16 February 1894 — Tycho's House, Wellingtonshire

It was ultimately unsurprising that Ford barely made it to Tycho before collapsing in on himself like a decaying star. He'd been trembling from the moment he stepped in through the floo. Maybe if he'd made it here when he'd originally intended to come, immediately after Mr. Farley had leftt he parlor, he would have fared better. As it was, he had already expended too much of his mental energy talking with Noble — or maybe too much just existing in his new state of the world, under the pressure of this new development, to have any left to hold himself together more than a dozen feet. As soon as he'd seen Ty his face had crumpled, eyebrows furrowed and mouth twisted.

He had to tell Ty, obviously, and he knew he ought to tell Tycho first, before he said or did anything else. Tycho was going to have thoughts and feelings on the subject, which Ford ought to give him space to process. Ty was going to have things to say, which Ford ought to hear out. Ford knew all of this because he had been in this position already — he'd been on the receiving end of this news, and he'd felt all the things he knew Ty was going to feel, and he knew exactly how not to handle it. He knew what he ought to give Tycho in terms of time and space and allowances, but — whatever his intentions had been when he'd come in through the floo, he'd forgotten them immediately upon seeing Tycho and feeling, all at once, how overwhelming this whole situation was. So instead of telling him, instead of saying anything, Ford found himself merely dashing to his lover as fast as his shaky legs could carry him and lodging himself in Tycho's arms.

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Tycho Dodonus

  

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Set by Lady!

Tycho had been spending a lot of his own time tinkering with yet another invention that had caught his fancy. It was not going well and along the way, he had sort of forgotten what its intention was. The important thing was that he was having fun. So he had an oil streak on one cheek and his magnifying goggles were in place over his eyes as he tinkered with a wrench.

He looked up from where he had been sitting on the floor whilst doing his prior activity when he heard someone coming through the floo. He stood up in concern at the look on Fords face. Ford collapsed into his arms and Tycho held him close before nudging his chin so that the other would look up at him. "What's wrong? Has something happened to one of your siblings?"

  

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Being able to feel the rhythm of Tycho's chest rising and falling was stabilizing, but it didn't last nearly long enough for Ford to feel he'd regained his balance. "No," he said, though this turn of events certainly wasn't going to do his unmarried sisters any favors either. "Something's happened to me."

He didn't know where to start. He hadn't told Tycho about anything that had happened at the party on Wednesday, and he didn't know whether or not he'd heard. Partly he had been too mortified to want to talk to anyone about it, but partly he had been thinking of the argument he and Ty had after Ford had been caught mooning over Miss Chang. Ty knew how Ford felt about him, but that might not prevent him from being annoyed about rumors, and Ford hadn't had the energy yesterday to fight about it. But in the light of what had happened since, he obviously couldn't avoid bringing it up any longer.

He should have taken a step back, to extricate himself from Tycho's arms before he delivered the news, but his legs still felt shaky. He wanted to bury himself against Ty's chest again and soak in whatever comfort Ty was willing to offer him before he had to explain what had happened, but he knew that would be selfish and cowardly. He managed a middle ground, still clinging to Ty but at least meeting his eyes as he spoke. His voice wavered. "I'm getting married."

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Set by Lady!

Tychos already evident concern shot up a thousandfold as Ford said that something had happened to him. He immediately began assessing the parts of Ford he could see but nothing seemed physically amiss.

He met the others eyes as he spoke and what came out of Fords mouth felt as ridiculous to him as if Ford had just announced that one of his gnomes had been made Minister of Magic. He merely stared for a moment as a snippet from the future filtered into his mind. "Can't be to me because we'd have to be in the Netherlands in over a hundred years to get to do that."

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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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.

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Set by Lady!

Tycho pushed his goggles to the top of his head so that he could pinch the bridge of his nose easier. He wasn't grasping any of this, it just made no logical sense. "What is that supposed to mean? Were you caught in the bed of some young woman by her entire family?" Even saying it was so ridiculous because Ford would never do that. And that was one of the only scenarios that Tycho imagined could lead to a forced marriage. "Unless some woman has come claiming to have your child growing within her." Another scenario that would make sense for this context if it didn't include Ford. Not when they'd had the mutual understanding at some point that neither were cavorting on the side. That this entire relationship might have seen them wed had they not been of the same gender, that was how much they loved one another.

