He screwed up. He totally screwed up. Okay, so, Norman didn’t exactly like where he was from. Norman probably liked Hive City if that was the case. Tyrone had always assumed everyone hated Hive City, but, it totally made sense for some people to like it if their place back home wasn’t the best. Did Dipper like Hive City better than Gravity Falls? It was hard to say, after all, Tyrone really liked Hive City but that was probably due to the fact that he was alive because of it. If everyone returned back to where they came from, Tyrone would go back to being dead. In all honestly, he didn’t know if he could do that again. It wasn’t like being dead was awful or something, he was just enjoying living again too much.
But back to the topic at hand. Norman had asked him a very specific question that he could do one or two things about. He could take a wild guess and be right, or he could take a wild guess and be terribly wrong. Dipper had been around the city a lot longer than he had, so Tyrone could only assume he was comfortable with it by now, right? That had to be the case, they had a Mystery Shack and everything. But what if Dipper was just acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t? That was totally something the both did all the time.
Finally convincing himself to speak, Tyrone laughs nervously and swallows a huge lump in his throat.
“Well, uh, I, uh, you see,” This was starting out as a train wreck, “I’ve been here for a while and,” He was committing now. No backing out of this one.
“It’s okay! It’s alright, I think? Yeah, it feels, uh, like home. Sometimes. Most times!” Tyrone’s voice was a squeaky, out-of-breath, nervously laughing wreck that gave him away like a poker player without a poker face. He had to come up with a plan, he had to make himself seem less suspicious, he had to do something or else Norman was going to think he was totally weird, which he didn’t want.
Wait. Norman didn’t know he existed. Right, right, everything was still fine.
“Uh, but, if you’re happy here then I am too!” That was so corny. Tyrone mentally slapped himself in the forehead. He was seriously going to die from how hard he was embarrassing himself. Then again, acting like an idiot in front of Dipper’s crush seemed like a good way to get even.