On hearing that, Ford's heart lifted and his stomach fluttered. He opened his mouth to ask You have? but held off. He had to remember that Tycho did this (things like this) all the time. He'd had Cleon Broadmoor staying the night and the pair of them weren't even close enough that Tycho talked about him often (at least not to Ford), so it wasn't like Tycho wanting to kiss him made him special, or anything. In fact, maybe this made their relationship less special. Had there ever been days where Ford thought they were spending time together because they were good friends, when Ty had only invited him hoping they might fall into bed together?

It wasn't something that Ford had any rights to be upset about; Tycho just led a very different life than he did. Ford had to be careful not to project, though. He could not assume that when Tycho said something like he'd wanted to kiss Ford for a long time that it meant the same thing as it would have coming from Ford.

"Well, you picked a hell of a way to do it," Ford said. He was trying to replicate their familiar cadence of conversation even though the kiss still had him feeling dizzy. He scooted back along the floor, hoping that increasing the space enough that their legs were no longer tangled together would help.

"You can't stay here. My whole family lives here and I'm not — going to try to explain this to them," he said, waving his hand vaguely between the pair of them when he said this.

---