Chapter Text
This is the story of how I fell in love with the English kid.
And it starts with his hair.
It was the colour of sunshine in the summer, curled perfect but messy all at the same time.
And don’t get me started at how beautiful it looked when the sun shone through it. Golden curls, seemingly illuminated individually. Like each individual strand of hair was woven out of pure golden sunshine, by Apollo himself.
Or in the middle of class, when my gaze would lift involuntarily and there it was… right in front of me.
Those same curls catching the light from the window. The glow shifting whenever the boy moved, and I would find the teachers voice fading in the background, till all I could focus on was how the light shone through his hair.
I always thought it seemed to hold the light instead of simply reflecting it.
Like it belonged there.
Like it had always been meant to exist in brightness.
And every class, like clock work…there was the hair.
Belonging to the English kid who sat in front of me in class.
And then, slowly…it stopped being just his hair.
Because the light didn’t only belong to his curls.
It reached further.
It touched his skin too.
Turning it a brilliant dusty tan, splattered with freckles.
There was something about the way the sun rested on it, like it had decided he was worth lingering on. It lit up his hair and made his skin glow.
I was sure his skin carried the same warmth as the sun that rested on him, like the sunlight had already settled and was refusing to leave.
And then there were his freckles.
They were scattered over his skin like constellations. I was sure, if I ever got the chance, I would trace them. Map them out properly, like the ones that live and thrive in the sky.
Like his skin held pieces of the night, even as it shone with the sun.
Like his skin somehow held both night and sunlight at once.
Like something in him belonged to the dark… even while he stood so easily in the light.
Like me and him, really weren’t that different… because I thrived in the night but could stand the sun… and he lived and breathed the sun, yet had night hidden within.
And maybe that was why I noticed them in such detail in the first place.
His freckles.
They weren’t even or perfect. Like someone had simply taken a brush dipped in sunlight and flicked it lightly across his skin.
Small, unimportant details, I had told myself.
Except they weren’t.
Because once I saw them, I couldn’t unsee them.
My eyes started tracing patterns I had no business memorising. Counting them without meaning to.
Freckle by freckle.
constellation by constellation.
Not because they were remarkable…But because they were his.
And that, apparently, was enough.
It became a habit before I realised it was one, a dangerous one — counting his freckles — it got to the point where I stopped pretending I wasn’t looking.
I’d let my gaze drift up his arm. Up his neck, to the southern cross studded there, almost hidden by that wonderful gold hair.
I was tracing it, for what must have been the hundredth time, the first time I heard him.
Not properly.
Just a low mumble, soft but rough around the edges.
It wasn’t directed at me.
Just something said under his breath to the person beside him.
I didn’t catch the words.
But I caught the sound.
And somehow, that was worse.
Because I wasn’t just watching, I was listening too.
Waiting for the next time I’d catch him, lean over his desk and whisper to his friend.
I didn’t have to wait long.
A few minutes later his friend leaned closer and whispered something in his ear.
I watched as his shoulders shifted and he clamped a hand over his mouth, barely concealing his laughter.
It was soft.
Warm.
Real.
It was loud…
But not in volume, in life.
And that did something strange to my chest.
Something tight and unfamiliar.
I wasn’t sure what it was, not then at least.
Only that it stayed.
Even after he stopped laughing.
Even after the moment passed and his focus shifted back to the board.
And before I knew it, the bell rang.
And sunshine boy with his sunshine hair, had left.
It was later that day, during lunch, when I saw his golden hair again.
It was bobbing through the crowd toward a table near the back. I watched as he walked with this light, almost happy bounce in his step.
I imagined him humming under his breath, the kind of quiet sound you only noticed if you were already paying attention. Or deeply, madly in love with someone…
He sat down with three others.
I glanced back down at my lunch, telling myself to mind my own business.
But the next time I looked up, my gaze drifted there again anyway.
He was talking now.
Animated, hands moving as he spoke, like his thoughts couldn’t stay still inside him, not around his friends.
Bursts of laughter kept spilling out at the table, around him.
Every now and then I could hear his weave through the rest, even though I’d only ever heard it once… but I could pick it out immediately.
Sun boys laugh.
I watched at the way his shoulders would shift when he laughed, like he couldn’t quite contain it, the way his head would tilt when he listened, properly listened, like whatever someone was saying actually mattered, the way his hands moved when he spoke—soft, absent gestures, like he was shaping his thoughts in the air before letting them exist.
I didn’t realise how long I was watching until the noise of lunch started to shift again, chairs scraping, voices rising, the room slowly emptying.
Days blurred like that.
Class.
Lunch— Sun boy.
Class again.
And then, English.
Always with the same place I ended up looking…
Same desk.
Same seat.
Same boy: the English kid, Sun boy.
With his brilliant blonde hair.
And his map of stars.
I was sitting in English three days later, tracing that map of stars.
I had found a new one — Corvus, Apollo’s crow. It was very fitting for Sun boy — engraving it into my mind.
“Nico?”
My head shot up.
“You’ll be working with Will Solace.”
Sun boy stood up, turning around, a huge grin on his face.
And for the first time
I saw him properly.
Saw him… whole.
My eyes flickered over his face.
His sharp, gentle nose that matched scrunched slightly with his grin, the crows feet around his eyes, that shows truely how much he smiles.
His freckles were scattered across his cheeks like they had been thrown there without care, but somehow, belonged exactly where they had landed.
They echoed the constellations I’d already mapped, complemented them.
His freckles matched his eyes.
His bright blue eyes, open and impossible to miss.
Not a still blue, but the blue of the ocean, forever moving, forever shifting, forever reflecting.
And right now they were reflecting me.
His hair framed his face in messy golden curls, the sunlight still settled there.
“Howdy,” he said, his voice as smooth, warm in a way that didn’t feel loud, just… certain. “I’m Will.”
That’s when it clicked.
Of course his name was Will Solace.
It sounded like it belonged to him!
Like the word ‘solace’ was made for him.
And hell he was the human version of sunshine.
I swallowed.
My words caught, somewhere useless in my throat as he pulled out the chair beside me, and sat down like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And then he started talking.
To me.
Like it was the most normal thing in the world.
And every class for the rest of the year, I saw the hair belonging to the English kid.
But now he turns around.
And smiles at me.
With his big, goofy grin.
-
And that’s how I met my sunshine, for real.
He’s no longer the English kid, and he no longer still in front of me… but beside me. He fights my battles with me, he treats me like I’m made of glass when I need it, hell he even lets me blabber about the constellations I’ve mapped out on his skin with pen.
It’s been eight years since that moment.
Eight years since the English kid turned around, eight years since we did that stupid project, eight years since we became friends… eight years since we became something more.
We live together now, we have for many years.
And somehow, after all this time… I still find myself back in that classroom, admiring the way the light sits on him… and then I blink and he’s sitting, staring back at me, the light still shining down on him.
Still resting on him, like it never left.