Jim Kirk woke up with two immediate thoughts in his head.

Firstly, he couldn't move.

This was not a frightening paralysis. He wasn't just stuck, he was within, inside, comfortably hidden away between the palms of sleep. He felt mildly inebriated - like his head was full of clouds, packed so densely they left no room for him to think - although he knew better than to believe that particular idea. He was part of something bigger, or had been, some elaborate and yet completely understandable, lucid dream, nonsensical and yet. somehow, completely sensical at the same time.

He did endeavor, eventually, to attempt detachment from this chrysalis, but it clung, like warm, living spiderweb, and as familiar as it felt in the very center of his mind, he was stricken by the simple bizarreness of the feeling. He was brave enough to face the fact that he had no idea what it was, only that he was...comfortable inside it. The clouds separated into mist and then fell around the side of his face as he repositioned it so slightly in a cradle that moved after it, thumb drawing a line over his cheek from where it had come to rest in sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep was an explanation, though not a comprehensive one. It had taken mere months of the Enterprise's maiden voyage before Jim's usual heavy sleeping pattern turned into one lighter than fine silk, interspersed with fifteen-minute breaks that usually consisted of him jolting awake in a terror, checking his surroundings, his communicator, his phaser, and collapsing back down in the exact spot he had risen from. Somehow, the concept of a night so undisturbed it was difficult to wake from was more alien at this point to him than, well...

The second thought.

Opening his eyes, which had been sealed not only with exhaustion but certainly some kind of glue, was the hardest part. Identification of the situation with which they were faced was close behind. That was the second thought.

Jim had no earthly idea how this had happened. He didn't even know for sure what this was, and as he lay there, unmoving, staring straight ahead, he skimmed through possibilities, even as memory slowly began to return fragments of the previous night.

Realization caused his stomach to turn, and something to begin to grow up in his throat.

In his mind, before he had returned to consciousness, he wasn't...here. Not quite. While he had a grasp now on what had transpired, that specific detail confused him. It felt like...like some kind of heaven. Now, this feeling had stayed fairly exact in his return to consciousness. There was a sense of elation he could not quite place, that he was almost nervous to lose.

Jim finally lifted his head, the fingers that the side of his face had been nestled into trailing loosely behind the imprints they had made during the course of the night. He did not question this, however, it did assure him of some very specific things.

By all scientific definition, Jim was himself. He, as a physical being, was no longer in the realm of access for any touch-telepathy, and by consequence, could no longer be sharing thought or emotion in that direction.

Even so, he felt like he was still...inside.

(Maybe inside was the wrong term. He hadn't just been inside. He was familiar with mind-melding, Their incorporeal forms were dancing together like separate, but identical, tongues of flame, and just as hot. It had been warm, the sun was beating down on his back, then, it had adjusted, a breeze swirled around him and lighted on the back of his neck. He had a memory of it, as real as any other, no matter the intangibility of the actual experience.)

Bits of him had remained ...mid-meld, had been relinquished to that aerial tunnel that they both seemed to possess one end of. There were things in his mind no longer private, things that, some way or another, had been brought to the awareness of the placid form to his immediate right by way of the tunnel. Was he asleep? Jim couldn't even tell that much. He didn't dare find out. Either way, Jim was waking up, and he was there, and he could retrace nearly every unconscious and conscious step that led to it, the day before, the mistake he made, the slip that he wasn't quite aware of, that sparked the conversation, turned argument, turned, well, something else entirely.

He opened the second the lift closed, rubbing his fingers into his eyes as if it would encourage them to stay any wider, releasing a breath he felt he'd been holding in for hours as Spock gave the order to take them down.

He mentioned something about something Starfleet related, Jim said something back, he hadn't quite slept the previous night, and the day had been busy, and he wasn't very much in tune with his surroundings. He said something about stress. His first officer had said something about sleep.

Jim was completely honest with himself and realized he would rather be doing anything now that he was off the bridge as long as it was with Spock. Sleep would normally not be included in this list of possibilities.

The lift stopped twice for an ensign, acknowledging the two of them with timid respect, and in the time they remained silent, Jim allowed one of his hands supporting his weight on the railing to drift. Now, it was only the heel, grazing the side of a finger where the hand he did not look at was probably curled loosely around the same rail. Whatever message such an advancement may have relayed, he found pride in the way the two seemed to blindly attract, until the whole lengths of them touched.