  

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Ford couldn't help but flinch at Ty's phrasing. So he hadn't heard about Wednesday, then. Ford wasn't sure if that was better or worse. Better, because it meant Tycho hadn't heard anything hyperbolic that hadn't actually happened; worse, because it left the whole recounting of it in Ford's hands, and there was little he wanted to do less than relive the events of Wednesday night.

"Not by her family," he admitted. His head was hung doggedly and he had, finally, started to peel himself back from Tycho's arms slightly to stand on his own two feet again. "By the Minister's wife, which I can say from experience now is rather worse. I'm surprised you hadn't already heard — it seemed as though everyone had. Nothing happened, of course," he added; he almost felt he didn't really need to say this, because Tycho would have already known that. "But that's not what everyone thinks."

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Set by Lady!

"The Ministers wife?" Tycho parroted, incredulous. This was all so bizarre. He pinched himself but no, this was not some bizarre, lucid dream.

"I've been busy though I did send you roses via crow for Valentines Day," Tycho said. He had been hoping for a little clandestine visit but Ford had not been home at the time of his flower delivery. "What does everyone think happened?"

  

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Ford's cheeks flushed slightly. He thought Tycho could probably guess what everyone thought, given that Ford was going to have to marry her, and he didn't really want to have to articulate all of it to fill in the blanks. "That I slept with her, I 'spose," he said a little lamely. Ford couldn't remember if Mr. Farley had actually said that when he'd come to call earlier that day, because so much of that conversation seemed like it had happened to someone else. He'd started off euphemistic, but of course they both knew exactly what he meant. "The Minister's wife walked in on us in a coatroom, in the middle of the ball — it looked bad, honestly," he admitted. "The door was locked and the room was dark and we'd both been out of the ball for a while already, and she had basically her entire corset off and her dress undone." It was difficult to imagine a situation which might have looked any worse, even if they had been carrying on together. He had admitted all of this without a second thought for how it would sound to Tycho, because Ford had such faith in their relationship that he did not imagine Tycho could think him guilty of anything no matter how badly it looked — but he had also not stopped to consider that it didn't make sense, his being in a locked room with an undressed woman after being absent from the party for some time, and so he did not rush to explain himself. "And everyone was talking about it, so then her father, today —" He cringed, unsure how exactly to summarize the visit from Mr. Farley.

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Set by Lady!

Tycho gave a short, scoffing, "ha" because the very idea was laughable. On top of their mutual agreement of exclusivity... he liked to think he kept Ford very satisfied in that regard. Besides even if Ford was secretly inclined to sometimes sleep with others, Ford was hardly the "have sex in a balls empty room" type of person, Tycho knew that fact all too well. It was because he knew Ford and how their own relationship was set that he had such a hard time making sense of any of this.

"Why were you in a dark room with a lady in an undone dress. And for such a length of time?" He still did not think Ford had betrayed him - Ford just would not do that - but what had he been doing? What explanations could there possibly even be? He was perhaps one of the most imaginative person in existence but all the scenarios presented to him by said imagination seemed equally implausible.

  

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"I wasn't," Ford insisted automatically. He didn't even mind that Ty had laughed, because the very idea of him hanging around for some great length of time in a dark room with an undressed woman was laughable. "I was —"

And it occurred to him then that he had no reasonable explanation to offer Tycho, either. He hadn't told Ty that he'd been sneaking away from well-attended parties for the past year to go and rob well-off houses, obviously, and it wasn't as though he could admit to it now either. An expression flickered across his face as he suddenly felt caught. It was the same conundrum he'd been in that night, when he'd let Mrs. Dempsey believe that they were doing something they shouldn't have been, except now even the most obvious explanation was off the table, because he knew that Tycho wouldn't believe it of him.

"I had to leave the party for a bit," he said, swallowing. Ty would either press him on this or he wouldn't, so there was nothing for it but to press past it and hope they could focus on the more serious bits — the consequences, rather than the cause. "I came back through the floo and found her like that, and then Mrs. Dempsey found us like that, and now I'm — going to have to marry her."

