The Attached Meme

[truthsnomiracle]

The Attached Meme


Inspired by the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode of the same name.

• Comment with your character, specifying name, canon, and gen/shipping/smut preferences, and/or tag someone else.
  
• You and the other person now have two problems. One, you're aware of each other's surface thoughts regardless of either of your wishes, and two, if you try to distance yourselves from each other you're struck with nausea and vertigo until you manage to get close again.
  
• Optionally, roll for or choose details:
  
  1. You've been captured by some hostile force and had devices surgically implanted into the backs of your necks in order to facilitate interrogation. The mental link between you and dependency on proximity are just side-effects. Can you escape under these conditions?
     
  2. You've been cursed by a spellcaster or supernatural being who wants you to "learn a lesson". Whether that's a real lesson about each other made possible by forced openness and time spent together or just the lesson of "don't mess with me" is an open question, and figuring it out may be key to having the curse broken...
     
  3. One of you has suddenly awakened to latent paranormal powers, or your existing powers are suddenly misbehaving -- perhaps due to unforeseen interaction with the other person's abilities, if they have them. Maybe you could solve this, or at least the part about having to stay near each other, if you could only gain control over your power...
     
  4. You were both willingly part of a scientific experiment, whether one of your own design or something you both volunteered for, and this... was not the result you signed up for. The mental link may or may not have been a known goal, but the involuntary aspect and the inability to separate aren't things either of you expected. Can science undo what it has done?
     
  5. You both came into contact with an unknown substance, whether by accident or simply because of mutual curiosity, and this was the result. Now if you're going to be able to have privacy relative to each other again, you're going to have to figure out what it is and why it had the effect on you it did in order to find a way to counteract it.
     
  6. Your choice, or something new!
  
  
• Have fun!

Comments

[twohalvesatwar]

The memories were a disorienting flash at first, one after another like a slideshow, only without any real order beyond whichever happened to be at the forefront of Jim's mind. He wasn't expecting Jim to latch on and try to drag him down. Most humans were psi-null. Even if someone understood telepathy, it was highly unlikely they would be able to react or even interact so ardently.

But Jim was reacting, was interacting, and Spock let himself be pulled in until their thoughts joined, merging like two different bodies of water.

The link was there. He could see it, glowing between them, bright and not at all fragile. Tentatively, gently, he plucked at the link and watched the subsequent ripples in awe. How...? Perhaps he had unintentionally left some of himself behind, but that alone wouldn't explain how the link had thrived all on its own, without the aid of himself or a healer.

I, too, have forgotten. You are not alone, Jim.

His own memories flickered around them, more controlled and concise than Jim's had been: He'd curled his fingers in against his palms, nails biting crescent-shaped marks into the soft, vulnerable flesh. He didn't feel the sting of pain, barely even registered that he was sobbing, breaths coming in harsh, ragged pants. His Vulcan heritage had failed him and his human heritage was a tidal wave of chaos, all of his careful controls shredded by the devastation that was Jim's death. Anger trickled through the devastation, tiny pinpricks of misdirected ire. The anger abruptly flared into a focused rage. Khan. Chasing Khan through the streets of London, fueled only by the need for vindication. Dark satisfaction when he broke the augment's arm.

I did not react so strongly even when... Even when his planet had been destroyed and his mother was lost. You compromise me.

[diditin3]

You did try to kill me... The thought holds absolutely no animosity and the sudden memory of Spock choking the life from him over one of the consoles on the Bridge is something to laugh about now.

Spock had not had anyone to talk him through it, choked or not, when he went after Khan. And yet, Kirk had been witness to something he'd never even imagined could be possible.

The last few words of his first life, spent gazing up into Spock's tear-clouded eyes, had been whispered and tumultuous. As scared as Jim was, he'd needed Spock to be all right and they couldn't even touch.

Maybe that was where it started.

Maybe the Augment's blood inside of him was slowly changing him, or had changed him enough, to keep Spock close. Could it be his fault for all of this?

I keep taking advantage of you, don't I?

[twohalvesatwar]

Shame-tinged amusement followed on the heels of that memory and Jim's remark.

You provoked me. As you often do.

He didn't consider what Jim did to be taking advantage. If Spock had more control — no, even then, he imagined he would bend over backwards for the human, no matter what the consequences. Consequences like the link, that he had no idea how to break, that he wasn't even sure he wanted to break. It wasn't up to him, though.