Then again, maybe this, right now, should be enough.

The lift slowed and he became brave, keeping a watchful eye on his unmoving profile, attempting to read the expression there, as his fingers spread, so tentatively, until they all came to touch, filling the gaps in between one another in a hesitant, but perfect way.

There was no expression to portray any opinion on this sudden advancement, which struck him as odd, even for his Vulcan officer, and even as his own hand turned towards Jim's, this absence of expression drove him to retract his hand from the same touch he so desired.

He looked at him like he was insane, in that calm, downplayed Vulcan way, but the implication was all there, and suddenly Jim became aware that there wasn't a way out of this, as the lift came to a halt and the doors opened. He knew why, and he felt like they both did, even if facing up to it would be harder to manage than most of the hostile alien races he'd encountered.

"I know." He resigned himself to the admission, back in his own quarters, where he turned his back to him in favor of straightening an already immaculate space. "I realize you're not exactly proud of some of our..."

He was still at the door, leaning so slightly against it, arms folded. Probably deliberating Jim's ridiculous tendency to straighten things when under high levels of stress. Or perhaps, he wondered as he moved the PADD on his bedside table perpendicular to the wall, he'd caught on to the irony of that, as if Jim was making up for something.

He looked at the ceiling.

"...Proclivities."

"Really, Captain, I would accuse you of simplification,"

"Would you?"

"You only seem to be thinking about it in incredibly simple terms-"

"I haven't a clue what's going on, Spock. How am I to think about it? How do you think about it?"

He could have said more. He couldn't even explain what happened a few minutes ago - one second they seemed on the same page, then they couldn't be further apart. He could bring up every moment they spent together as evidence, the realization of it, that he would die for him, but something less intense, maybe that he'd...live as long as his dangerous mission would give, as close as he could be to him. That he wasn't sure at all how Spock felt about any of this, if after the mission, assuming thy survived, they would part ways, or gradually fade out of each others lives. How do you think about something like that?

And that was the thing.

"How do you think about it?"

Jim didn't think this one through. Instead, he took a deep breath, looped one hand around Spock's wrist, and held their hands against the side of his face. He had already accepted this as not one of his proudest moments.

"If its impossible to explain, might I just know?"

He came up with three reasons why that might be a bad idea, three of which Jim neglected to process.

"Spock-"

His hand tensed against the side of Jim's face, hovering just far enough away to refuse the contact needed to initiate the meld.

Jim let go of his wrist.

His hand stayed.

Jim could still remember the first time Spock had melded with him for the sake of a mission. It had been a strange experience, that he had come out of gasping as if shoved suddenly underwater. There wasn't much of a difference. The pressure of those surprisingly strong fingers against his temples made the room swim, perhaps for more than the obvious reason, then fade, then, he was plunged into a state of existence he couldn't quite describe.

He was nowhere, and everywhere at the same time, rather, several places all at once. It felt like his mind was boiling, and everything inside was being thrown around like separate, but unique atoms of their own. Words were coming out of his mouth, he was walking somewhere, touching something, laughing, crying, he was everywhere all at once and he was everything, he was places he didn't even think he knew. There were memories he was sure were not his own, things he had repressed, things he had been too stunned to remember correctly at the time. He reminded himself of where he was, and a melange of imagery rushed to his immediate awareness, Spock, his hands, his eyes, that time in medbay, nearly yelling his name, the look on his face, any look on his face, the list went on, and on, and all the emotion tied to it did as well. He instinctively recoiled from the idea that Spock was probably seeing all of this unfiltered feeling just as he was, but he easily reminded himself of the hypocrisy of that.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in his room. He could only see light, in fact, and no floor beneath him, only light, blinding yellow, orange, interspersed with every color of the rainbow.

Just as he had become accustomed to floating, he landed on solid ground, stumbling and gasping from the adjustment. The rest of the light settled around him, as he blinked, becoming more and more concrete,until he could make out some divide between earth and sky, shapes on all sides, not a clear terrarium, but one nonetheless, and strangely familiar. Perhaps...something distant, almost forgotten, somewhere out of an old childhood memory. The mere thought of it, as he bent down to touch the dancing grass, watching it whip against his outstretched palms, astonished him. That this could all be existing, right now, and he could touch it, feel the sun on the back of his neck, almost at the wind racing across the ground in front of him. The only missing part- the only thing that should be there- and where could he be?

