I’m worried my crush is obvious and making someone uncomfortable

[Asking Queries]

Hi everyone,

As discussed in previous posts, a few months ago, I met an indescribably handsome transmasc person at the LGBT center of my college. I’ll call him Tex so I don’t reveal his real name.

When Tex is close to me, talking to me, looking at me, etc, I cannot function well. I can’t concentrate on what I was doing or who I was talking to, I am intensely aware of his presence, my hands go shaky, and I smile and can’t stop smiling. I feel safe around him and remember the feelings and interactions fondly. It sometimes really feels like he’s flirting with me, although he might just be very friendly.
I am worried that I am making him uncomfortable with my reactions; with how obvious it must be (at least in my view) that I have an intense crush on him. I especially worry about the involuntary smiling,—one of the few times I have been sexually harassed involved a very creepy guy grinning at me. I’ve considered that he could simply avoid me or interact differently if he was uncomfortable, but that isn’t reassuring enough to me.

Complicating things even more, I asked him out on a date maybe two months ago, which he politely declined, and he is a student worker. (The boundaries at the LGBT center of when the student workers are on and off work are somewhat blurry, which can be confusing.) I haven’t tried to flirt with him since he decided the date offer, and never when he was working, but I sometimes say quippy things that may seem like flirting or which are probably influenced by my crush on him.

Aside from not going to the LGBT center—which doesn’t really feel like an option, because I have friends there and it’s a lovely and safe space for queer people—I’m not sure what I can do. As I noted in a message to a friend, “I can’t exactly say ‘you’re so hot that if you’re just being silly in your flirting, please stop, because I don’t function well around you, and that isn’t worth it if this isn’t going anywhere’, especially because I asked him out and he said he wasn’t interested”.

If anyone has ideas on how to deal with this, please let me know.

AQ