Title: Meeting of More than Minds

Rating: T

Pairing: My two OCs from a A Different Kobyashi Maru: Allen and Selina (aka Faf and Grey)

Disclaimer: I only own my OCs, Paramount owns Star Trek and I am grateful that they let us play in their world.

Summary: In honor of Valentine's day and because mykardia encouraged me: an odd couple valentine

For anyone who has been reading my (excessively long) story A Different Kobyashi Maru, skip the front notes and go to the story. This is the chapter explaining what happened between Selina and Allen during the 'commercial break' between Ch 66: Meeting of Minds and Ch 67: Not Quite.

For everyone else the following notes are provided to give you enough idea of what's going on.

Characters:

Selina: Human but raised on Vulcan from early childhood to learn how to control her telepathy (in TOS a similarly Vulcan-trained telepath explains that she needed training not learn how to use her telepathy, but to learn how not to use it). Able to project her thoughts and emotions over a fairly large range, Selina really needed to learn control. Being among the few human women on Vulcan, her mother and Spock's became friends. However, Spock and Selina only became friends after they both had to adjust to life on earth at the beginning of their college years. She thinks of Spock as something like the older brother she never had and is partly responsible for nudging him into pursuing Nyota. Selina is in the Federation diplomatic corps and (in the manner of all female guest stars in ST) is strikingly beautiful.

Allen: One of Spock's few friends when they were both students at the Academy. He met Selina through Spock and the two became good friends. She nicknamed him Fafhrd because he is an extremely tall redhead of Nordic descent (however he is too skinny and clumsy to otherwise resemble the literary Fafhrd and it's a bit of joke between them that Selina, trained in Vulcan martial arts, can easily take him). Almost classically geeky and a little eccentric, he became a Starfleet computer security specialist who, due to a certain skill at hacking, also works with Intelligence. No one, esp. Allen himself, would think of him as particularly handsome.

Backstory:

When Allen confessed to having more than strictly friendly feelings for Selina but figured he had no chance with her, Spock (far more clueless about humans back then) decided that since they enjoyed each others company as friends and were intellectually compatible, the logical thing to do was to help fix them up. This went about as well as might be expected and after a disastrous date, Selina threatened Spock with dire consequences if he ever did anything like that again.

Despite that rocky start, the two did briefly become lovers. For a number of reasons, some hinging on Allen never being allowed to keep a thought to himself around her, it did not work out. To preserve a friendship they both valued, they formed an agreement: she would stay out of his head and they would stick to being just friends. Although they 'fell off the wagon' a couple times before it took, they have been just BFFs for over six years. For the last two, Selina has avoided romantic relationships following the death of her love of many years, David. Nyota has been urging her to move on (and thinks Spock wasn't all that clueless all those years ago).

In the course of my story, Selina and Allen were abducted and made an exception to the 'staying out of his head' part of their agreement so she could help him resist spilling security info under interrogation. (Of course Kirk, Spock and McCoy saved them.) Unfortunately, Allen was overdosed with truth serum and suffered temporary insanity including the partial split of his hacker alter ego, Erik, which has not yet resolved. Now, they are in Selina's temporary quarters on the Enterprise, where she has tried to repair some of the damage. She discovers that (a) he still has feelings for her beyond friendship and (b) in the past year he learned a technique to cover some thoughts from a cursory telepathic probe, which she insists on using this as a basis to revise their old agreement. After giving in, Allen remains in a light telepathic rapport with her but teases her about the attention she's been getting from Jim and Len.

If you're still interested after all that (there's a reason the story is so long), here's the one shot excerpt.
.

It was her fault for tickling him. It hadn't been fair, and he had retaliated, which also wasn't fair since he was one of very few people who knew that it was even possible. With a little effort she could suppress that response, but he used the fact that if she was going to get him back she'd have to let go of the link with his mind so she wouldn't feel his reaction when she did. He didn't even attempt to cover thinking about that strategy, although there were other thoughts being curtained in his mind that were sorely tempting her resolve to stick to their new agreement.

He'd tried to grab her hands the second he felt the link drop, but she was faster and had him almost curled into a ball before he finally managed to grab her wrists and pull her hands away from his sides. She grinned down at him. "How did you ever manage to pass hand-to-hand Fafhrd?"

"They didn't allow tickling." He gasped, widening his eyes as he tried to catch his breath. "Besides what I lack in speed and agility," He grinned suddenly and rolled them both off the couch, pinning her under him. "I make up for in guile."

She raised an eyebrow with an evil smile.

"I know, there are probably about ten ways you could kill me from this position." He laughed. "But at least you can't tickle."

She twisted a wrist experimentally, but he had her arms pinned to the ground, and she was unwilling to actually hurt him. In fact, feeling his body pressed against hers with his heart beating a little faster, hurting him was definitely not what she was inclined to do. His face was close and as she looked up into his eyes, for once, he was the one to read her mind.

The kiss was soft but lingering, allowing her ample time and opportunity to pull away. As she returned it, she touched his mind again, letting him see just how little interest she had in stopping and feeling the tangle of responses in his thoughts: love/fear /desire/uncertainty /happiness/disbelief. As he released her hands, his body's reaction was beginning to over rule his doubts, but there was above it all a nearly overwhelming sense of wonder and surprise.