Whirling around, he searched his fuzzy, shining surroundings, hardly conscious he was yelling into them until he heard the rumble of his own laughing voice in his ears, where the hell -

The breeze picked up and almost knocked him off his feet, and almost instantly he collided with someone, and blinked up, still laughing as he found his hold on a pair of shoulders.

Getting a bit carried away, aren't we? This, after all, was not what they came for. He reminded himself of the mission, just like any other, the prime directive, and allowed himself to sink forward, into something heavier, and darker, well-guarded, but smooth and clean and calm as the night.

He felt like he lost himself, falling and falling and falling as the scene changed around him, warm colors bleeding out and going cool, day seeming to turn into night, until he hit the ground once again.

This place.

He would never be able to do it justice in words.
It seemed to share details with the place he came from: air clean, almost sweet, warm but still light. A sky strewn with lights, humming with occasional activity, everything reflecting perfectly off a planet surface that seemed to be made of glass. And up there, somewhere far in the distance, a hint of a different light, something lighter than it all, some cloud, perhaps. Sunlight.

He didn't know this place, didn't know it at all. He had been here before, only briefly, and these things seemed like the earliest of his memories. but the sunlight, peeking through far above his head like aurora borealis, invoked in him a strange and fleeting sense of homesickness, as if he belonged somewhere outside of his reach, chasing something that stayed at a constant distance ahead, matching him step for step. Something he could touch a semblance of, if he reached far enough, but never completely. Never enough.

He felt the urge to look down, even though it made his head spin.

The glass that had appeared so pristine in the distance, was under his feet nothing further from the truth. There was a definite...movement when there was no reflection, some thing or things swirling against the other side, busy, frustrated...ravenous.

Jim knelt to it. He laid his hand against it. The wispy forms underneath seemed to vy for his touch, nuzzling against the surface. What were they?

The floor dissolved.

He went with it.

The next thing Jim knew, gravity had upended itself. He was flung the exact opposite direction, a flash between two planes showing him a brief vision of his ceiling, door, Spock, eyes completely wide, holding him up as if he were falling. Jim stumbled back, then collided with something softer, opening his eyes again to dark sky and the tickle of grass, then back again to ceiling and his own bed. A hand dropped from its stance at his face, but left everything hazy, confused, swimming in his sight as if he was underwater, but breathing. His thoughts weren't clear, and he could very well blame it on that, but he knew he shouldn't -

Jim was in a normal body again, on a normal ship. And he was staring. He hadn't opened his mouth any more than he had closed his eyes since the meld had broken, and he was anxious. He was curious, terrified. He wasn't quite breathing. He blinked, a couple of times. Sky, ceiling. Sky. Ceiling. Definitely ceiling.

He turned to his side, and, upon finding it empty, raised himself on one elbow, moving across the space between where he seemed to have collapsed and Spock, who, no matter what had happened while Jim was not quite there, had ended up close by, perched on the end of the bed, motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

"Spock,"

"I would make a request," however more Jim attempted to move into his view, it seemed that their eyes were never destined to meet. He accepted this, eventually, and resigned himself to the investigation of his profile for the sought-after answers. "Captain, if you believe me to be in any position to do so."

"Anything."

Let it go.

He was meant to not think about it. He knew so almost immediately, before the words left his mouth. He was meant to put it off, to forget. Not today. Not ever.

"I understand why." was the next disjointed phrase out of his mouth. He meant to follow it up with something, but the sudden way Spock came upright had him recalculating before he had any opportunity.

"Don't leave." He was given a look, somewhat blank but somehow displaying a complete message anyways, whether that was by side effect of the meld or his own perception. He ignored this, and pulled himself closer, close enough to touch if he dared.

"I was so close." It wouldn't have worked that way, he realized very suddenly. But there were other ways! Safer ways. There must be.

He remembered very suddenly standing in the middle of that field, hazy and surprised, and feeling everything at once. He remembered feeling him there, even though he wasn't entirely, and the pure joy at the unbridled release of his thoughts, as if they were some weight on him, leaving him light and free.

