What an odd thing to say, he couldn’t help but think as she responded, although in all fairness their conversation had not been marked by normalcy and decorum thus far. The invitation to show her his tattoos was one thing, but the fact that she’d specified they could do so abroad was something else entirely. It implied, at least to his ears, a total escape from the bounds of propriety — which was logical, he supposed, if they were looking for a situation in which it would be acceptable for him to be shirtless, but still. Even though she hadn’t mentioned anything except looking, it sounded scandalous just by virtue of the fact that it couldn’t take place in England. Had she meant it to? Was she... flirting with him? The idea surprised him. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, given that she’d asked him out for a drink within minutes of meeting him, and they’d been drinking and swapping stories for some time now. Still, he was not at all accustomed to finding himself in these sorts of situations. The idea that anyone might have any genuine interest in him was strange enough — that that interest might extent beyond the casual curiosity was yet another logical leap he simply hadn’t been prepared to make.

“Yeah,” he said, with a shy sort of smile. “Maybe.” How was one supposed to respond to flirting? Probably not like this, but he was at a loss for what else to say. A part of him wanted to put a pin in their current conversation and stop to clarify things — a part of him, he supposed, that remembered how quickly things had spiraled out of control with Zelda when he hadn’t been upfront with her about everything before he’d left for Avalon — but what, exactly, would he clarify? It wasn’t as though he had any very strong feelings about her one way or another, having only just met her an hour or so ago. With Zelda, he’d had very definite reasons that he couldn’t get involved with her, before he accidentally had — but it wasn’t as though he really had those, now, either, was it? He wasn’t imminently about to set sail anywhere (much to his chagrin), he had no upcoming plans that involved peril and possible death, and he wasn’t otherwise committed.

(Zelda hadn’t returned his last letter, so saying he was not committed was, perhaps, an understatement — but since he didn’t know what the actual state of things was it was at least safe to say that much).

So... what? Should he encourage her? Flirt back? Alfred wasn’t even sure how to go about that, awkward as he always found any sort of structured or pre-planned social interactions to be. It occurred to him that he’d already asked her a strange and incredibly personal question out of nowhere, and maybe she’d interpreted that as a ham-fisted attempt at flirting. Maybe she thought he’d started it, and she was just being polite and returning what she perceived as his interest, mirroring him while the conversation played out. Who knew, he reflected, whether there was any actual attraction at all, on either side. He had no idea how to read this sort of thing, and now he’d spun himself up in his thoughts too much to even be able to recognize his own feelings on the matter. Merlin, what a mess he was. No wonder Zelda had given up on him.