Fuck.
He had only asked on the off chance that she was willing to come right out and say that she didn't care at all about this, to claim that she could kiss him this afternoon and not think about it at all the entire time he was out to sea. He had to ask, because even when she'd said it the first time, some part of him had known that she was bluffing — but if she could have kept up the charade for just thirty more seconds, he would have pretended not to have known. He would have pushed all of his thoughts about the
responsible thing to do to the back of his mind and closed the distance to her and done the things he wanted to do, instead. Just one more reassurance — however weak or thin it might have been — would have been enough license to overcome his moral qualms about taking advantage of a young lady's emotions for his own selfish pleasure.
But he couldn't do that
now. Now she had swung the other way, and admitted to the exact thing he'd been worried about. In trying to cut the emotional aspect out of the moment, he had unintentionally initiated a conversation about that very thing.
He was not prepared for this. He didn't do well with discussing emotions in general, and the prospect of having to do so now exhausted him. He sat down in the chair behind his desk with an air of resignation, because he knew that he couldn't continue this line of conversation
and keep trying to hide the (thankfully now slightly ebbing) bulge at the front of his trousers. He regretted sitting down as soon as he'd done it, because sitting in a chair behind a desk while Miss Fisk stood gave this interaction a strange atmosphere, as though he were a Hogwarts professor and she were a student caught doing something she shouldn't have been doing. It was awkward and uncomfortable and the dynamic was entirely
wrong, but it would probably be even more awkward to stand up again — and he had no intention of doing so before the situation downstairs had resolved itself, anyway.
"I don't know," he said, honestly. Even though he hadn't been looking for a genuine response, some part of him
had known that she was lying, and he had no idea exactly where that knowledge had come from. "I guess I don't know you
that well," he admitted, "But — well. It just seemed wrong." He pulled his hands out of his pockets and thought about resting his elbows on the desk, but worried that would only make the 'student reporting for detention' feeling even stronger, and he wanted to avoid that at all costs. He ended up biting the outside edge of one thumb instead, while his other arm rested loosely on the arm rest of the chair. He was looking at the wall so that he didn't have to look at her, which somehow made it better.
"It's — not that I'm not the marrying type," he said tentatively, hazarding a quick glance at her before shifting his gaze back to a vague point on the wall. He considered telling her about his history with Lily — the words
I was engaged once were on the tip of his tongue — but he decided very quickly that that would be a terrible idea. While he knew that his reasoning for not getting involved with anyone before setting sail again was sound, he was not confident in his ability to convey that point to Miss Zelda. The last thing he needed was to make it seem as though he was turning her down because his heart was preoccupied elsewhere. Not to mention that he wasn't even sure where he
did stand with Lily. Merlin, what a mess.
Chewing over his words carefully, Alfred finally looked back at the young woman and explained, "I just — don't want to make promises I can't keep. It's not fair to anyone."
MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER
![[Image: xXXD462.png]](https://i.imgur.com/xXXD462.png)
