Fic: Light Up The Sky [Kirk/Spock, PG]
Title: Light Up The Sky
Author: The Moonmoth
Rating: PG
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, pre-slash
Words: ~3,700
Spoilers: Star Trek 2009
Warnings: none
Summary: Jim finds Spock’s quarters to be overly warm, and so he removes his gold tunic and pushes up the sleeves of his undershirt before they begin. Spock is now very well accustomed to the sight of Jim’s bare forearms, the glitter of his eyes in the light of the meditation lamp, the way his head tips minutely back and his lips part as Spock enters his mind.
A/N: A companion/sequel to Follow You (Into the Dark), made up in part of scenes and ideas that I couldn’t make work in the first story. My thanks still go to taste_is_sweet for giving me the confidence to cut it all in the first place. Unbeta’d, but please to be pointing out any errors/Brit!speak. Concrit is welcome.
Light Up the Sky
by The Moonmoth
*
1
*
The first mind Spock ever had contact with was his mother’s. Being Human, she could not initiate a meld, but Spock did not learn to develop robust shielding until his second year of life. Of his first year he can recall very little, his mind too young to form clear memories, but through all the startling new information his young brain had been processing, Spock can remember holding his mother’s hand, or sitting in her lap, and feeling that she loved him - an emotion so bright and clear and strong it had felt like the sun on his face.
*
As was traditional, Spock’s father began to school him in emotional and telepathic control not long after the first anniversary of his birth, gently erecting barriers in Spock’s mind and helping him to maintain them. He grew up with the expectation that the first half hour of his day would always be spent with his father in this way, the two of them kneeling on the floor of a room set aside just for this.
His father’s mind was fascinating to Spock, so ordered, so cool in comparison to his mother’s. It felt like walking through an immaculate building, crisp white corridors leading and branching from one another, each set with doors that sometimes Spock could open, but sometimes he could not, his father’s presence like a hand on his shoulder, guiding him.
As his father’s schooling continued, and he carefully began to show Spock how to shield his mind from intruding on others’, Spock realized that to be Vulcan, his own mind must come to resemble that of his father’s. It took a great deal more time for Spock to achieve even the basics than his father had anticipated, but Sarek’s ease and control when touching Spock’s mind were the cornerstones on which Spock built his ambitions to achieve proficiency in the discipline of mind melding.
Spock was eleven when he showed his father that he could not only shield his mind successfully but could himself now initiate a meld.
“You have done well,” his father said. “Clearly it is time for you to benefit from more advanced tuition than I can provide.” And the realization hit Spock with all the force of his volatile Vulcan emotions - there would be no more lessons with his father, no more time spent in that room together, just the two of them. Sarek had looked at his face with his own perfectly emotionless expression. “If only you applied yourself so readily to the control of your emotions as you have done to this discipline, Spock. T’Varan will not tolerate such lapses in her students.”
*
The third mind Spock touched was the mind specialist, T’Varan’s. She was Sarek’s great-aunt, and to Spock she appeared older than the rock Kir’Shara was built from.
Her mind, like Sarek’s, seemed to Spock like a series of corridors - she had taught his father too, after all. But where Sarek’s mind had felt familiar, like walking through their house, T’Varan’s mind was imposing, like the High Command building his father had taken him to once, and all her doors were locked.
*
His roommate at the Academy was a Betazoid called Garven Aldani. Spock had not encountered a Betazoid before, but it quickly became apparent that they had been paired because of Spock’s proficiency with telepathic shielding.
“It is immoral to attempt to gain that which is not freely given,” Spock told him tersely as he unpacked his possessions on that first day.
Cadet Aldani promptly withdrew, looking abashed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s just, you know, habit.”
“Indeed, I do not know,” Spock said, raising an eyebrow. “The right to privacy in one’s own mind is a tenet of Vulcan culture, and one of many other cultures in the Federation. I suspect you would do well to remember that.”
“Right, thanks,” Cadet Aldani said, a little forlornly. “Privacy isn’t really a concept we have on Betazed. Sometimes, the elders, if they didn’t like what you were thinking, they’d pluck the thought right out of your head before you could even say it. Everyone was in everyone’s head all the time. It’s kind of lonely without it.”
Spock simply nodded, unsure how to respond to such an alien set of values.
Cadet Aldani was an intriguing individual, sociable and withdrawn by turns, academically unremarkable and yet by the end of their freshman year Spock was aware that many captains were already expressing an interest in acquiring him for their crews.
“It’s the telepathy,” Aldani explained, as though it should be obvious.
“Please elaborate.”
