bakerstreet | The Attached Meme

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

The Attached Meme

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