#michael guerin guerilla jewelry maker

[lambourngb]

Any chance for new snippets from ring maker fic?😉 Plus I totally agree with your comments about Michael’s feelings!

I have been writing, it's about 45,000 words now, I'm hoping I can get it to the finish line in the next week or so. I'm a bit salty from last night so this snippet contains the "villain" of my story, Forrest Long.

so not forrest long friendly! and it's still pretty rough.

Previous snippets : 1 , 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,

The small bit of glass drew him back to his workbench. Hope was still a dangerous thing to him as he set to work on a second ring, but maybe it was time to be brave. Just as he was about to separate a new disk of tungsten to work into a ring, he heard Walt’s voice from the front of the shop, “The UFO museum is right down the road if you want to gawk at something and not buy anything-”

That was a very rude observation, even for Walt, who had no patience for a lot of the undecided tourist crowd that wandered through their door but still managed to coax them into buying something. Perhaps he had been left alone too long in the role of shop clerk while Michael had had his private breakdowns about Alex in the workshop over the last week, to remember the first rule of retail. Tell the customer what they want. 

It was time to stop hiding with his kiln and to face his responsibilities as the other half of ownership.

Michael stood up, brushed off his hands and straightened his clothes. He prepared himself to charm whatever particularly clueless tourist that had wandered into his shop and smooth over the ruffled edges from Walt’s derision. Pasting on his face his retail worker smile, he stepped into the main room of the store and then stopped dead at who he saw before him.

Walt’s insolence made a whole lot more sense to Michael just then. Standing in his store, with his hands all over the clean, glass cabinets was Alex’s boyfriend, Forrest Long.

Fuck his life.

Forrest snapped his head up from his perusal of the display, and then flashed a wide smile at Michael’s appearance. “Well, we meet again, Michael, isn’t it?” His voice was sweet as honey. “Your boss over here has a strange way of greeting customers. How does this shop stay in business?”

“I ain’t his boss, and we do just fine for business,” Sanders cut in, before picking up his bottle of Windex from under the cabinet and glared at the other man. Michael knew exactly what he was planning, and it wasn’t to clean off the prints from the glass surface, that was for sure. 

He swiftly moved to cut him off from spraying Forrest, sliding in front of him smoothly. “That’s true, he’s not my boss, um, we co-own the shop together.” Michael turned to Walt, who was glowering at him in disappointment. “Why don’t you take a break and get some lunch.”

“It’s too late for lunch.”

“Then an early dinner.”

Walt looked mulish at the suggestion, before reading the seriousness in Michael’s jawline and backed off. “Fine, I’ll head off, I was gonna check in with Arturo anyway about getting a cup of coffee after his lunch rush. If you’ve got this all under control.” Walt glanced dismissively at Forrest before turning back to Michael. “But you call me if you need me… to pick you up something too.”

With that, Walt disappeared back into the private area of the shop, presumably on his way out the backdoor to their neighbor, the Crashdown. Michael turned back to Forrest, who was still looking around the store with bored interest on his face. “Is there something in particular you’re looking for that I can help you with?”

“Hmm, I stopped in here looking for answers, can you help me with that? I’ve been trying to pin my boyfriend down for lunch, but he’s always busy, and apparently he’s always busy here.” Forrest’s genial smile didn’t waver as he stared at Michael. “Did you give Alex a job or something?” 

“Or something,” Michael answered evenly. “I can tell you he’s not on the payroll.”

“That’s very funny.” He kept smiling at Michael, but it never reached his eyes. “He’s not much of a shopper, so I’m very curious. According to Alex you’re old high school friends. So what is this, just two old friends catching up? Every day for the last two weeks?”

“Are you following him or something?”

“No, that was just a guess, but thank you for confirming it.” Forrest smirked smugly, before giving Michael a searching glance from head to toe. “I have a hard time buying the ‘friends’ story. I know all of Alex’s friends from Roswell. He talked a lot about Maria and Liz over the years. He’s never mentioned you.”

Michael glanced down, hooding his expression as he examined his work below, gleaming on the dark velvet. He hoped the gesture hid his anger. “Maybe I’m not very memorable.”

