He has to laugh at the comment, because he finds it endearing, likes the honesty in it, that Ned's not afraid of admitting something like that. They haven't known each other for very long, and he knows that there're a fair few amount of people who wouldn't say something like that for fear of it sounding too intimate, too emotional. In his opinion, though, there's nothing wrong with being intimate or emotional; he just likes that Ned can do it around him.

"Well, yeah, you usually don't tell the guys you fall for that you've fallen for them. Unless you fall for them after they get pie thrown at them, apparently. Not that that's falling for, I mean, not in the really serious definition of the term, just that you were pretty forward with me. I liked that."

And if there's one thing he can say about himself, it's that no matter how affectionate someone else can be, he's always there, poised with something equally affectionate and generally more awkward, to say. He hadn't meant that Ned had really fallen for him, because that implies a depth of emotion that he's pretty sure can't exist yet, but Ned had certainly been interested in him, in some way, from the moment they'd met. The feeling had been mutual.

"The first time I fell for a guy, I was in high school. I thought I was losing my mind. I mean, up until then, I'd been a weird kid, but the one thing I had going for me that was entirely normal was that I was just as girl-crazy as every other guy I knew. And then all of a sudden, there was this guy, and I was having the same thoughts about him I was having about the girls -- well, you know, a little different, but the same basic idea -- and I really thought I'd lost it."