How should he look, then? This was the way he felt; he couldn't just shrug it off and change. But Tycho saying no was enough to pin him in the hallway, making no move to actually leave. For a moment he just lingered there, not having anything productive to say or do, until eventually the weight of their combined misery forced him to say something, just to break the silence into more digestable pieces.

"Your hair looks awful," Ford said, which wasn't true; Tycho could have made anything look good, especially if he was wearing it with the confidence he always carried with him. "I don't like it," he said, which was. He didn't like that it was different — the physical manifestation of the idea that Tycho was out in the world, separately from him, growing and changing in ways Ford was no longer privy to.

---

  

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Set by Lady!

Tycho scoffed when Ford said his hair looked awful. ”Come now, don’t lie. I always look like a snack,” he stated, stealing from an expression that had been uttered in a far vision he’d had just the other week. More seriously, he touched a hand to his now shorter hair. ”I had to, it took some of the pain away.”

  

---

Can we dance like we're all alone
Stop the time and make it still
Hold you like I always will

Ford pressed his lips together. The moment was bittersweet. He felt a rush of fondness at Tycho's inexplicable joke — some things didn't change, like Ty using phrases that Ford had never heard before and probably never would hear from anyone else and leaving him to infer the meaning from context and tone alone. Some things did change: Ty's shorter hair, and the melancholic way he raised his hand to touch it. The mood was more jarring than the haircut; so very unlike the Tycho Ford had known when they were together.

He couldn't find anything to say. Eventually he took a step to close the distance between them again and wrapped his arms around Tycho tightly.

---

  

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Set by Lady!

Tycho was mildly surprised when Ford came to wrap his arms around him. He did the same, burying his head into the crook of Fords neck. "Gods, but I even miss the smell of you," he whispered into the others ears before being unable to help but whisper an improvised poem about it that spoke of longing for it when his nose might soon forget it entirely.

  

---

Can we dance like we're all alone
Stop the time and make it still
Hold you like I always will