#my heart...........

ryan is caleb's favorite counselor by FAR jgksks like he's really the only one caleb would actually consider a friend? he's not the only one who was there as a camper or anything, caleb can hardly keep track of himself let alone a bunch of kids LMAO but ofc he remembers ryan bc he just feels like a focal part of camp at this point. the summer rolls around, ryan comes back, those are just natural facts of life ! and caleb really doesn't have friends outside of his family gndks so it might sound a little sad but he'd probably consider ryan his longest/best friend besides his sister. (also i feel the need to mention how we've discussed caleb and kaylee being younger than the 90s birthdays LMAOOO i promise it's not like a 25 year old man trying to be besties with a child)

part of why i think he and ryan would click well is that they just really really love their baby sisters LMAO they're cute!! both of them kind of have.... not so conventional families? they both kind of try to fill the parent void and i think it would make caleb feel a lot better to realize that 1 he's not alone in that and 2 it's HARD he's not just a fuckup, ryan doesn't really know how to do this either, they're both just doing the best they can. ofc he can't tell ryan about the werewolf stuff though and caleb kind of distances himself from everyone at that point ? like he bit his dad and his sister, now he has this stupid curse, he was always a bit introverted but now he just wants a ten foot high wall between himself and everyone else, he's so afraid of hurting people.

obviously kaylee doesn't let him ice her out, but goddamn if the boy doesn't try ! LMAO. he feels so guilty, he doesn't feel like he deserves such a sweet, understanding sister, he feels like a danger to her even though he's already done The Worst Thing to her that he could have possibly done. he talks to bobby about those feelings mostly, because he doesn't want to unload it on her :(

so tbqh once it came to that year's batch of counselors, he was pretty indifferent. mentally he feels like getting to know any of them isn't really an option, because look at what he's done to the people he cares about already. he always goes back to that, he blames himself like he'd had any semblance of control of what he was doing when he bit chris and kaylee. getting close to people puts them at risk, it means having to come up with excuses every month, he feels so disconnected from the Normal world and while a part of him already felt that way living out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere LMAO its very much intentional. he just tends to give people an absolute stone wall when they try to talk, and the counselors pick up on it and assume he's just kind of weird and has other things to do ! he even kind of starts to pull away from ryan by the time he reaches counselor age, he doesn't like lying or being secretive and most importantly, he will NOT put ryan at risk too like he has a baby sister to go home to, it makes him feel sick to even think about passing the curse along to another family like that.