Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, and I have no money, so don't sue.
Warning: Contains m/m slash. Not a lemon. Don't like it, don't read it.
Author's Note: Starts from Spock's perspective. From then on, POV changes are noted, but that's not for a couple chapters. Also, I'm terribly off in some of my details, most prominently that of the Mind Meld. I have watched a lot of Star Trek, but mostly it was a long time ago and TNG as opposed to TOS. So just think of these things as my own interpretations of the various trekky phenomena. Oh, and I don't have a particular timeline to place this in. Let's say it could be an alternate universe, one that splits off after some unnoticed but key decision.
The Knight and the Rook
Chapter One: That Unnameable Emotion
A Mind Meld: to join minds with another person—very personal, very intimate. But despite the naked access it gives one into another's mind, the closeness it allows two people to achieve—despite this, the effect on the people involved is usually mutual indifference, or perhaps only comfortable—and complete—familiarity.
Friends who Meld once usually remained friends; some grow apart, some grow closer. Lovers do not often Meld, because it has a habit of ending passion in friendship. Enemies grow indifferent, without hatred or affinity. People of uneven affection or dislike soon regain equilibrium.
To Mind Meld with another is to become them, for an hour, to know their darkest secrets, their most dearly held desires—no, to have their secrets and their desires. It is to be in complete sympathy with that person for a moment.
Since most people cannot truly loathe or passionately love themselves, those who have been them can do neither likewise—at least in most cases. Betrayal is experienced from the traitor's point of view, and forgiven, or forgotten. Trust becomes irrelevant when all one's secrets are revealed. Passion dissipates, whether in love or in hatred.
This is why I suggested a Mind Meld to the captain when I noticed that my immediate reactions to his actions—his personal endeavors—were beginning to cloud my judgments, as well as my opinion of him.
He had always been a great lover of women, and since was very handsome according to the standards of most, he was generally very successful in this regard. I had known this about him for a very long time, and while I never understood completely, mine being a very different set of circumstances than his, it never interested me particularly unless it interfered with the ship's mission or his and others' safety.
Recently, though, his proclivity for what I must call seduction or something very like it—the connotations associated with words humans use for emotional, romantic, or sexual relationships I find most complex and illogical, and I do not quite trust myself to use them aptly—began to fascinate me inordinately. I paid closer attention than ever before to his behavior around women. I did not like what I observed.
His actions seemed to me to be foolish, impulsive, even self-destructive, since always, we had to leave behind the particular someone that he appeared to care for deeply. The actions of all these particular someones seemed to be similarly irresponsible, unless they knew nothing beforehand of his inevitable departure, and I thought it reprehensible of him to continue to "lead them on" as I have heard others say.
Also it began to occur to me that someday, the captain might not choose to leave. He might someday decide that his love was of more value to him than the interests of the crew, the ship, and the Federation as a whole. I knew him—I know him—to be much more an asset to the Federation than simply the captain of one of its ships: replaceable, expendable, and soon forgotten. It is no coincidence that some of the most momentous occasions in recent Federation history have happened under his command, aboard his ship, or with his involvement. He is quite an extraordinary man.
Upon reflection, I found that my observations, though they might have some truth in them, were becoming judgmental and disapproving in the extreme. As Bones might have said, I was becoming a busybody. I found this inappropriate and unwarranted, especially since I had never come to these conclusions before, when the captain had acted in the same manner. It was I who had changed, not him. The disapproving thoughts I was having reminded me strongly of the way a jealous lover is said to feel.
When I suggested a Mind Meld to Jim, his answer was flatly no. He didn't want us to grow indifferent, he said, and he respected my secrets and had no desire to pry into my mind. He wanted to know why I found it important to Meld with him, if I had some sort of grudge to dispel, but I did not reply. I had not explained my reasons to him before my request. I did not know why. My actions were growing more illogical by the day, my thoughts more inscrutable. I wondered occasionally if it was not time to return to Vulcan to complete my cycle once more, but I knew that was still four years off.