“Well, you know, tense negotiations, a lack of trust between sides, a telepath there would be really useful. Or, like, an untalkative prisoner with really crucial information, wouldn’t be a problem for me to just go get what we need, no harm done.”
“Indeed,” Spock said, considering. “And you do not see an ethical conflict in such actions?”
Aldani grinned somewhat ruefully and shook his head. “Are all Vulcans this uptight, Spock? Don’t answer that. As a Betazoid, no, nothing wrong with that, nothing more than an average day on Betazed. As a Starfleet officer, yes, I do have concerns, and I would approach each situation on its merits, but Spock, when I’m finally out there and it’s just me and my ship and my crew against whatever the Klingons or the Romulans or whoever can throw at us, I’m going to use every skill I’ve got to keep us all intact and breathing.”
Spock frowned, absorbing Aldani’s words. “On Vulcan, mind melds are only usually conducted between close family members or spouses,” he said eventually, “but your argument has merit.”
Oddly, Cadet Aldani looked relieved. “So you think you’d do it, too? If you had to?”
“Like you, I would consider each situation on its merits.” He paused, choosing his phrasing carefully. “However, I find myself uncomfortable with the idea of entering an alien mind. I am... unpracticed at it.”
Aldani smiled happily. “You can practice on me.”
That first time, Spock was unsure if it was solely the result of Aldani’s restraint over the previous months, now released, or simply the nature of Betazoid telepathy, but it was entirely overwhelming. Touching Garven’s mind was like tumbling through space in a free-fall, everything wide-open, a yawning, gaping vista that was both beautiful and terrifying and over which Spock had little or no control.
He was utterly astonished, on withdrawing, that more than an hour had passed on the chronometer in their room. His heart was racing as though he had been sprinting.
Opposite him, Garven flopped back on his bed with an exhausted exhalation of air. “Your mind is weird,” he said, “we should definitely do that again.”
Spock agreed - he had had only mixed success in navigating Garven’s neural pathways, and so it was logical to gain further experience where it was freely offered. It had also been strangely exhilarating, a fact he took great pains to shield from Aldani during their following encounters.
*
The fifth mind Spock touched was an Altairan assassin. Spock was an ensign aboard the USS Hood, and the bomb was found in engineering with only minutes to spare. Captain Pike ensured the incident sealed his promotion to lieutenant the following cycle.
He had nightmares for the following six weeks, but he was profoundly grateful to Garven for their practices together, because he was fully aware how much worse it could have been.
*
The sixth mind Spock touched belonged to a young Betazoid girl, rescued from the rubble of her colony after an attack by raiders, not ill enough to get a bed on the medical transport they accompanied back to Betazed, but so traumatized she could not speak. Spock was not asked to meld with her, nor was it strictly necessary, only three days out from the facilities on her homeworld with experts and family who could help her there. And yet he did. He is still unsure as to his reasoning to this day, though he cannot regret the decision.
Her name was Neena, she was nearly four and a half, and her mind was like a warm and comfortable nursery with a bushfire raging just outside the windows. And though her emotions were so fractured and wide-open, and Spock struggled to maintain his own control after melding with her, he still went down after his shift had ended and they spoke in their minds every day until she disembarked.
*
The seventh mind Spock touched was that of a dying Romulan aboard Nero’s ship. The experience was akin to piloting a shuttle with malfunctioning sensors in orbit around a black hole whose event horizon was crashing outwards like waves. But Romulan neural structure was at least cursorily similar to that of his own race, and he was able to quickly take what he needed without losing his way. Given everything that followed, his memory of the event has faded somewhat into the background.
*
Nyota’s mind was startling, the whipcrack of her lightning-quick thoughts made tangible through their melds. It was the closest Spock had ever come to actually witnessing the passage of electrical signals between neurons, her mind moving and changing with the rapidity of a spark jumping the synaptic gap.
She was the first sexual partner he had melded with, and with her he allowed himself, gradually, to reveal deeper and more private areas of himself, his need for intimacy heightened in the aftermath of the loss of Vulcan. There were many, many aspects of Nyota to admire, but one thing he held appreciation for was the way each meld was different, and in their months together, Nyota’s mind - ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-fascinating - never became familiar.
He does wonder, however, if that is perhaps why he did not foresee her decision to end their relationship, just five months out of spacedock.
*
He never melded with T’Pring, their bond performed by T’Varan on his seventh birthday, and though their minds were joined there was never a great degree of intimacy between them. Much of the time her presence in his mind went unnoticed, and he suspected the same was true for her. And in the event, after a loss of such magnitude, it did not immediately occur to him to search for the little island of ice-hard reserve at the back of his mind.