“Oh, I find that hard to believe. Alex, he’s never been one to hang around if he’s bored. Trust me.” A lock of dark hair fell over his eye before he shook it back into place with a practiced move. He brought his hand up to his chin, tapping it thoughtfully. His hand was adorned with several heavy rings, including an ugy signet on his ring finger. Michael didn’t see a space for a wedding ring or engagement ring on the other man’s finger, or space for anything outside of egoism. “He played the field for a while, but you know, I was the one who outlasted all the others.”

“Yeah he mentioned you guys have only been together for the last two years.”

Forrest’s face flinched minutely, Michael’s observation landing a very neat hit. “It’s been three years.”

Michael shrugged, not arguing the point. He knew what Alex had said to him about their relationship, and so did Forrest, based on the joke he had made the other night.

“Well, if you really know Alex, then you know how he can be. A bit closed off from his heart and his head.” Forrest waited for a reaction, before continuing with a slight edge to his voice when Michael remained bland. “I can tell there’s a bit of history here. Something unrequited? Let me guess, did you have a crush on him in high school or something? Then you lost touch with him when you went to college?”

Unrequited. 

Michael kept himself from laughing, although there was a shade of truth in that word. Unrequited as a unit of measurement could mean a number of things. After all, there were several ways he had never measured up when it came to shared feelings. Shared dreams. Shared weakness. He considered it unrequited when it came to believing they would end up together one day. He considered it unrequited when he thought about how Alex could ever consider marrying this prick in the first place.

Outloud, Michael shook his head, “Nah, I never went to college.”

“So what are you to him? His old townie fling then?” The derision dripped heavily in the air between them. 

“You’ll have to ask Alex that.” Michael kept his retail-smile in place with effort. “If you dare, that is. I mean, I suppose if you’re a gifted writer, you might be able to come up with a way to ask him that without coming off as a jealous prick. But I wouldn’t bet money on that.”

This time Michael scored an even deeper hit, invoking the implication of jealousy. Forrest licked his lips in response, and looked down, avoiding Michael’s gaze obviously. His fingers tapped restlessly on the glass. “You’re probably right. That’s not a great look for me, to be threatened by you of all people. I’m going to blame this on too much time staring at microfiche.” 

“Sure. If the shoe fits.”

Instead of firing back, Forrest pressed his finger on the glass over the turquoise jewelry arrangement. “Interesting shade of blue in your inventory.” Michael fought with the urge to use Walt’s Windex on the other man, but stayed unmoving as he continued lightly, “I think it’s unique only to Roswell and only to stones mined in the last seventy-some years. The book I’m writing, it’s all about the late 1940s and Roswell. Lots of secrets and mysteries here after World War II.” 

“I wouldn’t know. My high school history class was a little limited in scope.”

Forrest smiled again, back to the too-friendly expression of before. All of his previous attempts at intimidating Michael had vanished, covered up by the veneer of politeness. “I’ll be sure to send you an advanced copy then.” He tapped the case again with his ugly signet ring, before backing away toward the door. “It was nice getting to know you better, Michael.”

Michael didn’t bother with a response. He didn’t trust himself to make a polite one. God, after he had met the man at Ann’s pre-wedding party, he had left the event without having any idea what Alex saw in the guy. He was even more confused now about the appeal for Alex. Perhaps it was petty of him to believe, but there was no way it was good sex. The way Forrest had turned every subject back on himself, even at the party, Michael had a hard time seeing him as an unselfish lover. 

Not for the first time, he thought that Alex had deliberately sought out a partner that wouldn’t remind him of their past, of Michael. He was starting to see that it might be a good thing, he wasn’t coming up short in the comparison with Forrest. Literally or metaphorically. 

He heard the backdoor to the store open and close heavily. After a moment, Walt was back at his side. Without speaking, Michael handed the bottle of Windex over to him with a roll of paper towels. He snatched it from Michael’s grasp greedily, like he was being reunited with a long, lost companion, and spraying it heavily over the jewelry display case, targeting the prints. With one swipe of a towel, he erased all signs of Forrest Long from their store. 

“Oh shucks, is Shorty gone?”

“Yes, he just left.”

“Did you call him a cab so he could get home?”

Michael turned to Walt, and lifted his eyebrow curiously. “Why would I call him a cab? Didn’t he drive here?”

