Thanks for all your reviews! I felt sorry for letting you wait for the next update, but real life has kept me too busy for the last weeks. I'm on holiday at the moment, so more time for reading and writing!

Chapter 19 – Fights

No sign from Soltek for the whole evening and Irina felt quite depressed when she got up for work the next morning and dreaded the awkwardness of them having to work together. She debated with herself on how to behave towards him and chose to just act as if nothing had happened and just wait for him to do something.

When they worked on the program together with Barclay she realized that Soltek was much better in acting like nothing had happened. Some icy remarks about his suggestions slipped over her lips before she could think about how she was behaving, but he acted like he didn't realize her sarcasm. She should have anticipated that from a Vulcan, but might be too mad at him to think straight.

Barclay stuttered even more than usual, her bad mood seemed to make him nervous and she felt slightly guilty for it and then tried to work on the program with as little talk as possible.

She went to lunch without him. She thought about asking Lamira to join her, but then decided she wasn't in the mood for any talk right now.

Then in the afternoon she got into a heated argument with him over some parameter of the astrometrics program.

'No, that's a bad idea,' she said resolutely, 'it will make the primary interface too convoluted, we should leave it in the secondary interface.'

He gave her an astonished look raising both his eyebrows, but seemed lost for words.

'What is it?' she asked annoyed at his stare.

'You are lying,' he stated in a low voice.

'What?!' she asked indignantly.

'You think it is a good idea,' he said astonished, 'but you don't want to admit it.'

She gaped at him in shock and got even more furious when she realized that he was right.

'And how would you know what I'm thinking?! I thought you didn't understand humans,' she replied icily.

He crossed his arms and gave her a thoughtful look obviously thinking about how to explain himself.

'You're reading my mind!' she blurted out, 'stop it!'

She was furious and wanted to throw the padd at him she was holding, but restrained herself when she realized people where starting to look at them.

'Okay then,' she said taking a deep breath, 'let's do it your way, but stop the mind reading.'

'It was not my intention to pry,' he said in a low voice, while they were working the console, 'you send your thoughts openly to me.'

'I sure didn't!' she hissed.

'You are not trained in telepathy,' he stated coolly, 'if it wasn't your intention to provoke me, you might have sent your thoughts without consciously realizing it.'

'Oh great!' she sighed sarcastically, 'now you can read me like a book, while I still don't know what's going on between those pointy ears, that's not fair.'

'I believe we should discuss that matter in private,' he replied in a low voice while his eyes swept to Ensign Creyo, who was obviously watching them curiously and quickly looked at her console when he caught her at it. Irina noticed Soltek was blushing slightly, but still felt too mad to care. She decided to quit the argument there and concentrated on the program.

After work she went out to the arboretum for a round of running and when she returned exhausted she felt slightly better.

While under the shower she remembered her sister's words that he might just not know what to do about her feelings and she had been the one telling him to leave her alone yesterday, maybe he had taken that too literally...and she had also been quite a bit bitchy to him in engineering...

Just when she had finished to dress her door chime rang. It was him.

'Irina,' he asked, 'do you still require solitude or do you want to talk about the parameters of our relationship?'

'Let's talk,' she said and sat down on her couch.

He sat himself next to her. 'I've researched human customs and found out that it is required to...confess one's love before marriage,' he said slowly.

She looked at him wondering where this was going.

'You probably know from observing Vulcans that we don't glorify emotions the way humans do, but strive to overcome them,' he continued, 'which means we have emotions, but don't show or talk about them the way humans do.'

Irina considered this, 'I understand what you're saying,' she sighed thoughtfully. He returned a questioning look and she wondered if she detected sadness and longing in his eyes or if it was just her imagination. He also had some kind of sincere innocence in those dark brown eyes which was hard to be angry at. When she couldn't stand it any longer, she said: 'maybe I was expecting too much of you.'

'I don't know how to solve our inter-cultural problems yet, but I haven't given up' he said in a soft voice.

'I don't know what to do either,' she said with a sigh, 'but it's okay, relationships don't have to be perfect.'

'I understand that under the circumstances you can't marry me according to human customs because I've failed to do what would be required of me,' he said carefully.

'I haven't done what would be required of a Vulcan woman either,' she admitted, '...which is what exactly, by the way?' She looked at him curiously.

'As a Vulcan woman,' he said in a sharp voice, 'you wouldn't have lied to me.'

'I'm truly sorry, Soltek,' she replied earnestly, 'I didn't mean to lie, I didn't realize I was bashing your idea because I was angry at you.'

'Fascinating,' he said with a frown of undisguised astonishment, 'that is highly illogical.'

'Yes, it is,' she admitted, 'but it's not the same as deliberate lying, I wouldn't do that to you'. She moved closer and reached for his face. He closed his eyes and allowed her to kiss him.

'I believe you,' he said and placed his hands on her hips while their kiss deepened.

'Is that the only matter I fall short,' she asked while she caressed his face and ears and couldn't repress a satisfied grin at the visible state of pleasure she put him into.

'As a Vulcan woman...you most likely would have agreed to...marry me before...initiating physical contact,' he said in a hoarse whisper between drawing breaths.

'So every time I touch you, I break the rules?' she said teasingly in between kisses.

'Exactly,' he replied and grabbed her hand trying to center himself before she could give him more of this treatment.

'How come you let me do that then?' she asked with a hint of provocation.

He looked into her eyes and said in a clear voice, 'I trust you to be serious about me...and that you might see the logic of marriage at some point.' Irina thought she saw the hint of a smile creep over his face and she felt a warmth spread over to her from their hand contact which threatened to meld her away. She resisted and gave him a playfully skeptical look.

'I know from observing you,' he continued factually, 'that you are not unreasonable and quite able to logically deduct.' Then he paused and added in a lower more serious tone: 'and I trusted you to act careful and diligent about things Vulcans don't usually disclose to people they aren't married to.'

At that she smirked, 'so you're okay being my unwed boyfriend as long as I don't shout it out?' She started kissing him again, beginning at the mouth and then nibbling down under his chin. She giggled when a moan escaped him.

'If that's the culturally appropriate designation for my relation to a human,' he said gesturing her to stop, 'I respect it for the sake of diplomacy for the time being, but that is not my last word on the subject.'

She smiled, but refrained from saying that she loved him. However, he suddenly started to caress her face with his extended index and middle finger and although she still didn't fully grasp the telepathic connection between them a blissful warmth flooded her and she knew it was coming from him.

'For someone new in the boyfriend department you're doing that very well,' she whispered softly and started to kiss him again.