Later, when he did not find it, he wondered if it should have affected him more than it did.
*
Spock melded with Captain Kirk during their escape from Ostatia in an attempt to repair the damage inflicted by their telepaths. His was the tenth mind Spock had touched and it was...
It was...
Unique.
*
2
*
One thing Spock remembers vividly from his first meld with Kirk is the ease with which he had been able to enter the captain’s mind - Spock is a skilled telepath, and yet he had inadvertently been drawn in quickly and deeply. Captain Kirk had been in a great deal of pain at the time, and Spock had privately surmised, after the fact, that he had allowed himself such a lack of control in entering his mind because of his concern for his captain’s wellbeing. It is an unsatisfactory answer, both because of his own reaction and the fact that it did not explain the deep sense of familiarity Spock had felt in a mind he had never touched before.
As much as anything else, that intrigues him. It is a little over a week after Jim’s rescue from the Ostatians when Spock finally acquiesces to his own curiosity and invites the captain to his quarters after the evening meal.
“Since it has become apparent that you are both vulnerable to and likely to be at further risk from telepathic attack, it is logical to attempt to teach you to defend yourself,” he explains. It is indeed his intention to teach the captain these skills; his other motivation may conceivably come to light during their meld. But, as Jim is fond of saying, he will cross that bridge when he comes to it.
“It’s not going to involve meditation, is it?” Jim asks, looking at him somewhat dubiously.
“I can certainly incorporate other aspects of the mental disciplines if that interests you, Jim.”
“Uh huh, funny.” Spock detects the intended sarcasm in his response with a certain sense of satisfaction, and watches as Kirk looks around the room. He is not unfamiliar with Spock’s quarters, having spent a not insignificant amount of time here playing chess, however Jim’s curiosity in the few personal items Spock has on display has yet to wane.
“If you would sit,” Spock says, gesturing to the floor by a low table on which his meditation lamp rests. He lowers himself to the deck, legs crossed, and watched as Jim runs his fingers restlessly over the neck of Spock’s lute. “Jim?”
“Sorry,” Jim says, leaving the instrument and coming to sit opposite Spock. “I’m a little nervous,” he admits as Spock lights the lamp.
The captain is smiling, a facial expression at odds with his assertion. Raising an eyebrow in curiosity, Spock asks, “Why?”
“The last two times, I didn’t exactly have time to think about it.”
“If you are uncomfortable, we do not-”
“No, I want to,” Jim interrupts him. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, visibly forcing himself to relax. Spock watches him for a moment before reaching out and placing his fingers on Jim’s psi points. His skin feels cool to the touch, alien, and Spock notes there is a slight hitch in his breathing on contact.
Spock is prepared this time, keeping his mind carefully shielded so that he can enter Jim’s mind carefully, gradually. He watches the play of muscles in Jim’s face as his fingers settle into position, eyelids flickering, eyebrows knitting, then another inhalation and everything forced into relaxation.
When he senses that Jim is ready, he begins to form the connection between their minds, focusing himself with the words his father had taught him: “My mind to your mind...”
Jim exhales, head tilting back slightly, lips parted.
“My thoughts to your thoughts...”
Spock closes his eyes to avoid sensory overload as the connection between them takes hold and he begins to sense Jim’s mind alongside his own. Again, he can feel it, the ease with which their minds join, the simplicity of it, but expecting it this time means he can consciously hold back.
Spock? Can you hear me?
Yes.
Jim grins, mentally. It is most odd.
This is weird. In a good way. I think.
You must allow yourself a few moments to acclimatize to my presence in your mind.
Spock can feel cautious fingers of thought threading towards him, reaching towards him.
It feels different to last time. I can’t... really feel you the same way.
The meld I have initiated is superficial in depth. I will gradually deepen it as we proceed. Jim is impatient, he can feel it, butting up against his shields. But Jim is always impatient and a few more seconds of waiting will not kill him. When he is certain that Jim is ready, Spock carefully deepens the meld.
He finds himself in a familiar dusty clearing, approximately circular and three meters in diameter, surrounded by tall stalks of corn rustling and waving in a light breeze. Above, the sky is clear Terran blue and the bright sun overhead provides a tolerable warmth.
“This landscape seems to hold a special meaning for you,” he observes.