“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. All I know is that we had a car in our lot that didn’t belong to a paying customer, so I had it towed.” Walt wiped the glass with a shade more enthusiasm than the task really merited, with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth smile of faux innocence. “It was Arturo’s idea.”

[lambourngb]

wip wednesday

ringmaker! michael/ jewelry maker AU just hit 34,000 words this morning. 5 more scenes to go.

****

The morning slipped away from him, as he experimented in bringing his drawings to life in a  real application. In one kiln, he prepared tungsten to pour into a setting, and in another, the furnace superheated the softer white gold. There were pure lumps of silver from his last couriered delivery waiting in the wings to be used. 

At some point, Michael became aware that Walt was in the store with coffee in hand. He could feel the other man’s gaze on his back as he consumed nearly 90 percent of their recent material resupply in various rings, all of them masculine bands. “Don’t start, okay?”

“Did you hear me say a word, kid?”

“I can hear your thinking about the shop inventory and resupply orders.”

“Uh huh, you better not be hearin’ that. I know you have better manners.”

Michael looked up in his magnifying glasses from his work in soft gold. Walt was a fun house mirror silhouette before him through the powerful lenses. “I’m just working some things out in my head, productively. I promise in the end, this will all be something saleable, okay?” He dropped his attention back down to the warmth of the hot metal and then touched his finger against it, leaving his fingerprint behind. Retrieving his knife from the furnace, he applied the tip to the gold, gently working a swirl into the round side of the ring before returning to the task of drawing a faint map.

“Uh huh,” Walt grunted dubiously again, and then nodded toward the thin lines of alien glass that were waiting in a stand, ready to be embedded in the ring’s shank. “Somehow I doubt you’re gonna sell that project.”

He ignored the ribbing, and gestured toward the shop, “I think I hear a customer.”

Even though it was Michael’s turn to work a shift on the floor of the shop and wait on the foot traffic of tourists, Walt rolled his eyes and left him alone in the back without an argument. Walt Sanders was a man who had known him since he was an angry eleven year old with a bag full of discarded soup cans and glass milk bottles, all for sale so he could buy enough food to survive the lessons in Christian submissiveness. He knew every shade of defensiveness Michael could muster, but it was clear his misery could probably be seen from orbit and that had earned him some kindness from the other man. 

Walt was also annoyingly right. 

The last ring was not for sale.

He had carefully crafted a minuscule world map, leaving behind the whorls of his own fingerprint over it, and then the last step was placing the delicate strip of alien glass in the shank, the band of metal that fit around the finger. While he had mastered the technique of making his own programmable glass using turquoise and heat, this piece had been carefully harvested from the first piece of the crashed ship he had found at the Foster’s Homestead Ranch. 

After enduring a terrifying lecture about sin and sinners, Sodom and Gomorrah in particular, he had run away after the fundamentalist family had gone to bed, using a borrowed bicycle. In the black of night he had peddled toward the last place his life had made sense. With the howls of lonely coyotes in his ears, he had found the small piece in the dirt by his foot, after tripping and falling to the ground. The luckiest accident. It had felt like a promise of something better, and then he had met Alex the next day in middle school. Fitting.

The inside of the band bore a simple inscription, one word, home.

[lambourngb]

wip wednesday

more of ringmaker!Michael .previously here and here .. this thing just hit 15,000 words.

“If you were hoping to walk in and buy a set of wedding rings, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the process is pretty involved since I make all the wedding rings custom. It takes weeks.”

“Weeks?” Alex looked a little pale at the thought. “I had no idea making jewelry was so …time-consuming. Even for a band of gold with an inscription?”

Michael snorted in response, but without offense. “I make art, each of the rings are one of a kind and tailored to the client. I sit with the couple and we talk about their relationship, what they love about each other, what draws them together. That’s all part of the design process, and it takes time. When two people decide to become a family, it’s important to me that I get it right. The ring is not just a promise when they exchange vows, it’s a reminder of love when things are shitty. I want someone to look down at something I made, and be reminded of what’s important, so that maybe instead of walking out the door, they walk toward their partner instead.” He blinked a few times, avoiding Alex’s gaze, willing the emotion that had crept into his voice to sink back down, to slumber peacefully inside him. 