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Set by Lady!

Something in his lovers expression didn't sit right with him. He extricated himself from Ford and listened as the other spoke. Ford was hiding something more from him and he could not help but wonder what it might be.

"Why would you leave a party when you are the usual chaperone for your sisters?" Tycho asked before his attention became more focused on the fact Ford had to marry someone. "Married. So you've come to say goodbye?" There were so many questions here. What was some young unwed lady doing undressing in a coat room in the first place? Was Ford still going to be bound by those same values he'd held when he'd broken off with his former lover that had gotten married? Would he expect Tycho to continue this relationship, knowing Ford was going home to a wife? His heart was breaking either way and he was not doing a very good job of keeping that fact out of his expression .

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   Fortitude Greengrass

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Ford had started to chew his lower lip when Tycho pulled back, the wheels turning in his head for what he might say that could satisfy the other man, but he never had the chance to say anything. The word goodbye hit him like a gut punch. Ford frowned so intensely his expression looked as though it had collapsed in on itself. Not yet, not yet, he thought desperately, and he barely stifled another urge to launch himself at Tycho and bury himself in the other man's arms again. He didn't know whether he wanted to hold Ty more to comfort him or to comfort himself, or to do something that would momentarily smother the guilt Ford felt about the whole situation. It was certainly a mix of all three, and it wasn't fair to Tycho to treat him like some cheap distraction from more important matters.

How much he wished he could just say no. But Ford had been in that position before, standing in an empty room talking to someone who was going to marry a woman they didn't care about and insisted nothing needed to change, and he knew that wasn't really a decision he could make unilaterally. Even if he decided to sully himself again in that way — even if he decided that Tycho was worth whatever guilt came with the decision to keep the relationship going — it wasn't his decision to make.

"Tycho," he said, voice soft and miserable. Ford didn't move towards Ty but he did reach to try and take his hand, thinking please. Please.

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Set by Lady!

Fords expression was heartbreaking. More so as his name was said so softly and miserably. He allowed the other to take his hand and just stood there for a moment before tugging the other back into his arms. "Don't marry her. You'll both be unbearably miserable, we all will be," Tycho pleaded as he pressed kisses to the backs of Fords hands. Not that he knew who this girl was but he couldn't imagine she would be very pleased to find herself married against her well. Unless she had orchestrated it all, that was, which was another possibility.

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   Elias Grimstone, Fortitude Greengrass

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Tycho took his hand and Ford spent a moment fighting to control his facial expression. If this was going to be goodbye, if this was it, then it would be easier for both of them if he could pretend stoicism — but if this was it then it was impossible to keep his dismay off his face. And he knew even if this moment wasn't their goodbye that it would be coming soon; he knew he could never ask Tycho to be with him while he was married to someone else. But Ford wasn't married tonight, and he just kept thinking not yet, not yet as though it would be any easier tomorrow, or next week.

When Tycho pulled him into his arms the wave of relief that washed over Ford was overwhelming. He curled in to Ty, head against his chest and one arm wrapping tight against Tycho's waist to keep him close. There were tears in the corners of his eyes and Ford didn't bother trying to wipe them away or hide them, because that would have meant pulling his hand back from Tycho's kisses, and now kisses from Tycho were in limited supply. He couldn't let a single one go to waste.

"Keep holding me," he begged. He couldn't respond to Ty's entreaty not to marry her; he didn't have the strength to leave Tycho's arms again and he thought if he said I have to, it's already done, it'll be in the paper tomorrow then Ty might pull back again. "Please. I love you, I love you so much. Please."

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Set by Lady!

Tycho wiped his lovers tears away, at a loss as to what their options might be. Lingering dreams he'd had of their future gone to dust. They were still possible, he supposed. But only if Ford decided he could keep this going, if he himself decided he could keep this going with Ford a married man. But there would always be a third factor. And the dream of someday living in old age together as confirmed bachelors was very much gone.

"We could disappear together - we even prepared to do such a thing," but even as he said it, Tycho knew Ford was unlikely to agree. Not if it meant leaving his beloved siblings to deal with scandal fallout on their own. He held Ford tighter to him, as if the other might disappear into smoke at any moment. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."

  

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