I became filled with dread and some unnameable emotion each time I went near my Captain and each time I thought of him, which happened more often all the time. I brooded over the carelessness of his passions, and over the increasing irrationality of my fascination with them. I had been to Dr. McCoy more than once to discuss these matters with him, but he seemed as mystified as me.
Perhaps it is my human side, he suggested, worrying needlessly that my friendship with Jim would end in one of his numerous affairs. That would never happen, he said. Jim is a loyal man.
This did not seem to be a logical explanation, since Jim has rarely distanced himself from us when he believed himself to be in love. And yet the idea of Jim in love disturbed me increasingly.
The doctor gave me a long, piercing glance when I told him this. I could not easily interpret his expression, but suspicion and unease seemed contained in his gaze, and possibly something like compassion, or perhaps sorrow.
I lived for a few weeks more with the painful and baffling anomaly of a troubled mind, and then I approached my Captain once more—with an ultimatum. I told him that we must either Meld and resolve my turmoil finally, or that I must resign as first officer and leave the ship. I believed that those were the only two options available; otherwise, I would have been unfit to serve.
Jim seemed surprised and alarmed by my proposal, but he quickly agreed to a Mind Meld, with, he said, severe misgivings.
We proceeded right away. Physically, a Mind Meld is very easily done, and not at all taxing: one simply places one's fingertips on the other's head and the implants and associated circuitry that run through each nervous system (among which are our universal translators) connect the neural maps of each brain.
Mentally, and, I am forced to say, emotionally, however, a Mind Meld does not leave one unscarred.
I do not know for how long we sat in Jim's office, grasping each other's temples across the desk, breathing hard, but it seemed at once a lifetime and a nanosecond. I saw all of Jim's life and memories as though I had lived them all and was then merely accessing them; I was, in essence, Jim. His life began to make a sort of sense to me that I still remembered later if I concentrated hard enough—a heavily emotional existence will always be foreign and highly illogical to me.
His thoughts were mine; my thoughts his. I remembered his loves, his losses, his anger, his pain and despair; and I knew then that I too had experience these things, through him. Our thoughts became reflective as the part of us that was mostly him began to recognize that unnameable emotion I had experienced, miserably and recurrently, in his presence. We then began, somewhat reluctantly, to look into Jim's own emotions regarding me, and we found that though they had most often been very similar to his friendship with Dr. McCoy—Bones, as he thought of him—but that subtly, something was different about them, something that had been growing for a good while at that point, unacknowledged, misunderstood, like a weed stretching out tentative roots in the dark.
We didn't register any time between the moment that realization came upon us in a flash, and the moment we were suddenly connected, even more intensely than through the Meld—connected in emotion, in desire, in physical distance. We were kissing, that previously unnamed emotion I began to call infatuation, or possibly love, or maybe lust, echoing and rebounding between our Melded minds. Everything that I had been feeling culminated in this prolonged moment of mutual passion.
I said earlier that Mind Melds contribute more often to indifference between the involved parties than to passion, but that is only after the Meld, when the lasting effects set in. During a Meld, feelings are likely to intensify, passions and pain to heighten. Afterwards, everything is integrated into each person's consciousness and voluntary intimacy is rarely still desired.
When we moved, as one, to shed our garments in our newfound frenzy of infatuation—or love, or lust, if it was one of those instead—the Meld was broken, and Jim and I broke apart, and we sat for a long time, staring at one another, shocked at what we had just felt. Well, I speak for myself at least; as for him, I can only assume. The feelings had passed of course; I now felt for the captain the same way I always had, before my turmoil began. He was my Captain; I was honor bound to serve him faithfully; and we were good friends. That was all.
I got up to leave and at the door I said, "I shall be in my quarters, Captain. If you wish it, I will continue on in my capacity here. I think I can perform my duties adequately from now on."
The captain drew down his eyebrows in thought and dismissed me with, "Yes, Mr. Spock, I think that will do for now. We must discuss this…later…" in a faint, distracted voice.
I left and returned to my quarters, where I slept in renewed calm, and didn't trouble myself further about the matter of my most unusual recent fixation on the captain. However, my respite was short-lived.