“I grew up here,” Jim says, and Spock is suddenly aware that one point one kilometers south of their current position is an old wooden farmhouse with peeling green paint and a refrigeration unit that refuses to function every other Sunday. Briefly, he sees flashes of people he does not recognize - a heavy-set man with dark brown hair, a boy who must be a close relative of Jim’s, tanned skin and ripped jeans, a woman who-
Spock feels the moment when Jim clamps down on the flow of information his mind had been freely supplying to Spock. He remembers the sensation from their previous meld, the flow stopped by the force of Jim’s will alone, pressing down between them.
“Fascinating,” Spock says.
Jim looks at him, his expression not one that Spock can easily define. “It’s not that I don’t want you to know about that stuff,” he says, seeming to select each word with care. “It’s just, I want to show it to you on my own terms.”
“I understand,” Spock says inclining his head. “Vulcans also value their privacy. In fact, your ability to shield yourself from me at all is not common among psi null species. It is the skill I had sought to teach you.”
Jim looks at him then and Spock is suddenly very aware of Jim’s mind, probing. “Who’s Garven?” he asks. “You were thinking his name when you said that just now, about psi null species.”
Spock raises an eyebrow, both impressed and disconcerted that Jim had been able to access that information.
“I will show you, if you would like, but later. First, it is my intention to teach you to build upon the ability you already seem to possess to shield yourself. Not all species will exercise my current level of restraint when attacking your mind,” he adds, at the rising tide of objection he senses from Jim.
“I knew you were holding back on me,” Jim says, but Spock can feel his assent.
He remembers the words his father said to him all those years ago. “Imagine that you are building a wall,” he begins.
*
It becomes a regular fixture: Mondays and Thursdays they play chess; Wednesday and Saturdays they spar; Tuesdays they review the duty roster; Fridays they go back to Spock’s quarters and meld with each other.
Jim finds Spock’s quarters to be overly warm, and so he removes his gold tunic and pushes up the sleeves of his undershirt before they begin. Spock is now very well accustomed to the sight of Jim’s bare forearms, the glitter of his eyes in the light of the meditation lamp, the way his head tips minutely back and his lips part as Spock enters his mind.
Sometimes they simply explore each other’s thoughts and memories, testing the boundaries of what the other is willing to allow them to see, but Jim always eventually places them in a physical setting, preferring more concrete surroundings.
Initially, as Spock is teaching him to protect his mind, they spend much of their time in the small clearing in the cornfield - it is clear to Spock that this is a place Jim has previously felt safe in. What Jim had to fear that he felt the need for a place of safety, Spock is unsure and Jim has yet to show him, though there are hints in the few memories of his youth that Jim has allowed him to see.
As Jim becomes more proficient in keeping private that which he does not wish to be revealed, the specifics of their surroundings also begin to change. Spock is unsure if Jim even realizes that it is happening, but the corn that began taller than their heads begins to shrink back into the ground, and the dusty earth of the clearing hardens and takes on a metallic sheen, and gradually around them the decks and corridors of the Enterprise take shape.
Spock is intrigued that this has become the landscape of their joined minds. T’Varan had taught him to structure his own mind like a corridor with adjoining rooms that could be locked at will, but he has never given this mental structure a particular design - that is Jim entirely.
*
Jim had implied previously that their counterparts from the alternate universe had shared a close association. Spock remembers from his own brief and disconcerting exchange with Ambassador Spock that his older self fully expected them to follow the same path.
He understands that most humans would term their friendship as ‘close’, and he wonders if this is what the Ambassador meant:
The awareness of the cool feel of Jim’s skin when he offers Spock a hand up during their workouts
(“Your defense has improved in efficacy recently. Have you been receiving additional training?”
“No, it’s weird, but since we started melding regularly, it sometimes feels like I can predict what you’re going to do.”
“Intriguing. Your strategy remains as much a mystery to me as it ever was.”);
An appreciation of the way the skin of his face and neck tinge pink with warmth when he has spent long periods of time in Spock’s quarters
(“You are certain you do not wish me to lower the environmental controls?”
“Plausible deniability, Spock. If I can claim the heat in here makes me drowsy, it makes my win-to-loss ratio seem more respectable.”
“At three to twenty-five, it certainly could not be any less so.”);
A clear, sharp image, as he sits quietly working at his lab terminal, of the shape of Jim’s mouth as he laughs
(“I knew it!”
“There is something amusing to you in this memory?”
“You hate Ensign Brandel just as much as I do - I hope you realize you’ve just lost any moral superiority for the future here.”)
The Ambassador had said that they would share a friendship that would define them both. But when Jim is able to predict his thoughts from across the bridge by minute changes in Spock’s facial expression and body language, and when Spock is able to see through Jim’s tangled web of illogic to the brilliant tactical solution beneath - when instances such as these occur, Spock surmises that they are in fact defining something new altogether.