She stroked her fingers through his beard and kissed the side of his mouth where his grin usually tilted higher. Do not be surprised, Fafhrd. After all, you owe me.

Complete confusion added to the mix of reactions. Owe you?

In the shuttle, you promised that if we made it out you would 'owe me one'. At the time, I believe I noted a certain asymmetry in the exceptions made to our agreement.

She felt the rumble of a soft laugh in his chest as he gathered her in his arms. Far be it from me to back out of a deal.

The next kiss was playful, but deepened quickly, and pinned beneath him, she needed no telepathy to note his growing interest in upholding his part of that deal. As she ground against him, in the back of her mind flickered the memory of Nyota grinning while she suggested 'bumping him off the wagon'.

He noticed it too and his lips turned in a smile. So it's okay for Spock's girlfriend to fix us up?

Are you objecting? She nipped at the sensitive spot on his neck and felt his response like a small electric jolt through their link.

Absolutely not! He peeled her blouse open for emphasis and paused a moment to admire the view. …In fact, I'm considering sending her some chocolate.

Faf…

I know, but it's the thought that counts.

The thought was interrupted by a brief struggle as he tried to unhook her bra.

You are getting rusty. She teased.

Am I? She just caught a raised eyebrow and a devilish grin before he lowered his head to her chest, intent on proving her wrong.

She laced her fingers through his hair and resisted an urge to moan. Beyond the fact that her bra opened in front, he had forgotten absolutely nothing and appeared to have learned a few new and really good things in the years since they had last been together.

It was not just the feel of their bodies pressed together or the way his mouth was moving on her flesh. Even with the wounds that remained, there was a warmth in his mind that drew her and the thoughts he was no longer trying to cover were as arousing as his touch. In the feedback growing between them, hers were having the same effect on him. But as she opened his jumper and his hand found its way under her skirt, she realized this was moving too fast. Her shields were coming undone and projecting broadband what she was feeling right now would be bad in so many ways.

Sensing it too, he pulled back, rolled off of her ...and struck his head on the coffee table. It might not have been quite the way he had intended to allow her a space to regain control, but as he very creatively cursed starship furnishings, she re-centered and quietly thanked the all fates for an old lover who knew her so well.

"Are you alright, Fafhrd?"

"Fine." He rubbed the back of his head and rolled his eyes. "That was smooth, eh?"

He was so perfectly Allen in that moment that she had to smile. "Not being 'smooth' is part of your charm."

"Thanks, I think." He traced a finger across her brow. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," she lied. Her shields had stabilized, but she was angry, beyond frustrated and deeply embarrassed. Normally she considered her talent a gift, but if she were a normal woman or even a more average telepath this would not be an issue. Nor would it have been if she had been paying attention.

"Hey, it's okay." Faf smoothed her hair and gave her a small, wry smile. "Letting a bunch of folks get lucky at a party is one thing; disrupting several decks here would be something else entirely."

Noticing something odd in the way his eyes shifted, she brushed his mind and overheard the part of him that was Erik arguing that the ship could use a little fun. Fafhrd closed his eyes and shook his head. "Sorry."

"No, I am sorry."

"We would probably have both regretted it later." He sighed with more than a little immediate regret.

No. Not this time. She was never more certain of anything. She took his face in both hands and made him look at her. "That is not what I meant. Do not think you are getting out of this so easily."

His eyebrows rose and he broke into an incredulous smile. "If you think I want out of this, you're crazier than I am."

"Good." She rested her head on his shoulder. "It has been a long time. I think I just need to go a bit more slowly."

"We can go as slowly as you like, but unless I'm worse off then I think, it's not like we haven't worked this out before." He lifted her hand to his lips before pressing it back against his temple. "Take whatever you need to ground yourself. I don't have any more secrets worth keeping. Only, ...let's move to the bed first. There are a lot fewer things for me to bump into there."

.

.

They had made love slowly, almost playfully, like two old friends sharing a gift, and perhaps that was all it was. If afterward she had thought of David, he had understood and just held her. And if that had made him think of Liz and they both remembered the other friends and loved ones lost with the Armstrong and Vulcan to Nero's madness, they had offered each other what comfort they could.

Selina smiled when she heard him begin to snore. She turned in his arms and watched his face, peaceful despite the sound he was producing. He had resisted sleep in sickbay in order to be sure to keep Erik in check, but he and Erik had been quite united since joining her in bed. It bode well for bringing them together completely (and she doubted that he would object to this particular therapy). It had been tempting to allow herself to be pulled into sleep with him, but someone would send out a search party and there were explanations that neither of them was ready to give. They had not decided themselves what it meant, beyond evening an imbalance in an old agreement and potentially adding some clauses to a new one - a fiction designed to allow either to back away later without consequence to their friendship.

She was unsure of whether he would have given in to temptation without Erik pushing in the back of his mind, and so didn't know if this would survive once he returned to himself. She did know, having gone so deeply into his mind, that some part of him still believed that she would find someone better and so would not allow himself to think it could last. That he knew she had felt an attraction for Len and Jim did not help that, nor did the knowledge that he would soon be locked away in Albans for an indefinite time. While she could do nothing to remedy the former, but she was determined to change the last. For now, however, she could allow him to rest undisturbed.

She kissed him softly, brushing his mind, as she rose to meditate. "Sleep, my old love, and I will keep watch until it is time for you to wake."