greatamazingfeelingsboy

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michael guerin

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"I have a couple hours before work tomorrow. You can come over?"

That's how it starts. Clint needs some help on an art project, and Caleb isn't an artist by a long shot (which he warns Clint about plenty), but he does remember all the stuff he and Chloe talked about, and when Clint hears that, he seems to think it's enough knowledge for Caleb to be helpful.

So, on Saturday morning before Caleb goes to the shop, Clint comes to the apartment. Caleb has double- and triple-checked that the spare room door is locked. He's covered anything that gives off too much of its own light (which is so weird, and so cool), and on top of installing the locking doorknob, he'd also installed privacy stripping along the bottom.

He won't let Michael's secret get out. Not after everything.

Clint and Caleb are sitting on the couch. There's some TV show streaming on FilmFix while they work. On the coffee table in front of them is a box of Sharpie markers in all sorts of colors, a sketch of Clint's idea, and the final piece he's going to be inking.

"I feel like you should've sprung the extra few bucks for actual art markers," Caleb says. "You're not gonna get shit done for shading with these."

Clint rolls his eyes, but laughs.

"I'm not planning on shading," he says. "I want to do something flatter, y'know? Starker. Something that'll stand out from the rest of the class."

Clint doesn't want to go to art school, but he has ideas about art that a lot of the more pretentious kids in their grade don't seem to. He's talking about it now, and Caleb should be listening, but instead, he's losing himself in the rhythm of Clint's voice. He's drawn into the heady, exciting swell of the passion Clint's feeling. Clint is gesturing as he speaks, voice rising when he starts to get enthusiastic, and lowering again when he feels self conscious. It's adorable.

Caleb's starting to stare, he knows it, so he clears his throat and tries to deflect with a joke.

"Don't you think you stand out enough already?"

"Why, 'cause I'm queer, or 'cause I'm black?" Clint asks. There's a kind of wry, challenging smile on his face, and now it's Caleb's turn to roll his eyes.

"No? Dude, you know that's not what I meant," Caleb says, and pelts a marker at Clint's chest.

"No, I really don't," he says, all faux innocence. "Tell me, Michaels, how do I 'stand out enough already'?"

Caleb feels caught. Clint's playful joy is floating on butterflies that are becoming way too familiar, way too comfortable, in Caleb's ribs. He feels his face heating, and he tries to laugh it off.

"I just— hello, you're the star quarterback. Literally every girl in school that isn't a lesbian wants to date you."

"Yeah, well, it's not the girls I'm interested in," he reminds.

The butterflies surge again. Clint's watching him with dark, hopeful eyes. He doesn't feel the hope, but he can see it. Clint doesn't dare to hope, Caleb realizes. He shakes his head and looks at the project in front of them. He can feel Clint watching him, and he needs to get this back on track before something happens.

"Here, gimme that marker back, I'll start the outline," he says, reaching for it.

"Nah, it's mine now," Clint says. His amusement rises up and crystallizes when Caleb looks at him. "Shouldn't have thrown it at me," he points out, and Caleb rolls his eyes and laughs.

"Dude," he argues, and reaches for it again.

Clint jerks it out of his reach, and when Caleb reaches for it again, tucks it behind himself. Caleb huffs a disbelieving laugh. He stretches to reach around Clint's other side. Clint laughs and twists to dodge.

The ensuing struggle is ridiculous, but Clint's joy is contagious as they wrestle for the marker.

Caleb's not sure how, or when, it happens, but he finds himself leaning over Clint, his arm pinned beneath Clint's body, their fingers tangled around the marker. Their breath is coming faster, heavier, from the exertion of their weird little wrestling match, but they're staring at each other.

For a long, weighty moment, Caleb is reminded of Sadie Hawkins, and leaning over Adam, and how he'd had no idea how close they'd come to kissing. This is different. He can tell, now. He recognizes the feeling that says 'I want to kiss him' in a way that he hadn't back then.

But he still doesn't know what to do about it.

Clint does. He stretches up, pressing his lips to Caleb's like he knows exactly what he wants.

* * *
Caleb doesn't know how long they spend kissing. But when his work alarm goes off, telling him to get his ass to the shop so he isn't late, he jerks back. Clint's surprise settles next to his own, making his heart pound all the harder, and with a curse he turns to grab his phone off the coffee table.

"Fuck, I gotta go," he says. Clint's disappointment paws at him. "I'm gonna be late," he explains, scrambling off the couch. "Um, just... Lock up when you leave, okay?"

"Caleb—" Clint tries, but Caleb's already rushing to the door.

"I'll see you on Monday!" he says, letting the door fall shut behind him.

He's a fucking coward, but he really is going to be late for work.

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"What? No, no, it was not bad," Caleb says. He can feel Michael trying to put the pieces together. "It was very not bad. That... was part of the problem, actually."

He explains it to Michael as well as he can: that he hadn't invited Clint over with any plans to make out, that it'd been this dumb wrestling match like any TV movie. That he'd liked kissing him, but then his phone alarm had gone off, warning him it was time to head to the shop, and... well. By the time he'd gotten Michael's voicemail, it'd felt weird to think about going back to the apartment, to chance facing Clint and going back to that moment.

