[ 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
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
[ 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.
He was the kind of boy who found delight in being left alone to his own devices, content to lay on the roof on his house and dream of a thousand things that never quite had a chance of coming to fruition. Some days it was more far-fetched than others, some days it was closer to reality than he could bear. Some days his mother liked to joke that he liked to spend more time in his head then down here on the ground at home and some days his brothers (Orion, 21, and Pollux, 23) liked to tease about how his habits would never get him any girls.
It was always girls girls girls with them, and he thought that his mother was in a way, relieved that he did not end up like his brothers.
"I like the way you are ― I don't have to worry about you bringing home a baby and telling me that it's yours. It's less stress on me," she had teased, before kissing him gently on the forehead and leaving a plate of sandwiches for him on the roof.
"Thanks, mom," he had said with a small grin on his face, his eyes already a million miles away.
Here he was once more, on the roof of the house he had grown up in, in the flesh he had marked as his own, in the headspace that he had spent so many hours burrowed into. The tile dug snugly into his back, but he didn't mind much ― he usually let it dig into him until his back was rubbed raw and left impressive grooves in the space of his skin. Even then, only the promise of food would coax him from his perch.
A cacophony of sound dragged his attention back down towards the house next door.
He gazed onto the street, where moving men were depositing the last of the boxes, watching as the embodiment of warm hues and fall and maple syrup stood in the background. She was scowling magnificently at something her mother was trying to impart upon her, but it still did not impede on Castor's surety ― this girl, his new neighbor, was the epitome of the color auburn.
Perhaps it was the way she tied up her frizzy mane of her hair (haphazardly, one electric pink hair tie too many), or the way her skin gleamed in the Californian sun (shiny, effusive, gloriously tan), or the way emotions flitted across her face when she thought no one would be able to see (a stunning composition of terror, melancholy, and sadness; his fingers itched to draw her) ― whatever it was, Castor found himself entranced by her seemingly paradoxical nature.
She was a strong presence, but even then, in the midst of who he assumed to be her family, she was muted. Trapped. Background noise. She blended in, and he thought that in the slump of her shoulders as her siblings unintentionally ignored her protests, it was a fact that she was resigned to.
He could find relation to that ― his brothers were so entrancing and enthralling that sometimes he felt like he was merely a prop or even worse, a piece of scenery. He couldn't find fault in that, though, because it was in their nature to gravitate towards people, whereas he was, well, not.
It wasn't that he was averse to people, per se, it was just that they were too demanding. They demanded that he glance at them when they talked, demanded that he listen (which was preposterous, given that his mind liked to move about a mile a minute), and demanded he give an opinion or input once in awhile.
People were incredibly exhausting, and Castor did not particularly like having to deal with them.
"Hey!" He startled, nearly tumbling off the roof himself. The only thing that had saved him were his elbows, which had jammed themselves into the roof in order to stop his descent. He rubbed them ruefully and peered down over the edge.
Dark, fierce, brown eyes met light blue ones, and he nearly tumbled off the roof once more.
She was most definitely amber.
"What are you doing up there?" She called, cupping hands around her mouth.
"What are you doing down there?" He asked, chest beating feverishly in his chest. He supposed near death experiences did that to you.
She frowned. "What are you, a first grader?"
"No," he blinked. "It was a legit question."
She blinked back at him, head tilted slightly; he had the oddest feeling that she was staring through him rather than at, and he wondered, for a moment, panicking, if he was that transparent.
"I'm Nyssa." She ― Nyssa, he told himself delightedly (it suited her, he thought) ― paused, then grinned wryly. Castor found the constellations on her cheeks incredibly endearing, and when she smiled, it was like the sun had stored some of its beams in there for safekeeping. "Your new neighbor."
"Castor Burke," he called back. "I would shake your hand, but my mother's made a rule about jumping off the roof of our house."
Nyssa laughed, rich and deep and luxuriously slow; the sight was beautifully enchanting, starlight and moonlight and the stars personified ― there was just something about this girl that exuded a warmth that he had yet to find anywhere else in Grover Beach. Castor, oddly enough, felt like he was intruding on something private and personal in the way she arched her back in her laughter, leaving a sliver of honeyed skin on display for the entire world to see.
Red bloomed heavily around his cheeks. He hoped he was high enough for her to miss the dusting of pink feathering across his cheekbones and his neck; this was his curse for being so fair skinned, despite living in a town where the sun liked to kiss everyone on the cheek, leaving them well browned and tanned.
Well, it's just me and the cul de sac, really, he amended hastily, drawing his gaze from her stomach and sweeping it around the block.
"Why does that have to be rule?" she said. It took him a good few seconds to get his brain back from the clouds and to realize that she was still talking to him.
"What?"
"I mean," she grinned, white flashing against luscious pink lips, "why does that have to be a rule? Isn't it common sense to not jump off the roof?"
He shrugged. "Tell that to my idiot brothers."
"Ah." She nodded, understanding, then straightened imperceptibly. "Are they cute, at least?"
Castor laughed, a snort escaping his lips before he could truly stop it. "Everybody says I look exactly like them, so you tell me, Nyssa."
She made an appreciative hum, molten eyes dragging up and down the entirety him (oh god, he could feel his ears burning), and tilted her lips into a wicked smirk.
"I think you're alright," she said. Castor merely observed her in a dazed sort of fashion, because that definitely wasn't what her tone implied. But before he could respond, her mother called for her from inside the house, and she flounced away, giving him a salacious wink and a wave.
"Bye, Castor. See you around, yeah?"
"Bye Nyssa." His voice sounded shaky even to his ears. Dear God, was it burning out here, or was it just him? He glanced at the weather app on his phone just to make sure.
70 degrees, Grover Beach. He read it two more times just to be sure, mortified that yes, indeed, it was really just him.
Girls, Castor thought, head coming back to rest on the roof, making a dull thunk! sound. Perhaps he was better off staring at the sun ― at the very least, a bright beam of light to his eyes would give him a straighter answer than they ever could.