Author: The Moonmoth
Rating: PG
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, pre-slash
Words: ~3,700
Spoilers: Star Trek 2009
Warnings: none
Summary: Jim finds Spock’s quarters to be overly warm, and so he removes his gold tunic and pushes up the sleeves of his undershirt before they begin. Spock is now very well accustomed to the sight of Jim’s bare forearms, the glitter of his eyes in the light of the meditation lamp, the way his head tips minutely back and his lips part as Spock enters his mind.
A/N: A companion/sequel to Follow You (Into the Dark), made up in part of scenes and ideas that I couldn’t make work in the first story. My thanks still go to taste_is_sweet for giving me the confidence to cut it all in the first place. Unbeta’d, but please to be pointing out any errors/Brit!speak. Concrit is welcome.
Light Up the Sky
by The Moonmoth
*
1
*
The first mind Spock ever had contact with was his mother’s. Being Human, she could not initiate a meld, but Spock did not learn to develop robust shielding until his second year of life. Of his first year he can recall very little, his mind too young to form clear memories, but through all the startling new information his young brain had been processing, Spock can remember holding his mother’s hand, or sitting in her lap, and feeling that she loved him - an emotion so bright and clear and strong it had felt like the sun on his face.
*
As was traditional, Spock’s father began to school him in emotional and telepathic control not long after the first anniversary of his birth, gently erecting barriers in Spock’s mind and helping him to maintain them. He grew up with the expectation that the first half hour of his day would always be spent with his father in this way, the two of them kneeling on the floor of a room set aside just for this.
His father’s mind was fascinating to Spock, so ordered, so cool in comparison to his mother’s. It felt like walking through an immaculate building, crisp white corridors leading and branching from one another, each set with doors that sometimes Spock could open, but sometimes he could not, his father’s presence like a hand on his shoulder, guiding him.
As his father’s schooling continued, and he carefully began to show Spock how to shield his mind from intruding on others’, Spock realized that to be Vulcan, his own mind must come to resemble that of his father’s. It took a great deal more time for Spock to achieve even the basics than his father had anticipated, but Sarek’s ease and control when touching Spock’s mind were the cornerstones on which Spock built his ambitions to achieve proficiency in the discipline of mind melding.
Spock was eleven when he showed his father that he could not only shield his mind successfully but could himself now initiate a meld.
“You have done well,” his father said. “Clearly it is time for you to benefit from more advanced tuition than I can provide.” And the realization hit Spock with all the force of his volatile Vulcan emotions - there would be no more lessons with his father, no more time spent in that room together, just the two of them. Sarek had looked at his face with his own perfectly emotionless expression. “If only you applied yourself so readily to the control of your emotions as you have done to this discipline, Spock. T’Varan will not tolerate such lapses in her students.”
*
The third mind Spock touched was the mind specialist, T’Varan’s. She was Sarek’s great-aunt, and to Spock she appeared older than the rock Kir’Shara was built from.
Her mind, like Sarek’s, seemed to Spock like a series of corridors - she had taught his father too, after all. But where Sarek’s mind had felt familiar, like walking through their house, T’Varan’s mind was imposing, like the High Command building his father had taken him to once, and all her doors were locked.
*
His roommate at the Academy was a Betazoid called Garven Aldani. Spock had not encountered a Betazoid before, but it quickly became apparent that they had been paired because of Spock’s proficiency with telepathic shielding.
“It is immoral to attempt to gain that which is not freely given,” Spock told him tersely as he unpacked his possessions on that first day.
Cadet Aldani promptly withdrew, looking abashed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s just, you know, habit.”
“Indeed, I do not know,” Spock said, raising an eyebrow. “The right to privacy in one’s own mind is a tenet of Vulcan culture, and one of many other cultures in the Federation. I suspect you would do well to remember that.”
“Right, thanks,” Cadet Aldani said, a little forlornly. “Privacy isn’t really a concept we have on Betazed. Sometimes, the elders, if they didn’t like what you were thinking, they’d pluck the thought right out of your head before you could even say it. Everyone was in everyone’s head all the time. It’s kind of lonely without it.”
Spock simply nodded, unsure how to respond to such an alien set of values.
Cadet Aldani was an intriguing individual, sociable and withdrawn by turns, academically unremarkable and yet by the end of their freshman year Spock was aware that many captains were already expressing an interest in acquiring him for their crews.
“It’s the telepathy,” Aldani explained, as though it should be obvious.
“Please elaborate.”
