Naturally there were certain things that Vitali was starting to think in regards to Mariya. He didn't like what the conclusion of those things might have been, but he realized that they were a real possibility. The fact that this all might have just been an awkward situation caused by their affections and the fact that they didn't see each other for some time would have helped her position much more than his own.<br/><br/>Absence made the heart grow fonder, according to the old saying, so the fact that she was away might very well have lead to him acting this way. That would have made some sense. Gestures and touching had the influence on him that Mariya probably wanted them to have as well. Even if they weren't romantic gestures, they had at least started to feel like it. That was weird, considering that he still thought of her as a sort of family member of his. Blood relations were not at all there, of course. They weren't even the same race, at least not in the Russian conception of race. Marriage or anything else never made them family either.<br/><br/>Merely his mind had done so, and that was why he had thought the way that he did. Still, he wasn't entirely sure that he had liked the idea of them getting close in that way any more than he liked the fact that he was going to have to start asking questions soon. Questions in this case were those that he still didn't exactly want to own up to.<br/><br/>"Well, I had honestly thought you didn't want anyone to say that anything was going on between us, but I can think of a few places that we could go in order to be completely alone." Vitali eventually started to lead her in one direction, hoping that she was going to follow in spite of the perceived awkwardness of the aforementioned moment.<br/><br/>What he didn't want was to have to actually start asking any of those questions though. He didn't want to ask if she were working for someone. He didn't want to think that she was trying to get information out of him. It just felt mean to him to even have to think about any of that, but he had to admit she had been acting strangely. That would have provided answers to his questions.<br/><br/>They weren't answers that he had wanted to accept, however.