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Oh no.
He was fucked.
Techie could practically feel himself getting redder--could feel his cheeks, his ears, the back of his neck--all growing hotter, redder, sure to clash with his hair. His heart rate had picked up, beating even faster than it had before, from just talking normally with Matt. No, now he was starting to panic, his limbs trembling slightly, mouth gone dry as he stared at Matt, the other staring back at him, slightly slack-jawed, looking at him in confusion.
All just because Techie knew his name. Because he was stupid and uttered that name, the name of this man that was practically a stranger. Hell, they had never even talked before today. Matt probably thought he was some creep, a stalker, even. Techie shouldn’t have known his name, but he did, had known it for practically the two years they’d attended university together as he tried to work up the courage to finally talk to him, the source of his infatuation…
Oh, he was so fucked.
He needed to get away, to have Matt stop looking at him with those great brown eyes that he could get lost in, to just be somewhere else entirely, possibly preferably another state, just away, away--
“Uh, hey? You alright?”
Techie gulped, then quickly turned around, back to his table a few feet away, scrambling to stuff as much of the copper wire he could into his bag, pushing it down, grabbing the few papers on the table as well, stuffing them in, hands shaking the whole while, trying to calm himself with deep breaths that only turned shaky. He just...he just needed to clean up and he could leave, get out of here, hopefully never see Matt again and be reminded of what a failure he was, how creepy he was.
“Hey!”
Techie jumped, his arm going wide, hitting the sculpture sitting at the edge of the table, where he’d been sitting previously, left out because he would never stuff such a delicate thing in his backpack.
No.
It felt like he was watching in slow motion as his sculpture fell from the table, tumbling in the air, hitting the ground. There was no theatrical crunch, barely any sound at all but for a small thump as it hit the carpet. Yet, it felt like he could hear his heart shattering as he saw wires bend, pushing parts of the sculpture out of formation.
Techie broke.
Of all the emotions he’d gone through so rapidly, from fear, to nervousness, to excitement, to sadness, to fear again, and now...and now despair, as the sculpture, the bouquet of roses made of copper he’d worked so hard on, almost finished, bending, ruining it. Oh, he was sure he may eventually get it back into shape, perhaps replacing some of the wires--he was lucky it wasn’t made out of one single, continuous wire, hadn’t soldered any of it--but that didn’t help at the moment, when he was still reeling from the emotional rollercoaster he’d been put through.
He slid to the floor, tears falling freely down his cheeks as he stared at the copper roses. It was unfair, just...he couldn’t even just manage to have a decent conversation with the guy he had a crush on without it all turning into this horrible fiasco, could he? Not only did he basically out himself as a weirdo, but he’d gone and acted like this, a little crazy, and then...then just breaking down, crying, all over a sculpture that he could fix. Techie was sure Matt was long gone by now, freaked out by the human disaster he was.
A tentative touch to the shoulder. Techie nearly jumped out of his skin, whipping his head around, looking up to see Matt there, towering over him, teeth biting his bottom lip again.
“Sorry,” the blond said, removing his hand, then looking to the sculpture, walking over and bending to pick it up, careful as he handed it back to Techie, who took it with shaking hands.
“Are you okay?”
Matt sounded genuinely worried. Techie worried that he was just acting, that maybe his apparent crazy breakdown just had him careful, not wanting him to go on some psychotic spree. Not that he would ever do such a thing, but, they were strangers to each other, weren’t they?
“ ‘Mfine,” he managed to mutter out between sobs, rubbing at his face with one hand, the other still carefully holding the roses. If Matt hadn’t seen the worst of him before, well, he certainly had now, hadn’t he? It couldn’t get much worse than this, he reasoned with himself, though he was also fairly sure he’d just cursed himself just by thinking that.
“Is it...can you fix it?”
Techie looked up at him, slightly amazed that he even seemed to care. Even Armie struggled with it, caring more of his reactions to things dealing with his sculptures than the actual art piece itself; his brother had too much of a technical mind to really enjoy art.
“I...yeah, probably.”
Matt exhaled as he crouched down next to him, looking a much odder sight than Techie did sitting on the ground with his larger mass. They were probably quite the sight to see; two tall men sitting on the floor like kindergarteners, one thin as a rail, the other thick and muscled, looking like he could snap him in half while barely lifting a finger.
“Well that’s good. I’m sorry about that…”
He continued to stare. This man continued to surprise him, actually caring , something that his appearance did not hint at. Not that appearance meant much, which he knew, thinking of his brother’s boyfriend--built along the same lines as Matt, but could be sweet and doting, and much too needy. But he still was surprised about it, that this man could even care about something like this, something that seemed like it would be trivial to him; who would care about some social outcast’s work?
“You...you have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one that knocked it over…” he trailed off, looking down at his sculpture again, fingers pulling slightly at one of the copper petals, already trying to fix it, needing something to focus on before he got much too lost in this man once again. It was just a disappointment waiting to happen, he was sure.
Matt shrugged. “Yeah, but. I dunno. If I hadn’t come up to you in the first place...it might not have happened, you would have still been working on it and…” he trailed off, looking embarrassed again, hand rubbing at the back of his neck.
Techie gave tiny gasps as he tried to calm down the sobs that were still trying to escape, his emotional response apparently unable to catch up with what his actual emotions were. Hopeful, maybe, though he wanted to push that down, still worried he was taking this all the wrong way, a tendril of happiness, that Matt even seemed to be worried about his sculpture, worried that it was beyond repair, even though he hadn’t pushed it over.
“Well that...that would have been a shame,” he managed to force out, ignoring the part of his mind that screamed it was a bad idea, that he was just asking for disappointment, for rejection. But this could be his last chance, could be his only time talking to Matt, to this handsome man he’d been pining over.
A bashful smile met his gaze when he finally, finally , looked back up at Matt a few moments later, having been too scared to do so, worried he’d see disgust or pity in that face, almost sure that it was what he would see there, after all that had happened in these past few minutes.
“Would it?” Matt asked tentatively, pushing his glasses up on his nose with one hand even though they hardly needed it, probably a nervous tic; Techie knew all about those, of needing his hands to do something, occupy some other space besides just being still, otherwise his mind would take over too completely.
“Yes,” Techie answered with a shaky smile, cheeks tear-stained, still trying to suppress his sobs, as he reached out and rested his hand atop Matt’s, lacing their fingers together.