"I want to understand. But you have to...you must meet me somewhere in between -" he busied his hands in each other, hoping to lose the urge to reach out. "Is the idea of that really so horrible?"

He had assumed time would amend his state. Coming out of melds had always seemed...troublesome, from what he had witnessed of them. He did not expect his speech to decline as time went on, however, and when his question went unanswered, his officer's eyes still unmoving, glassy, hyperfocused on the wall in front of them, it flashed in his mind that this was some more pressing issue than his question not getting answered.

Jim moved as if to investigate this, freezing when the hand he was close to touching curled away from him, and stayed that way when Spock lifted it, and -something Jim had never witnessed him do- brought it to his face.

"Your mind," His voice muffled from behind that hand, and barely more than a whisper to begin with, could have killed Jim, he was sure of that, if he didn't then look directly at him, eyes so slightly wide, as his hand fell.

If there was any shred of telepathy remaining between the two, Jim devoted all of its strength toward the transmission of a singular message.

He pressed his hands into the grass, scraping his heels down into soil. It was only a blur between that only half-sentence and the return to wherever he was now. He looked out over the water.

He was not afraid of the fall. Of all things, he would not be afraid of something inside Spock's mind- who he silently thanked for the second chance.

Another hand placed itself over his in the blue-green grass, and he felt a gentle push towards the edge of the island he laid upon. He allowed it, slowly allowing his hand to hover over the surface, until it seemed it was rising up to meet him, gently suctioning against his palm.

Something golden moved through the water, that he initially thought to be a fish, but one caught in motion, wispy and blurred. He recognized something he must have mistaken earlier to be a reflection, but was now swirling around him, nosing against the surface, careful, excited, then barrelling itself against his palm.

It was sudden. Beautiful. Ardent.

He opened his eyes, this detachment gentle, but he still was not himself, not entirely. The hazy figure not inches away suddenly grew smaller in his sight and he followed, letting his eyes close once again after catching a clear glimpse of familiar grey walls and the frame of the door, and dark hair. Thank you, he edged in before they reconnected, determined to retain the silence that reigned over the other side.

He looked down at his hand, and a momentary concern leaped inside him when it seemed that the golden thing had come out of the water, wrapping itself up to his wrist until it weaved and burrowed around both his fingers and the fingers of the hand still firm against his wrist. He knew soon enough that it was only reflection, tinting his skin in a yellow-gold radiance that seemed to shimmer against the water, until he could not discern his own skin from the creature's below him.

He let this leave his sight, turning around as far as he could manage while keeping his arm in the same relative position. The head on his shoulder lifted, adjusted, and his eyes locked with a pair just as bottomless as the water encircling them.

There was a gentle pull on his wrist. He let the thing in the water go, watching it circle and spiral around, surfacing ever so often and sending droplets flying around it on all sides as it leaped in moonlight. Something pressed against the back of his neck, and he turned again, senselessly lifting a damp hand to the cold skin of the apparition that seemed to have stuck to him like shadow.

That was where his memory faded. He could assume the rest if he tried, but consciousness ended there, on that ethereal shoreline, pressed so completely close to the being sharing in this strange, lucid dream of his.

And Jim was here, still in that bed. They were both here. He didn't even know when he had left the meld - could have stayed in it the whole night.

Maybe he had been too studious in the past, but when he felt a movement in the sheets around him and immediately fixated himself upon the face at his side, Jim was proud to think he had memorized even the way he spoke. And the single syllable, inaudible, that his lips formed almost as if in reflex elicited an equally spontaneous smile.

"Yes?"

Spock's forehead knit, as if he was unconscious of the fact that he had spoke, and confused at the responding question, but did not open his eyes. After what appeared to be a period of deliberation, he resolved to answer only by turning, his free hand fisting itself in the small amount of sheet between them and pulling it closer as he did so. And off of Jim.

And Jim was not a poet, and would never be a poet, in any timeline or lifetime he could imagine, but he might want to be in a select few of those, and in more than not he certainly would have a poetic thought or two when it came to anything similar to the situation he was now faced with.

