Hickey nods. There's a moment before he decides to admit to Kieren,

"Honestly, it's because of the hush-hush of it all that I never thought this would happen. Billy's the sort of man who's careful. He'll look at a situation and analyze all the choices at the expense of actually making one. You know me, I was open about it all the moment you told me this sort of thing is accepted here."

Aggressively open and obnoxious about it but hey, still counts.

"Billy's...guarded. It's not a bad thing. But it is what it is."