Yup.

"If it's comfortable they incur debt for the hospitality. We do offer, but it'd be stupid to accept, and no one does."

Well, that's stupid and I hate it.

"I am not very surprised."

Your brother suggested I talk to someone good at people, by which he may have just meant you, about... I'm not sure how to summarize the topic we were on at the time, my cultural discomfort with illegible interpersonal power?

Nod. 

But I'm not sure what to ask.

"Would you be having this problem if you were wandering around among the eleventh century humans? That is, is it a consequence of the species difference or of some cultural ones?"

I think I'd have better guesses about the humans' thought processes even though my knowledge of the century is vague and gappy. I think it's... cultural differences but specifically the ones that arise out of the species difference, maybe.

"Do you think we'd solve it in significant part if we worked out some kind of computerized debt accounting for you? Or if, I don't know, people carried abacuses and moved beads around when anyone spoke to let you know where the debt stood?"

It wouldn't hurt and it'd give me practice that I expect would be useful in the long term, but, well, for one thing I'd be surprised if the computer could do it effectively, and for another it'd tell me about what people are reacting to in reality but not what they expect or want or anything.

"They want sushi and popcorn, for the most part.  - unless we're talking about my brother. Are we?"

He is among the topics we could be talking about.

"He is in love with you because you fulfilled all his dreams and at least as much because you understood them, and I don't think he has the faintest idea what he wants but he's happy and he's not expecting anything and he's too literal-minded to take anything except an explicit statement about what you want as a hint about what you want."

I do not know what to do about him being in love with me at all!

"What would you do about it if he was a human or an apsel or something?"

Then I'd probably ask him on a date, which I don't know if faeries do, and be way less worried that I would suddenly find myself metaphorically neck-deep in something that would be really kinky if a human or apsel or something did it!

"Faeries go on dates. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the - are you worried that you don't know what sex acts he likes? Does it not work to ask him?"

Well this is a weird conversation to be having with his brother but that's more of a subset of the issue.

He has no idea why this would be a weird conversation to be having with his brother but decides not to ask. 

"Can you maybe - describe something that would be a bad outcome?"

It's probably relevant that I (as an individual, this isn't a culture thing) am not a big fan of casual sex and if he's in love with me "casual" is not the right word but a thing I don't like about it is that it's too much a matter of

It'd be a bad outcome if we dated and then it turns out faeries don't even have the emotions I'm interested in relationships involving, or don't think of them as important or don't think of them as important compared to making sure whoever's recently given the other party more sushi gets more stuff, or something.

Nod.

"I think you might actually just have to talk with him about that. If you want to. I haven't really known any humans but it doesn't seem impossible to me that there are some emotions around relationships which humans have and faeries don't."

Yeah, that's probably the mature responsible thing to do instead of awkwardly pretending I haven't noticed.

"I hope for your sake it is not the case that no faeries have the sort of thing you want."

Yes, that would get annoying sometime in the next million years.