He may have some choice words, yes. He lifted a hand to where the course of the night had disturbed his normally impeccable hairline, tentatively spreading his fingers through it, smoothing it back against itself.

Seraphic, he thought as he continued in idly flicking unwilling strands off his officers forehead, the sides of his fingers brushed against his skin. Now, maybe that was a bit dramatic. He was so cold, Jim couldn't help imagining what his fingers might be like. And in their...meld, he recognized suddenly and exactly the feeling of...standing in that field with the breeze and the sunlight and...what a wonderful metaphor he could make of it if he wanted - that striking swirl of air, the feeling of security and wonder, the almost religious way his own sheets had ended up swirled around his limbs, over one shoulder, bunched up in one hand. Theistic?

Jim didn't really know how he expected to simply understand all these feelings, when he so often and so adamantly attempted to drive them from his mind, but, somehow, he was. It was an instantaneous thing, like understanding had been shot up in his veins like a hypo and was now curling through every bit of him, from his fingernails to his lungs, and around the edges of his mind. He hadn't really wanted it, half the time. To really get it. He hadn't truly faced up to the fact, of course, and he would never act in a regular manner upon anything so likely to be transitory - so sure to be ill-fated. But the simple touch of his hand to the pool in their minds had told him things he almost felt he shouldn't be allowed to know. Things he had driven from his own mind months ago, things that had happened between them, good and bad, and both sides to them. A time returning from a bad planetside experience, when, desperate and terrified, he'd nearly pushed him against a wall and resolved to confess everything he felt in the terror that he would wait to long and lose the chance altogether. Maybe the first, anxious time Jim really kissed him, running away immediately after.

The remembrance of such things brought easily to mind his own burning shame, layered with fear, reluctant joy, dare he say love? But beyond that, pieces of the puzzle that had been missing since the opening of the box. Confusion, astonishment, undying...devotion, bits he wasn't even aware of, parts he had never seen, the security of a closed door, incredibly warm hands, disappointment in consistent rational thinking. Fear.

There was never any fraction of hope that they could remain as nothing. Not with those things, not with light years between them.

He rocked backwards until he could only see the ceiling, and let out a resigned sigh. He wondered, sometimes, why he wanted to be a captain. He had always outwardly assumed, at least, it had something to do with the fame, or the glory, the boldness that came with endeavoring through space with no aim or knowledge of what awaited him or his crew. And maybe that wasn't completely incorrect, though incomplete.

The ship hummed all around him. She was normally an incredibly calm creature, and tonight was no different, at least, as far as she was concerned. No, it was her captain whose perspective had changed, had begun to listen closer, to think deeper. He could hear the engines, propelling them slowly through the great sea of the universe, tirelessly working past stars and planets infinite as they were vast.

He came searching. To search for something like this, something alien and beautiful in a way he would never know on earth. Perhaps that thing terrified him. But didn't that make the assurance of it all the more-

He had found it. He found it on a scale far beyond his comprehension. He would never have been completely ready, completely fearless. But then, he wouldn't be ready for any of it. His mental health would have a lot in store for it if this was anything as evanescent as the look on his face when Jim finally moved as if to stand, eyes flying open and fixating upon him only for a few seconds, in pure, unshielded disappointment.

But, of course, maybe Jim needn't think about that
here. Maybe here, he could pretend the only things that existed were a wide, open sky above him, the grass beneath him, a cold breeze. And what that cold breeze tended to bring with it. What else did he need?

Well. Perhaps that dignified just as much thought as the transience of their shared affection - he concluded as he took hold of the hand still beside him on the pillow, and brought it up above them with his own, fitting the two clumsily together.

"How does that go, again?" Jim asked under his breath, smiling when Spock turned his way again in order to reach around and carefully pry apart Jim's fingers in the ta'al form his own had reflexively shifted into. He could hardly hold it, his fingers straining to keep apart, and while this would normally frustrate him, the determined way Spock resigned himself to slotting his own slender fingers in between Jim's middle and ring served as an adequate distraction, until he brought his other hand against it.

"I think that will take some getting used to."

"Given adequate practice," he spoke for the first true time since the night before, the sheer huskiness of his voice, while never quite finishing the thought, sending another smile pushing at the corners of Jim's mouth, who for the third time that morning had a very interesting thought.

He sincerely hoped that they would.