Crichton is very cruel to drop all of that on Arthur, directly after the nuzzling thing, when Arthur is busy giving himself heatstroke with all the blushing he's doing. He's almost thirty; it's absurd that he can still feel like he's sixteen years old and courting for the first time.

Anyhow, Arthur's hand is searching around for Crichton's, because he has an impulse that feels a lot like sticking his head in a tiger's mouth.

"Is there a reason," he asks, curious, "to suspect that time on the planet might move differently while you're away?" That's not the kind of thing they taught when he was in school, that's for sure; maybe it's a quirk of Crichton's particular world.