“Well, you know, tense negotiations, a lack of trust between sides, a telepath there would be really useful. Or, like, an untalkative prisoner with really crucial information, wouldn’t be a problem for me to just go get what we need, no harm done.”
“Indeed,” Spock said, considering. “And you do not see an ethical conflict in such actions?”
Aldani grinned somewhat ruefully and shook his head. “Are all Vulcans this uptight, Spock? Don’t answer that. As a Betazoid, no, nothing wrong with that, nothing more than an average day on Betazed. As a Starfleet officer, yes, I do have concerns, and I would approach each situation on its merits, but Spock, when I’m finally out there and it’s just me and my ship and my crew against whatever the Klingons or the Romulans or whoever can throw at us, I’m going to use every skill I’ve got to keep us all intact and breathing.”
Spock frowned, absorbing Aldani’s words. “On Vulcan, mind melds are only usually conducted between close family members or spouses,” he said eventually, “but your argument has merit.”
Oddly, Cadet Aldani looked relieved. “So you think you’d do it, too? If you had to?”
“Like you, I would consider each situation on its merits.” He paused, choosing his phrasing carefully. “However, I find myself uncomfortable with the idea of entering an alien mind. I am... unpracticed at it.”
Aldani smiled happily. “You can practice on me.”
That first time, Spock was unsure if it was solely the result of Aldani’s restraint over the previous months, now released, or simply the nature of Betazoid telepathy, but it was entirely overwhelming. Touching Garven’s mind was like tumbling through space in a free-fall, everything wide-open, a yawning, gaping vista that was both beautiful and terrifying and over which Spock had little or no control.
He was utterly astonished, on withdrawing, that more than an hour had passed on the chronometer in their room. His heart was racing as though he had been sprinting.
Opposite him, Garven flopped back on his bed with an exhausted exhalation of air. “Your mind is weird,” he said, “we should definitely do that again.”
Spock agreed - he had had only mixed success in navigating Garven’s neural pathways, and so it was logical to gain further experience where it was freely offered. It had also been strangely exhilarating, a fact he took great pains to shield from Aldani during their following encounters.
*
The fifth mind Spock touched was an Altairan assassin. Spock was an ensign aboard the USS Hood, and the bomb was found in engineering with only minutes to spare. Captain Pike ensured the incident sealed his promotion to lieutenant the following cycle.
He had nightmares for the following six weeks, but he was profoundly grateful to Garven for their practices together, because he was fully aware how much worse it could have been.
*
The sixth mind Spock touched belonged to a young Betazoid girl, rescued from the rubble of her colony after an attack by raiders, not ill enough to get a bed on the medical transport they accompanied back to Betazed, but so traumatized she could not speak. Spock was not asked to meld with her, nor was it strictly necessary, only three days out from the facilities on her homeworld with experts and family who could help her there. And yet he did. He is still unsure as to his reasoning to this day, though he cannot regret the decision.
Her name was Neena, she was nearly four and a half, and her mind was like a warm and comfortable nursery with a bushfire raging just outside the windows. And though her emotions were so fractured and wide-open, and Spock struggled to maintain his own control after melding with her, he still went down after his shift had ended and they spoke in their minds every day until she disembarked.
*
The seventh mind Spock touched was that of a dying Romulan aboard Nero’s ship. The experience was akin to piloting a shuttle with malfunctioning sensors in orbit around a black hole whose event horizon was crashing outwards like waves. But Romulan neural structure was at least cursorily similar to that of his own race, and he was able to quickly take what he needed without losing his way. Given everything that followed, his memory of the event has faded somewhat into the background.
*
Nyota’s mind was startling, the whipcrack of her lightning-quick thoughts made tangible through their melds. It was the closest Spock had ever come to actually witnessing the passage of electrical signals between neurons, her mind moving and changing with the rapidity of a spark jumping the synaptic gap.
She was the first sexual partner he had melded with, and with her he allowed himself, gradually, to reveal deeper and more private areas of himself, his need for intimacy heightened in the aftermath of the loss of Vulcan. There were many, many aspects of Nyota to admire, but one thing he held appreciation for was the way each meld was different, and in their months together, Nyota’s mind - ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-fascinating - never became familiar.
He does wonder, however, if that is perhaps why he did not foresee her decision to end their relationship, just five months out of spacedock.
*
He never melded with T’Pring, their bond performed by T’Varan on his seventh birthday, and though their minds were joined there was never a great degree of intimacy between them. Much of the time her presence in his mind went unnoticed, and he suspected the same was true for her. And in the event, after a loss of such magnitude, it did not immediately occur to him to search for the little island of ice-hard reserve at the back of his mind.
