Fell In Love In Stages // a matty healy fanfic

1:02

-Matty's POV-

I hum a tune that's been stuck in my head for a while. I haven't found the right words for it yet.
I glance at my watch and see it's 1:02 AM.
I look at the girl in front of me and can't help but smile to myself.
For someone who puts up such a front, I've caught her at a time when she's most human.
God knows I've been here one too many times.
I've never felt closer to her. Not even when our bodies were entwined. The hold this stranger had on me, was inexplicable.
My mind was racing from all the straight lines I've made disappear into my nose in the past hour. Yet, I'm fixated on the girl with the soft sound and hair all over the place.
I chuckle at myself.

"Are you laughing at me?" I hear a soft voice, almost childlike in tone, say to me
"Uh" I say, caught off guard for a moment, so deep in thought I forgot I wasn't alone in the room.
She musters up the strength to pull herself off the ground and stumbles onto the basin.
"Get out" she says, her face flushed.
"What? I wasn't-" is all I manage to get out. Matty you fuck up, I think to myself. I'm unable to find it in me to tell this girl I wasn't laughing at her, but rather at the sheer magnitude of inspiration she had sparked within me. Two songs in a single hour, simply by being herself - it was a testament to the depth and complexity of her character. It was a laugh of bewilderment, rather than mockery.

Yet despite my desire to express this sentiment, the words eluded me, and I remained silently fixated on her, lost in the sea of thoughts she had stirred within me.

"Fine, I'll leave" she stumbles again onto the door and fiddles with the door knob.
I get on my feet, flush the toilet and reach for the door knob. I twist it gently, unlocking the door with a click. As much as I'd like her to stay so I could explain, I understand how consent works.