"I didn't hate it," he says. "But... I dunno, like... I feel guilty?"

Michael can't help the smirk on his face, though that softens a little as he thinks about feeling guilty and why he should. He never did. Even when things with him and Alex were over, he didn't feel guilty about what happened with him and Maria, but that had been over.

He gets the feeling though that he doesn't have that sense of closure with Adam.

"You know you're allowed, right? There's no guarantee that Adam's gonna come here."

Caleb makes a little face at that. It always stings, just a little, when he's reminded that, no, Adam isn't here, and no, he probably isn't going to be. He knows Michael doesn't mean it that way, though, so he shrugs.

"I mean, I know. And, and my friend Rosie said that maybe, y'know, I'm actually still back there, too? Like, some people have told me that time stops there, or that I'll get back the moment I left from, so it's like I was never gone, but she was saying that maybe it's like... one of me came here, and the original me stayed there? So... I'm still with him. He's still with me. And. And that's good, right? It's not... y'know... cheating, or whatever, if I'm actually still there?"

He has no idea if that makes sense. He hopes it does. He hopes Michael gets it, that he agrees, confirms Caleb's thoughts.

Michael doesn't want to think about a poor sad-sack pathetic version of himself who might be back home. Genuinely, that's just depressing in the most awful of ways, so he stays mum on that, focusing on Caleb's issues and not what it would mean for some poor Michael Guerin.

"So, then, if it felt good, then why not do it some more?" he says, since that feels like the reasonable next step out of all of this.

Michael's feelings, and his words, aren't exactly what Caleb had been hoping for, but he thinks he understands why. He doesn't want to — right now, all he wants is to be reassured — but he thinks he gets it.

"I mean... I dunno. Like... what if he wants, like, more?" More than kissing, more than making out. How is he going to keep his empathy in check?

Michael squints at him, trying to figure it out, mostly, what he would do. "I mean, fuck, if it were me, I'd just get down to it, but I don't have a byline to feelings," he confesses. "If he wants to do more, then you two should talk about it. About whether it's a date or fucking or more."

"You don't have to tell him the truth," he admits, "but you should definitely tell him what you want."

Caleb blushes when Michael talks so easily about sex, and he shrugs. "I don't know if I'm ready for... y'know, that," he admits. "Like, my ability, I mean. I don't know if I can balance during... that. Maybe before coming here, y'know, before all that shit with Damien, I might've been, but... I'm not sure anymore."

Michael can't help the way he's smirking, only because this is his bread and butter when it comes to talking about it. "Hey, look," he says. "If you're not ready, then you tell him. Make something up, or say you're waiting until the tenth date, I don't know."

But if Caleb thinks he'll never be ready, then fuck...

"How do we work on that?" he asks. "With you?"

"Fuck, I don't know," he admits.

How had his day turned into talking about this? The obvious answer is to try, he realizes. He's never going to know unless he tries. But that means trying with Clint, or with someone who knows about his ability. That list is short, and most of them are not people he wants to imagine having sex with.

Not because they aren't good looking, or because he doesn't like their feelings, but because he's too close to them. That'd be weird.

"I mean," he deadpans, "I guess Alex and I could just have sex in the next room over, but I'm not entirely sure you'd be down with that happening," he says, with a little smirk. Caleb should notice that he's feeling better, completely like himself, and it's one of the biggest reliefs in the world.

"Look, tell Clint right now that you're not sure about sex. At least set that expectation so the guy doesn't get pushy on you."

God, he's so glad he can tell Michael is joking, but it feels so fucking good, so normal, that he forgets to be annoyed, even playfully. He just laughs and shakes his head, then focuses back on Michael's words as he continues.

"Right, right," he says, but makes no move for his phone. He's not going to just blurt that out over text. That feels like a conversation he should have face to face.

"Holy shit, I didn't mean right now," Michael says, all of a sudden panicked that Caleb is about to do this via text, which never works well. Not that he'd know. His texting habits aren't exactly very strong, which had been part of the reason he'd run into so much trouble in the first place.

He gestures, roughly, around. "You know, you just...you get on the same page. Alex and I, when we were seventeen, even we had a bit of a conversation." Sure, it had been frantic, but they'd decided (stupidly) to leave the Emporium and go to the shed.

"Okay, but that's just it," Caleb argues. "How do you even work in a conversation like that? Dr. Bright was telling me to, to 'express my concerns,' or whatever, and, like. That's not even a little bit romantic. How am I supposed to keep Adam, or whoever, in the mood if I'm, like... talking about my fucking quick trigger?"

It's a little embarrassing to say the words out loud, even if he knows Michael understands, and won't judge him. He sorta judges himself.

Michael's trying to listen, but it requires fiddling with the piece of alien ship while he does, like he needs this to let his mind work over the issue. "I think the point is you talk about the quick trigger before anything happens," he says, squinting at Caleb.

"Do you feel like when it happens, you can't control it?"

