greatamazingfeelingsboy

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alex stern

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Jan 28th?

Caleb sprawls on Alex's couch, exhausted and sore and slightly frustrated. He'd gone to the gym with some of the guys from the team, and it'd proved... trying. Clint kept looking at him, which in and of itself isn't a problem. The problem was that he kept getting slightly aroused, at random times, while looking at Caleb. Which meant Caleb worked out harder, which meant Clint stared more, which meant that Clint got aroused more, and by the end of the two hours, he was so fucking tired and sore from trying to work out the feelings he kept getting.

He'd already showered at his place, but he'd promised Alex he'd swing over after the gym, since his place isn't warded against Grays. He likes hanging out with her, and he likes that there aren't any butterflies between them. It's nice to just... have a friend.

Which he realizes isn't fair to Rosie, who's easily one of his closest friends here. But she's so busy with her boyfriend and school that sometimes he doesn't get to just hang out with her. Last week doesn't entirely count, because he'd been a mess.

"Kill me," he mumbles into the couch cushion his face is pressed against.

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"Why am I killing you?" asks Alex, coming back into the sitting room with two cups of tea and setting one at Caleb's end of the sofa before she lowers herself down onto the other end. "It can't be that bad, surely?"

He pushes up so he can lean forward and get the tea. "I just got back from the gym with the guys," he says, like that explains everything.

He hasn't told many people about Clint. Mr. Burgess knows, of course, and he gives Caleb shit about it any chance he gets. Michael, too. So he hasn't really told Alex or Rosie (although Rosie probably also knows, since they all go to school together).

It takes Alex a moment to put it together, curled up around her teacup but, eventually, both dark eyebrows shoot up.

"Oh, shit," she says. "Are any of them...you know..." Because there could be all sorts of metaphorical stuff leaking if they are.

"Yeah," he says. He lets his head drop back against the back of the couch, turning to look at her. "Yeah, he is." Gay, or into him, he doesn't know exactly what Alex had intended to say, but the answer is the same.

"And he's in the gym watching you get all sweaty and shit." Alex's eyebrows are still raised, and she sips her tea. "Let me guess. There's something hardcore objectification going on and you're aware of every little bit of it."

"Exactly," he says, this time with a sigh. "It's... weird. I mean, not bad-weird, because I like him, he's a good guy. But not... not good-weird, because I have a boyfriend, and he knows that, but Adam's not here, and he probably won't ever be, and Clint can't help who he's attracted to, y'know? I mean, nobody can."

"Does he know?" she asks, stretching out her leg to nudge his thigh with her bare foot. "About you, I mean? Does he know how hard you're picking up what he's putting down?"

"No, no way," he says. He sort of nudges his leg against her foot, and sips his tea before continuing. "I'm not supposed to tell... anyone, actually, so only a few people here even know. You, my friend Michael and his fiance, um. Mr. Burgess, at school, because he caught me getting empathy-drunk at the dance..."

"Well, now I just feel special," says Alex, leaving her foot where it is. She's starting to figure out that both of them find that kind of platonic contact comforting. "So you're just...what...feeling what he's feeling and trying to ignore it?"

"Yep," he says, sort of popping the P at the end. He sighs, glancing over at her. "I kept trying to, like, work it out with the weights and shit there, which just made it worse, and... yeah. I pretty much ran away when they all went into the showers. I do not shower in locker rooms."

"Yeah, I can imagine you wouldn't want to," she says, because she can only imagine how horny a teenage boy could get when everything was wet and soapy and there. "Am I allowed to ask how bad things got? I realise I'm perilously close to just making direct reference to your dick at this point, but I think our friendship is at that point."

"Fuck, Alex," he says with a laugh, but it feels good to just. Laugh. "I mean, what d'you want to know, that I jerked off when I got home? I didn't! I mean, I could've, but it feels... I dunno, wrong? Besides, it all sort of... wore off after I was far enough away."

That, at least, is the good thing about his ability. He might have threads connecting him to people's feelings, and they might feel like his own, sometimes, but once those threads break, the feelings fade, and he's left with his own again.

And, yeah, sometimes he thinks about Clint when he's jerking off, but then he feels guilty. He misses Adam so much, especially lately, after everything that'd happened with Michael has left him feeling like a roughly-wrung out sponge, and he just wants to be filled with green again.

She laughs at that, covering her face with one hand, her palm hot from where it's been resting against her tea-cup.

"Jesus Christ," she says, still laughing and shaking her head. "I mean, thanks for keeping me posted." She grins. "Better than it wears off, though."

"Hey, you're the one that was curious, I'm just answering the questions," he points out. "Anyway, I would like to never, ever go back to school, because he also— Oh, fuck, I didn't tell you about that!"

He straightens up off the couch and shuffles until he's sitting on it like a normal person: back against the arm, leg stretched along the cushions and pressed against Alex's, the other foot on the floor.

"I saw that dude the other day. The one we're mad at."

"The dude we're mad at?" she says, and it takes a moment before something clicks into place in his head. "Darlington?"

"Yeah!" he answers, nodding enthusiastically. "We had a field trip the other day, and apparently he works at a museum? And I sorta... went at him. But I didn't hit him, though!" he rushes to assure, because he forgets, for a moment, that Alex doesn't go to school with him, doesn't know his history with punching people in the face. "I mean, I wanted to, because I just kept thinking about how upset he made you, but I didn't."

Nerves bubble up in Alex's chest, mostly because she can't imagine how Darlington reacted to any of this, and her dark eyes stay fixed on Caleb's face.

"What did he..." She pauses. "How did it go?"

"It went... fine?" he says, thrown off by the nerves she's feeling. "I mean, I kinda called him an asshole, and yelled at him, a little, but... I think... I think I helped."

It's important to Caleb, to be able to help. Using his ability to make people's lives better is a constant struggle for him, and he actually feels like he might have accomplished it.

"I take it you guys still haven't talked," he says, feeling a little disappointed.

"Not yet," she says, with a shake of her head, knowing that he'll be able to feel the way her stomach dips. "But that doesn't mean we won't. He'll be figuring it out in his own head. He might not want to be my...boyfriend, or whatever, but we're all we've got from home. We'll figure it out."

Caleb makes a little face, because they're both stupid, but it's not his place to interfere any more than he already has.

"Anyway, us talking ran late, so I asked Clint to cover for me, and I guess he told Dammers that I was in the fucking bathroom, so now the the team likes to joke that I've got IBS, or something." He rolls his eyes, because IBS is nothing to joke about, okay.

"It's probably better than some of the shit that they could be talking about," says Alex, and her face darkens for a moment when she thinks about all of the shit she got called at school after what had happened.

"Hey, what—" he starts, and nudges their legs together. "What's that about?"

"It's a really gross story and you really don't want to hear about it," she says. It's a story that she's never told to anyone, not since she was thirteen and worked out where it was going to get her. She doesn't want Caleb to look at her the way he probably will if she tells him now.

He leans forward, hand resting on her shin. He can feel the black sludge dripping from her collarbones, the icy fear that he might judge her, and part of him wants to be angry — she should know him better than that, by now — but she's so ashamed.

"Alex..."

"Kids called me Bloody Mary at school, okay?" she says, but she doesn't pull away from his touch. "You really don't want to know how that got started."