He flies to America in coach, as not even his grandfather's newfound fears about his safety have changed his grandfather's opinion that the finances of the state of Norzue can be put to much better uses than first-class plane tickets.

He gets in, goes to his apartment, and reads a book while he waits for his babysitter to show up.

He isn't really sure what he's expecting from Bandile's apartment, but he does bring a borrowed copy of Interview with the Vampire with Sasha's favorite parts underlined, just in case. 

What he gets is an unlocked door, a semi-furnished apartment, a couple of fully packed suitcases, and a person on a couch who unpacked the Vorkosigan Saga first and forgot what he was going to do with the rest of it. 

oh no he's cute

Marlo knocks before he opens the door, smiles at Bandile. "Hello." 

"Hi!" he says. "Are you Marlo?"

"I am. You're Prince Bandile?" 

He has done maybe an excessive amount of research on how the name is supposed to be pronounced. 

"That's pretty good for an American." (He has a British accent.) 

oh no he's cute

"I have a friend who would murder me in my sleep if I didn't at least try. — thank you." 

"Sounds like a great friend. --I'm sorry, this is going to be an incredibly boring job for you."

"He is. And it can't be more boring than sitting at a desk doing paperwork." 

"I have no idea why my granddad decided I suddenly needed a bodyguard or why I couldn't have brought one from home, but I promise you no one is trying to kill me."

Failure: Survivor's Guilt says otherwise. 

"Less boring than paperwork is a low bar, I'm sure this will meet it even without any murder attempts." 

"I suppose if you like watching me do my homework and watch bad science fiction movies and draft properly tactful press releases about LGBT rights, that's your business."

He probably will like that, actually. 

"It's the kind of job you can read on, at least." 

"Yeah, you can catch up on all your favorite series."

Or yours, he doesn't say. 

"I feel like I should be asking questions but I have no idea what to ask about." 

"We don't have Ebola, you don't usually see lions outside of national parks, I have used a cell phone before as has almost everyone else in my country, and we don't particularly need help from American musicians."

"Yes, I have read a single wikipedia article. — actually I was trying to figure out whether it would be awkward to ask about your thesis or not." 

"You did research!"

"I did! I don't have enough context to understand most of it, unfortunately. It being the thesis, not the research." 

"I'm happy to explain it if you're interested, but don't feel like you have to ask."

Why do people keep assuming he's asking questions about things he doesn't want to hear about! Why would he do that! 

"I'm interested!" 

"Maybe I want to hear about you and your strange and exotic American lifestyle. For example, I understand you have over a hundred flavors of ice cream."

"I don't think there's anywhere that has more than a hundred in one place, but America is large and has a lot of ice cream places and some of them are in weird hippie towns where they think olive oil should go in ice cream. For the record it should not." 

"Yeah, I'm not seeing it."