Later, when he did not find it, he wondered if it should have affected him more than it did.
*
Spock melded with Captain Kirk during their escape from Ostatia in an attempt to repair the damage inflicted by their telepaths. His was the tenth mind Spock had touched and it was...
It was...
Unique.
*
2
*
One thing Spock remembers vividly from his first meld with Kirk is the ease with which he had been able to enter the captain’s mind - Spock is a skilled telepath, and yet he had inadvertently been drawn in quickly and deeply. Captain Kirk had been in a great deal of pain at the time, and Spock had privately surmised, after the fact, that he had allowed himself such a lack of control in entering his mind because of his concern for his captain’s wellbeing. It is an unsatisfactory answer, both because of his own reaction and the fact that it did not explain the deep sense of familiarity Spock had felt in a mind he had never touched before.
As much as anything else, that intrigues him. It is a little over a week after Jim’s rescue from the Ostatians when Spock finally acquiesces to his own curiosity and invites the captain to his quarters after the evening meal.
“Since it has become apparent that you are both vulnerable to and likely to be at further risk from telepathic attack, it is logical to attempt to teach you to defend yourself,” he explains. It is indeed his intention to teach the captain these skills; his other motivation may conceivably come to light during their meld. But, as Jim is fond of saying, he will cross that bridge when he comes to it.
“It’s not going to involve meditation, is it?” Jim asks, looking at him somewhat dubiously.
“I can certainly incorporate other aspects of the mental disciplines if that interests you, Jim.”
“Uh huh, funny.” Spock detects the intended sarcasm in his response with a certain sense of satisfaction, and watches as Kirk looks around the room. He is not unfamiliar with Spock’s quarters, having spent a not insignificant amount of time here playing chess, however Jim’s curiosity in the few personal items Spock has on display has yet to wane.
“If you would sit,” Spock says, gesturing to the floor by a low table on which his meditation lamp rests. He lowers himself to the deck, legs crossed, and watched as Jim runs his fingers restlessly over the neck of Spock’s lute. “Jim?”
“Sorry,” Jim says, leaving the instrument and coming to sit opposite Spock. “I’m a little nervous,” he admits as Spock lights the lamp.
The captain is smiling, a facial expression at odds with his assertion. Raising an eyebrow in curiosity, Spock asks, “Why?”
“The last two times, I didn’t exactly have time to think about it.”
“If you are uncomfortable, we do not-”
“No, I want to,” Jim interrupts him. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply, visibly forcing himself to relax. Spock watches him for a moment before reaching out and placing his fingers on Jim’s psi points. His skin feels cool to the touch, alien, and Spock notes there is a slight hitch in his breathing on contact.
Spock is prepared this time, keeping his mind carefully shielded so that he can enter Jim’s mind carefully, gradually. He watches the play of muscles in Jim’s face as his fingers settle into position, eyelids flickering, eyebrows knitting, then another inhalation and everything forced into relaxation.
When he senses that Jim is ready, he begins to form the connection between their minds, focusing himself with the words his father had taught him: “My mind to your mind...”
Jim exhales, head tilting back slightly, lips parted.
“My thoughts to your thoughts...”
Spock closes his eyes to avoid sensory overload as the connection between them takes hold and he begins to sense Jim’s mind alongside his own. Again, he can feel it, the ease with which their minds join, the simplicity of it, but expecting it this time means he can consciously hold back.
Spock? Can you hear me?
Yes.
Jim grins, mentally. It is most odd.
This is weird. In a good way. I think.
You must allow yourself a few moments to acclimatize to my presence in your mind.
Spock can feel cautious fingers of thought threading towards him, reaching towards him.
It feels different to last time. I can’t... really feel you the same way.
The meld I have initiated is superficial in depth. I will gradually deepen it as we proceed. Jim is impatient, he can feel it, butting up against his shields. But Jim is always impatient and a few more seconds of waiting will not kill him. When he is certain that Jim is ready, Spock carefully deepens the meld.
He finds himself in a familiar dusty clearing, approximately circular and three meters in diameter, surrounded by tall stalks of corn rustling and waving in a light breeze. Above, the sky is clear Terran blue and the bright sun overhead provides a tolerable warmth.
“This landscape seems to hold a special meaning for you,” he observes.
“I grew up here,” Jim says, and Spock is suddenly aware that one point one kilometers south of their current position is an old wooden farmhouse with peeling green paint and a refrigeration unit that refuses to function every other Sunday. Briefly, he sees flashes of people he does not recognize - a heavy-set man with dark brown hair, a boy who must be a close relative of Jim’s, tanned skin and ripped jeans, a woman who-
Spock feels the moment when Jim clamps down on the flow of information his mind had been freely supplying to Spock. He remembers the sensation from their previous meld, the flow stopped by the force of Jim’s will alone, pressing down between them.
