing.

He always felt inexplicably nostalgic when the wind teased his nose, full of the salty spray and left his tongue tasting the gritty sand despite him being nowhere near the ocean.

It reminded him of better times, when his dad wasn't so sick all the time and he wasn't swamped with thousands upon thousands of useless papers of homework.

Do this, teachers liked to say, copy that, answer this. They never gave him a straight answer on why he should do so ― all they did was shoot him a look that bordered on a glare, so he shut his mouth, ground his teeth, and continued to do as he was told.

Or at least, it was what he tried to do.

He would usually get caught on a word, like light or bassoon or space ― it wouldn't have to be much, it would just have to make him think, just a bit. The thought would start small, an innocent flame that blossomed into a raging inferno as it picked up speed as he fed it more fuel until he was completely lost in the world despite the way his body anchored him to the ground.

Space face, they liked to call him, smiling to themselves whenever they had managed to slip it into conversation, as if they were sneaky. It varied from time to time ― moon boy, star eyes, astronaut ― but it was almost always laced with affection. He never quite minded, as long as they left him to himself.