That was far too personal. Fifteen years since he had first kissed Alex. His left hand ached gently in the background, but he ignored it, not daring to look at it. Twelve years since he last saw him, and he was still like this.

Alex inhaled sharply. There was a shared pain and guilt, a touch of wounded offense in his dark eyes, but he was carefully not looking toward Michael’s hand either. 

He quickly realized that while he thought his words had stripped himself bare before Alex, exposing his every glaring inadequacy; to Alex, they probably sounded like some sort of an emotional autopsy. The cause of death of their relationship laid at Alex’s feet. Which couldn’t be further from the truth - Fuck.

“Anyway,” Michael rushed to fill the awkward silence between them, “I’m particular about my rings, they’re kind of my penance. I spent way too long pushing people away who cared about me, that it feels good to make something that brings people together for once.” He could only hope that each couple, each client he had, was a little luckier, a little wiser than he had been in love. It was a feeling of goodwill he could work on stretching to cover Alex and his boyfriend, at least he hoped he could. “Making rings instead of breaking things, that’s my motto now,” he finished, feeling ridiculous. “I should put it on my business cards.”

Idiot. He was the opposite of smooth, apparently. The telekinetic earthquake to bury himself with to escape this conversation was sounding better and better to him as a viable option.

“Right,” Alex croaked, not really looking reassured by the explanation or charmed by Michael’s attempt at a joke. He swallowed visibly, and looked at the discarded loom and bracelet with a closed expression that Michael recognized from past experience; Alex was struggling to control his emotions. Not positive ones, either.

Shit. This really was a disaster. Abort.

“I don’t like to rush things, so if you’re not going to be in town long, I completely understand if my work isn’t a good fit for you and your… plans. I could see if I can make a referral to another designer?”

There. He laid out an exit to Alex, a means of politely ending this meeting and allowing him to disappear out the door, keeping their paths separate, until presumably they would cross again at Liz’s wedding next month. 

Michael realized suddenly he would probably meet the boyfriend, the presumptive fiancé, at the wedding as Alex’s date. There would be no avoiding that, Max and Liz would outright murder Michael if he missed their big day for anything short of being captured by the government as an exposed alien. He barely managed to escape their wrath with missing the rehearsal dinner the night before, and that was with a good excuse. Still, seeing Alex in a suit, on the arm of another man, a man who might be wearing the excitement of engagement on his face, he might consider arranging a government dissection to avoid that. 

He didn’t need his heart anyway, and lots of people who knew him would argue he never used his brain in the first place.

It would be the kindest thing for both of them for Alex to walk out of the store empty-handed and let this encounter just be an awkward story to tell at the bar after a few drinks. The type of fish stories people told at the end of the night to one up each other, always full of incredulous details, recounted color and self-deprecating humor. The ones that garnered the hoots of dismay but that the audience understood couldn’t be real. You had your ex make your wedding rings, only you Alex Manes and people would laugh. Michael would laugh too, even as he wondered whether Alex considered him an ex. He had certainly never told anyone about them in Roswell, not in fifteen years.

Instead of being merciful and taking the offered out, Alex firmed his lips together and took a deep breath in response. “Actually, I’m in town for a while, and not just for the wedding. I’ll be here for at least a few months. Maybe longer. My boyfriend has family here, and he wants to write a book about the history of Roswell during World War II.”

[lambourngb]

these hands (let you go free)

Awww thank you. This is the story that reignited my muse, the other 3 WIPs have been in progress for a year, some two years, but this one I started June 19th, right after 4x02. The giftset of all the times Michael has done something to repair or make jewelry and almost immediately I thought about Alex walking into his shop, looking for a wedding ring for someone else and Michael pining hardcore for Alex.

It's 49,000 words currently, a canon-divergent AU where Alex stays away from Roswell for 13 years but other canon-events happen, mostly the same way. It touches on a lot of subjects, that feeling you get when you're in your 30s and everyone is getting married, the pain of examining grief and loss, navigating the path to self-worth, and of course, figuring out how to be a friend to someone you're in love with.... anyway, I kinda thought my muse was dead because of real life stuff, but writing this story has been like therapy to me.

