Author's Note: This is a continuation of The Serendipity Paradox, though enough background information should be provided for it to be read as a standalone story.
How to Date a Vulcan
Preface
Amanda chewed her fingernail nervously and watched the Vulcan starship grow smaller from the portal of the transfer shuttle. They would arrive at Earth in thirteen minutes. It would be nice to be home, but her mother had promised to wait for her at the landing pad.
Of course it would be nice to see her mother too, but her mother had a tendency to be overbearing. Given the events of the past two weeks, her mother's high-strung behavior would be understandable.
Amanda had spent numerous hours over the last three days trying to piece it all together in her head. A few times she had laughed out loud at how ludicrous it all was: her life of the past two weeks sounded like something out of an action holomovie.
Terrorists working for a rogue Starfleet admiral had abducted her and Sarek, and they had only narrowly escaped with their lives and averted a war with the Romulans. She had spent more than a week recovering in a hospital in Shi'Khar following their rescue, and now it was time to go home.
Only she wasn't going home alone. She quit chewing her nail and looked at the man sitting to her right. Sarek. Her… boyfriend? Fiancé? Betrothed? Significant other? Bondmate-to-be?
She quickly turned her head back to the portal to stare out at the image of her home planet from space. She still hadn't figured out how to categorize their relationship, and eventually just decided there probably was no appropriate analogous term in either Federation Standard English or Vuhlkansu.
He had asked her to marry him. She had tentatively said yes. That was that. But now she had to tell her mother.
The thought of telling her deeply socially conscious mother about her potentially pending nuptials to a Vulcan who was only four years younger than Amanda's grandmother was daunting. She would almost rather face down terrorists again.
Her eyes wandered back to Sarek and she felt butterflies in her stomach. She wondered why she was so scared of how her mother would react.
He was not only a planetary ambassador, but he was intelligent, even-tempered, well-spoken, well-traveled, well educated, kind, gentlemanly, and virtually everything her mother would want for her daughter. Sure, his sense of humor might be a little lacking, and no one would ever accuse Sarek of being jovial, but no one was perfect. It only mattered if he was perfect for her, and as far as she could see, he was.
Still, she was glad he had accepted her request to get to know each other for six months prior to getting married, or what he referred to as "bonding." When she thought about it too much, she felt overwhelmed at how it would all work.
They might be alike in some respects, but nothing could conceal the fact that they were also very different people. She also worried that she was very young and hadn't had many serious relationships. People changed all the time.
She had changed tremendously in the past year. She had completed her doctorate, moved to San Francisco, taken her first job as a teacher, started and ended a relationship with a morally questionable politician, survived a riot, lost her father, was abducted by terrorists, and of course, had met Sarek.
It seemed quite likely she was rushing into something she might not be ready for.
Strangely, that hadn't mattered to him. He just wanted to get married and figure it all out later, which seemed so uncharacteristically Vulcan that she almost thought he was playing a joke on her. Why not? Sarek the prankster seemed just as likely a scenario as Sarek the romantic who wanted to run away and elope.
Of course, his exact words had been that they would simply require a period of "adjustment and education." She was sure it would take a little more than that to merge their two lives, families, and cultures together.
When she thought about what their lives would be like, she found it wasn't easy to do. Would they just get married and move to Vulcan when his assignment on Earth was over? What would it be like to leave home and make a life somewhere else? Would he want children? She wasn't even sure if she did: she was only twenty-four and hadn't given it much thought.
Smaller details were even fuzzier. What would it be like to bicker and quarrel with someone so skilled in logic and debate? What if his stoic persona eventually got on her nerves? What if he found himself unable to tolerate her human personality?
The transport shuttle entered Earth's atmosphere: they would be on the ground in less than two minutes. Her stomach lurched in anxiety.
There were too many questions and not enough answers.
Why did he think it would be so easy?
Protocols for Human Courtship
Abstract
Sarek could sense Amanda's tension welling inside of her. He had felt it for days, but it reached an accelerated pitch as the shuttle began the descent to Earth. He was growing better at repressing her emotional overflow, but he still disliked the fact that she was nervous.
Their shared experiences in the recent weeks had convinced him that he loved her and wanted to be her mate. She seemed willing but apprehensive, due to what seemed to be primarily logistical considerations.
Following her incessant questions about what their lives would be like, he had taken time to consider his proposal to her logically and he still considered it sound.
He was the Vulcan ambassador to Earth and would likely continue to serve in that capacity for some time. She was human. Marrying her would help him understand the culture of the planet to a greater degree than ever before. Additionally, she spoke passable Vuhlkansu and a number of other Federation languages, a skillset she would no doubt find useful as a diplomat's mate.
She had asked what affect their bonding would have on his career, but truthfully, it would probably matter very little. He had paid a price for divorcing his first wife, T'Rea, through a minor demotion to resume his post as ambassador to Earth, a position he had already held once before.
Bonding with Amanda Grayson would certainly be considered unorthodox, but there were many people in positions of power on Vulcan who knew the truth of what his intended mate had done to save the Federation from war with the Romulans. Councilwoman T'Lona's specific words had been that the High Council was "immensely grateful" to Amanda for her actions, both during and following the incident.
So though he might be considered a bit of an oddity in many Vulcan social circles for his choice, it wouldn't be the first time, and he was unlikely to suffer any real political damage from it. As it was, he was already returning to Earth to resume his ambassadorship, and therefore would remain largely out of the eye of central Vulcan politics.
Politics aside, Amanda seemed to worry about disappointing him, a trait that he found both admirable and peculiar. He appreciated her desire to please him, but all bonded mates possessed certain failings that would ultimately lead to some minor disappointment, himself included. Since she had yet to disappoint him, it was illogical for her to assume that she naturally would with an abnormally high frequency.
She further fretted over acclimating to Vulcan culture, yet everything he knew about her suggested she was an intelligent and adaptable woman: excellent qualities in any mate, but particularly for the mate of an ambassador. He did not expect her to eschew her human qualities and fully embrace Vulcan tenets, just as he had not abandoned his own beliefs and customs when he resided on Earth. Diplomacy was little more than the practical exercise of compromise, and he failed to see why their relationship should be any different.
She agonized over the possibility that she would eventually greatly annoy him or that he would grow tired of her, which was also perplexing. He had spent many years in the Diplomatic Service, and most of it had been on Earth in the company of humans. Humans possessed many idiosyncrasies and were often irrational, but he was accustomed to that. Vulcans were masters of patience, and while he had met a handful of individuals in his career that tested the limits of his emotional control, she was a far cry from a drunken, impetuous Tellarite lawyer at a mediation table.
He wondered if her uncertainty was a byproduct of her youth: perhaps she did not know her own mind well enough to trust her decisions.
He heard the release of the inertial dampeners as the shuttle bumped gently onto the landing pad. Amanda's head whipped around in his direction as the crew prepared for disembarkation. There was anxiety riddled throughout her features.
He took her forefingers in ozh'esta, a practice she was becoming more familiar with and one he had found to be particularly effective in calming her nerves.
She smiled faintly at the embrace of their fingers, but then looked down and broke the contact when she noticed one of the shuttle's crewman glancing in their direction.
She was focusing more on the answers to questions when he preferred to explore the questions together as each arose in time. It was illogical to attempt to prepare for every possible contingency. Forming a life together would take work, but that was true of any bonded mates.
Why did she imagine it would be so difficult?
