"No, no," he assured her immediately. "I don't want you to leave." He was being honest about enjoying his conversation with her before, and he wouldn't have invited her here if he hadn't wanted her company, at least to some extent. "And I'm not even saying that we can't... do anything," he clarified, with another blush. "Just that if we do I think — I think — well, I'd need to know what it means for you first. Because, I mean — well, we're in England," he joked a little wryly. "And there's all sorts of expectations about it, you know? And I don't expect you to be very English about it, I suppose — but I'd want to know what your expectations are, since we're not... since we hardly know each other, really."

Alfred had slept with people casually before, in his early career as a sailor, but he'd learned early on that when two people came into such an intimate situation with a different set of expectations, it was a recipe for heartbreak, and he wanted to make sure he avoided that, whenever possible. He hadn't done a good job of that with Zelda, and maybe, looking back on it, that was what had gotten them all fucked up — maybe if he'd just not slept with her that night on the Voyager, everything would be different now.

"When I was just a kid — nineteen or twenty, maybe — I slept with this girl I met at a port call in Boston," he explained, glancing down at the neck of his beer bottle. "And after our ship pulled out she wrote me all these letters — I got them for months afterwards. And it wasn't like I was ever coming back to Boston. So — so I know how corsets work," he added jokingly, glancing back up at her. "You can give me a little credit, at least — I'm not that English. I just want to make sure I'm not... doing anything reckless."