*** tiny snippet ***

“— But today’s not about that, it’s about how when I met Liz and fell in love with her, my parents didn’t hesitate to welcome her into the family. Maybe it was easy because to me, Liz is a part of me. Our journey had some detours, but I knew, deep down, that this was where we were headed. That we were brought together for a purpose. When I think about how I’ve always wanted to be just a guy from Roswell, somewhere along the way, the man I really wanted to be was, yours, Liz.  I still don’t know how I got this lucky, but I promise I will never take it for granted. Thank you all for being here to help us celebrate our wedding.” Max touched his glass to Liz’s with a gentle clink, and they all took a sip in unison with him for toast. Once he finished, he set his glass down and grabbed Liz eagerly, dipping her into a kiss to the whistles and cheers of everyone seated.

Liz broke the kiss and then gave Max a firm slap on the ass to the delight of the guests. “You’ve earned so much slack from me with that beautiful speech. I’m not going to even try to come up with something better.” She spoke to everyone directly with a wry smile on her deep red lips, and then picked up her glass to raise in the air. “This is what happens when you fall in love with someone who has the soul of a writer, even if he does still carry a badge.” 

Michael laughed along with everyone else. He caught out of the corner of his eye, Forrest leaning closer to Alex, placing his arm along the back of his chair with a knowing smile, as if to remind everyone that he was a writer too. This time he didn’t bother to hold back his eye roll as he turned away from that couple back toward the head table, where Liz was still speaking. 

“Max was being generous when he said our journey had some detours. I tried to tell him right from the start that I was a fierce Latina who wanted a Nobel by thirty-five, that I couldn’t promise him that I was worth all of the trouble that my dreams brought along with it, but while I was listing out my faults, all he could hear was my virtues.”

“You’re perfect, mija!” Arturo called from his seat. “And I have a machete that challenges anyone to tell me differently!”

Liz shook her head with a smile at her father, as the crowd laughed again on cue. “Max happens to agree with you, Papi, and I’m sure your machete has nothing to do with it.”

Max made a see-saw motion with his hand, before breaking into a wide grin as Arturo drew his finger across his throat dramatically.

“Okay you, two, that’s enough. I’ve been married for an hour, and already I’m outnumbered. Anyway, I’d like to echo what my wonderful husband said, thank you all for joining us. I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time. There’s nothing more important to me, than family, both the family of my blood, like my comedian father and my sweet cousin Rosalinda, and then there’s the family of my heart, Maria and Alex. Thank you, Ann and Dave, and Isobel, for welcoming me into your family, long before Max put this ring on my finger.” Liz held up her hand for all to see, before gazing down at the ring. “As much as I enjoy a good party, this ring is what I’ve been looking forward to the most about today. First of all, let me give a shout-out to the designer, Michael, and I urge everyone to find his shop on Main Street, Sanders and Son Trinkets.” 

Michael felt his face redden as everyone turned in their seats toward him. Liz clapped for him, pointing him out to the crowd, and flashing her ring again. He felt Alex nudge his leg again in support. A nice gesture, but he still wanted to kill Liz, as he kept his public retail smile in place. Ann Evans had brought the members of the community with the deepest pockets to the reception, and new business was never a bad thing.

He couldn’t help but remember that Liz had steered Alex to his shop, after the rehearsal dinner.

“He does beautiful work, does he not? All of his custom rings require an in-depth conversation, and I’m telling you my friends, Pre-Cana with my childhood priest felt less involved,” Liz joked, the guests laughed at her quip. She looked down at her ring, and her smile softened into something that felt so private, Michael had to look away even though he had made it for them. “Honestly, that was how I knew Max and I were ready for this step, forget putting together a dresser from Ikea, if you want to really know a man, then try designing a ring that is meant to represent your love to each other. From day one we were on the same page when it came to what we wanted, and I can’t argue with the end result, we’re here, together, and this ring, it reminds of what made it all worth it. Anyway, thank you again for coming, dessert from Cosmic Cakes and the Crashdown will be coming out soon, along with the moment some of you have been waiting for, seeing our dance moves. Well, my dance moves, at least!”

Max shrugged good-naturedly at Liz’s teasing, acknowledging that she was the more gifted dancer of the two of them.