“Fascinating,” Spock says.
Jim looks at him, his expression not one that Spock can easily define. “It’s not that I don’t want you to know about that stuff,” he says, seeming to select each word with care. “It’s just, I want to show it to you on my own terms.”
“I understand,” Spock says inclining his head. “Vulcans also value their privacy. In fact, your ability to shield yourself from me at all is not common among psi null species. It is the skill I had sought to teach you.”
Jim looks at him then and Spock is suddenly very aware of Jim’s mind, probing. “Who’s Garven?” he asks. “You were thinking his name when you said that just now, about psi null species.”
Spock raises an eyebrow, both impressed and disconcerted that Jim had been able to access that information.
“I will show you, if you would like, but later. First, it is my intention to teach you to build upon the ability you already seem to possess to shield yourself. Not all species will exercise my current level of restraint when attacking your mind,” he adds, at the rising tide of objection he senses from Jim.
“I knew you were holding back on me,” Jim says, but Spock can feel his assent.
He remembers the words his father said to him all those years ago. “Imagine that you are building a wall,” he begins.
*
It becomes a regular fixture: Mondays and Thursdays they play chess; Wednesday and Saturdays they spar; Tuesdays they review the duty roster; Fridays they go back to Spock’s quarters and meld with each other.
Jim finds Spock’s quarters to be overly warm, and so he removes his gold tunic and pushes up the sleeves of his undershirt before they begin. Spock is now very well accustomed to the sight of Jim’s bare forearms, the glitter of his eyes in the light of the meditation lamp, the way his head tips minutely back and his lips part as Spock enters his mind.
Sometimes they simply explore each other’s thoughts and memories, testing the boundaries of what the other is willing to allow them to see, but Jim always eventually places them in a physical setting, preferring more concrete surroundings.
Initially, as Spock is teaching him to protect his mind, they spend much of their time in the small clearing in the cornfield - it is clear to Spock that this is a place Jim has previously felt safe in. What Jim had to fear that he felt the need for a place of safety, Spock is unsure and Jim has yet to show him, though there are hints in the few memories of his youth that Jim has allowed him to see.
As Jim becomes more proficient in keeping private that which he does not wish to be revealed, the specifics of their surroundings also begin to change. Spock is unsure if Jim even realizes that it is happening, but the corn that began taller than their heads begins to shrink back into the ground, and the dusty earth of the clearing hardens and takes on a metallic sheen, and gradually around them the decks and corridors of the Enterprise take shape.
Spock is intrigued that this has become the landscape of their joined minds. T’Varan had taught him to structure his own mind like a corridor with adjoining rooms that could be locked at will, but he has never given this mental structure a particular design - that is Jim entirely.
*
Jim had implied previously that their counterparts from the alternate universe had shared a close association. Spock remembers from his own brief and disconcerting exchange with Ambassador Spock that his older self fully expected them to follow the same path.
He understands that most humans would term their friendship as ‘close’, and he wonders if this is what the Ambassador meant:
The awareness of the cool feel of Jim’s skin when he offers Spock a hand up during their workouts
(“Your defense has improved in efficacy recently. Have you been receiving additional training?”
“No, it’s weird, but since we started melding regularly, it sometimes feels like I can predict what you’re going to do.”
“Intriguing. Your strategy remains as much a mystery to me as it ever was.”);
An appreciation of the way the skin of his face and neck tinge pink with warmth when he has spent long periods of time in Spock’s quarters
(“You are certain you do not wish me to lower the environmental controls?”
“Plausible deniability, Spock. If I can claim the heat in here makes me drowsy, it makes my win-to-loss ratio seem more respectable.”
“At three to twenty-five, it certainly could not be any less so.”);
A clear, sharp image, as he sits quietly working at his lab terminal, of the shape of Jim’s mouth as he laughs
(“I knew it!”
“There is something amusing to you in this memory?”
“You hate Ensign Brandel just as much as I do - I hope you realize you’ve just lost any moral superiority for the future here.”)
The Ambassador had said that they would share a friendship that would define them both. But when Jim is able to predict his thoughts from across the bridge by minute changes in Spock’s facial expression and body language, and when Spock is able to see through Jim’s tangled web of illogic to the brilliant tactical solution beneath - when instances such as these occur, Spock surmises that they are in fact defining something new altogether.