Cuz sometimes, when Michael's head is full of chaos, he swears it feels similar.

"I mean, yeah," he says, blushing again. "Like... the only way to calm it down is if I get nervous and back off, and then... well, that kinda fucking ruins the moment, too, y'know?" God, sometimes he really hates his ability. "Like, when it's just me, I'm fine. I can... y'know..." He makes a vague 'jerking off' gesture. "I can last awhile."

Michael gives him a long look, with a joke on the tip of his tongue, though he doesn't say it. "Look, I'm just saying, you can't not fuck forever, unless you don't want to. If that's your thing, cool," he says, because he's an alien, and what does he care about human definitions of sexuality?

"What do you do about other emotions? When things like my anger overwhelms you?"

"I mean, I guess I just... try to pull back from it," he says. "Dr. Bright taught me how to, like, reel in, a little, and it doesn't always work, but, I mean, sometimes it does." He shrugs, then adds, "I don't know if I'd have, like... the brain function to do that in, in, the moment, though. I think that's what gets me the most. I'll, like, try, but I'll be too... caught up, or whatever."

Michael's kind of not wanting to trash his therapist or anything, but, "What if you did the opposite?"

It feels a little like the old argument with him and Isobel about their powers. They never wanted to use them, and Michael used them all the time. "What if you used them more? Channeled it more, until it became sort of like, second nature?" he suggests, because that to him sounds like a much better way of doing things.

"What if it's like me and my telekinesis, where I can do it without thinking?"

"I don't use my ability, though," Caleb says. "It's not something I can decide to use or not use."

This is an old argument, with Michael and with his parents. But he thinks he gets what Michael's trying to suggest. Instead of pulling back, he thinks Caleb should let it wash over him. That's terrifying, because it makes him think of the first few months, before he'd met Dr. Bright, when everything had been an overwhelming noise, and he couldn't focus, and he couldn't think.

"That's... I don't know, Man, it's... What if that just makes it worse? Like, say Clint's over, and we're, we're kissing, and we both start to get, like... O-only then, I'm feeling it, and I'm feeling him feeling it, and it's starting to stack, and..." He puffs out a nervous breath, trailing off.

"Yeah, but do you not use it because no one ever taught you?" he points out. "Isobel, she could go into people's heads, she could feel what they felt, and sometimes we did that for each other. Who's to say you can't use your powers?"

After all, it just seems like something that should definitely be able to be done, in his opinion.

"So unstack it. Play Jenga with it," he says, his brain attacking this logically. "Why not use it to fuel you, and then hit restart? Like, discard the emotion," he says. "Can you do that? Take something in, then throw it away?"

Caleb looks thoughtful, then shakes his head. "The only time I can ever 'discard' an emotion is when I'm far enough away from the source, or if I fall asleep. Sleeping's sort of my reset button. Them, or me, I mean."

He thinks about how, back home, he'd felt the threads of emotion from his family dissolve when they fell asleep. Caleb had always been the last one down because of that. But with Adam, the ocean often pulled him down enough that he fell asleep on his own, and he'd wake up feeling a little more like himself.

But he'd never intentionally tried to sever one of those threads. He'd rejected negative emotions before, but he'd still felt them, still been aware of them. That's not the same thing as taking it and discarding it.

"Yeah, but think about that."

Michael can see the thread here, and he just wants to pull Caleb along with him. "When you go to sleep, you reset, but I bet you do it during the day without thinking about it. I mean, unless by night, you're just stacking emotions all day. Otherwise, you're doing something."

It's just figuring out what that something is, as far as Michael's concerned. "Look, obviously I'm not a great subject right now, but what about Alex? Could you try with him when he gets back home?"

Caleb thinks about that some more. Stacking emotions all day is exactly what he does. He finds brief reprieve in being alone — or with just a single person, someone he's familiar with — but by the end of the day, he's still shedding layers upon layers of other people's feelings. Some of them are easier to ignore than others. Some of them, he can use to help him through the day. Someone's focus keeps him take notes in class. Someone's excitement keeps him interested in a subject. Those feelings can keep the darker emotions at bay, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel them, isn't aware of them.

He twists the mood ring on his finger. It's a gag gift, but he still wears it, because it reminds him of Michael, and of that moment in the shop that he'd been able to sort through the tangle of colors to find and understand just one. It might not be any different than that.

"What d'you mean, like... try to feel something, then let go of it?"

"Yeah, like, if I get angry and you feel it, how do you let it flow through you, like water on a rock in a river. You still feel it, cuz you're the rock," he says, "but then it just washes through you, over you, and it doesn't stay too long."

Wouldn't that be something he could do?

"Maybe it's something like that color thing you do, but you think of it like, I dunno, puzzle pieces."

Caleb hums thoughtfully, then shrugs. "I mean, I'll try," he says. That's the least he can do, right? Put an effort in, see what sticks. Anything that'll help, he's happy to give it a shot.

"Anyway, enough about my weird... nonexistent sex life. As much of a joy as it is to talk to you about it." He laughs and shakes his head a little.