If you take advantage, then I allow it to happen. Jim, this link... is very similar to the bonding link between Vulcans. It is also stronger than I anticipated. I have had my shields up against it, so I did not realize until we joined.

As he spoke of the bonding link, a dim memory surfaced of a Vulcan girl just shy of seven years old.

[diditin3]

There was almost too much information presented to him in Spock's memory push and Jim, with the limitations of a human mind, could not compartmentalize and analyze what he was seeing quite like the Vulcan could. However, a little effort and some trial and error, mixed with a little more creativity than Vulcans like to give themselves over to allowed him to replay the images slowly, like he was looking through data on a PADD.

His fingers even twitched slightly, a physical representation of what his mind was doing inside the shared space he and Spock had created between them.

A bonding link sounded fishy. How was it possible when one, Spock was only half Vulcan and Jim exactly no percent Vulcan? And about Uhura (and did that mean that Jim was going to have to look forward to whatever they did while alone)? And finally--

That girl.

Delving deeper, Jim saw her. T'Pring. The one Spock had been promised to until-- Well, he left Vulcan, likely, and started up his romance with their communications officer.

[twohalvesatwar]

You forget; my mother was human, my father Vulcan, and yet they shared a bonding link.

He showed Jim a single thread, not nearly as bright or strong as the one between himself and Kirk — his connection to T'Pring, weakened by both distance and intent. It was no longer there, just a memory. She'd perished with Vulcan.

There was something deeper still, but Spock's shields were closed around it protectively.

Nyota and I are no longer in a romantic relationship.

[diditin3]

Jim hadn't forgotten, he just thought that Spock's full-blooded Vulcan father had been able to do it... Or no, that was a lie. He hadn't even known that Vulcans telepathically bond before they mate. It wasn't in any of the books, Vulcans were secretive about their biology to a point where he remembered Bones flopping down on the floor one day and mentioning God damned side hearts! under his breath about a year into their stint at the Academy.

Where Spock's train of thought went, so too did Kirk's right up until he found himself blocked out. It felt raw and though he wondered if he could press into it still, he was immediately sidelined by Spock's admission.

"What?" It came out both physically and telepathically, that was how great his surprise had been. Wow. Sorry man.

And a jealousy that Kirk didn't even know he'd had faded.

[twohalvesatwar]

Spock's fingers twitched against Jim's face at that outburst of surprise, and he raised his eyebrow again. Amusement rippled through the meld, then confusion when... something faded. Jealousy? Jealousy was not an emotion Spock had much experience with. Jealousy was illogical. Who had Jim been jealous of? Nyota, or —

He cut that thought short. It was a mutual decision.

[diditin3]

Why? It wasn't exactly a question, more like a probing. The bond allowed for movements Jim didn't understand and Spock was understandably finding awkward to explain. There had been no bonding ritual, no tenuous start of a telepathic promise for eventual joining, and yet, here it was, quite accidental.

Jim immediately closed the question out when he realized what he was doing. This dance was impossible to navigate. He had two left feet.

Uh. So. This-- Us. Is it fixable? Did he want it to be fixed? Knowing it for what it was, couldn't it actually help them out? Relay commands, get through communication barriers-- Was that selflish?

[twohalvesatwar]

Spock was aware of the human proclivity to gossip, to share more private information and as such he didn't take offense at Jim's question, simply let it go. Two left feet or not, he was still doing remarkably well, all things considered.

He hesitated when Jim asked if 'they' — if the link — was fixable. No, not fixable. If it could be removed. ...I do not know. Traditionally forged bonds can be broken by a healer, but at a cost. Because broken bonds were a wound; they festered and ached and eventually scarred over but an empty space was always left behind.

[diditin3]

It made little sense for Kirk to lift his hand and mirror the touch (incorrectly) on Spock's face, but he'd done so, somehow, unfocused as his eyes were and living as he was in the bond rather than in physical reality for the moment. We're months away from any of your people, Spock, Jim thought, not testily, but in relief. Giving this up seemed impossibly wrong, but so too had sucking in his first gasp of air after Bones injected him with a serum of Augment blood.

And what if that had facilitated this whole mess? Made Jim susceptible? There were too many impossible questions.

I could ask you. Him. Spock knew about himself by now. Jim found no reason to hide it anyhow. The universe was not going to collapse. If anyone would know what all of this is suppose to mean-- Well two Spocks are better than one, right?