The idea that Tim would keep him in the loop catches him totally unprepared. He stops and stares at Tim for a good two-beat pause, expression flat.

Then he bursts out laughing.

He had assumed that Tim would eventually take his (selfish, cowardly, presumptuous) refusal and go in alone, then shut him out of whatever he found inside--why wouldn't he, if he knows Foster to be the putrid, rotted garbage he is?

But of course he knows the answer. Tim refuses to acknowledge that truth. He believes Foster to possess not just life, perpetuating, but a compromisable reality, the mundane delusion of personhood, of something to be saved.

Usually Foster would oppose him instantly, because he has to--he has to stop people before the start, he's obligated, required on a moral and ideological level to correct these things before they get too far, or anywhere at all.

But it's actually funnier, right now, when he's quasi-braced on the ledge straddling hysteria and panic. So okay, Tim. He'll bite.

"...if you insist."