Techie froze and felt ice run through his veins. Why is Kylo Ren, of all people, talking to him?! The blood is pulsing so hard in his ears that he doesn’t even know what the man is saying, and can only stare blankly at him.
“Um, ah,” he says, very intelligently.
And then bolts for the nearest exit.
Techie looked pleased that the attraction was mutual judging by how his face lit up like a star, but he felt somewhat exasperated too. “Feelings aren’t something you can c-control or *explain*, Kylo. I don’t know much about you, that’s true. B-but I do know that I WANT to learn more. You’re f-fascinating, and powerful, and I actually mean something to you! You talk to me like I matter!”
His face pinked and he eyed some icing near Ren’s bottom lip. “There aren’t, um, a lot of people I can say that about.” All this time, he hadn’t tried to reach out and touch Ren, but without realizing it he’d begun to inch closer.
He added, embarrassed, “If it makes you f-feel better, I can say my feelings are only physical… That’s a l-lot easier to, uh, justify, right?”
“You DO matter!” he insists. He doesn’t know why he believes it so strongly but he does. Techie is important.
All the words he used to describe him were so positive . He don’t understand how he saw all that. He wondered if that was the eyes too? Making everything seem better somehow? It was unlikely, he knew.
Physical. That wasn’t terrible at all. Kylo needed to spend time with someone, something more than his thoughts. And he seemed to have a thing for red hair.
As if reading Techie’s mind, his tongue darted out to get the bit of icing, and he moved one hand up to card through the other’s hair, brushing it away from his face.
He made himself look so small but he burned very brightly; the only reason Kylo hadn’t sensed him before was likely how far down in the ship he lived.
The minute Ren’s hand smoothed back a strand of hair, Techie looked like he’d choked on his own tongue, and he shifted slightly forward to follow his retreating fingers. It was a little embarrassing, but Techie had been trying to get used to getting pleasant touches instead of “bad” ones, and now he was developing an intense need for affection.
To distract himself from the sudden ache for his touch, Techie excused himself a moment and pulled out something he’d salvaged from Mega City One; an old music player, which he’d fixed back up into working condition.
“What kind of m-music do you like?”
TechieHux 