Tycho staring at him like that was nerve-wracking and heart-breaking all at once, but Ford found himself unable to look away.

"I would've waited a hundred years for you," he replied. Please don't hate me, he was thinking desperately. He didn't have the right to ask that of Tycho, but he also didn't know how he could survive this conversation if Ty responded to it by pushing him away. "I didn't want this. I — didn't have a choice," he said. But though it might have felt that way, it wasn't exactly true, and he didn't know whether Tycho would believe it.

---