On the one hand: yes, being discreet was always important for people like them, and even more so now that someone had reason to be suspicious of Ford's interactions with other men. On the other hand: Ford had never thought discreet and Tycho in the same sentence before, and he had no conceptualization of what that might mean, if it wasn't just what they were already doing. Ford didn't think they'd done anything wrong so far... and Noble didn't know that he was seeing someone now. The confrontation could have been much worse if they hadn't already been careful enough, he realized. If Noble had enough of an inkling to guess that Tycho and he were involved in some way, Ford didn't think he would have been able to deny it — at least, he wouldn't have been able to deny it well enough that Noble would have actually believed him.

"If you start being discreet, that'll tip him off faster than if you'd sent flowers straight to my door," Ford pointed out, with a fond (yet faltering) smile. "He knows you. But he doesn't know that I'm with anyone," Ford continued. "So I think we'll be alright, if we just... don't give him any reason to think about us, for a while."

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