"Bones!"

McCoy didn't flinch when Jim's roar echoed throughout sickbay. The redshirt whose arm he was setting nearly jolted clean out of his seat and the doctor roughly tugged him back down. The kid—Johnson? Jenson? God only knows how Jim remembers every single crew member's first and last names… maybe it was Jameson—gave a nervous look to McCoy, waiting for him to answer the call, but the chief medical officer ignored it with a parental air of indifference.

"Well, there you go, kid," Bones grunted, giving the ensign back his arm.

"Thanks, doctor," the boy nodded. "Man, I always come back from away missions with something broken or busted. Any advice on how to avoid that?"

"Wear a different coloured shirt?" McCoy grumbled under his breath as he reassembled his kit.

"What?"

"What?" McCoy glanced up, raising his eyebrows innocently. "Alright, you're fixed. Get outta my sickbay."

The redshirt nodded and hopped of the bed, jumping a foot in the air when Jim tried again-

"McCoy!"

"Damnit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a senior citizen!" Bones shouted back. "There's no need to shout!"

"Bones!" Jim yipped as his head appeared between the curtains of the medical bed Bones was crouched in front of. "I was looking for you."

"So I heard," Bones mumbled, twisting a finger in his ear and pulling a face in exaggeration. "What do you want?"

"Why is Spock on sick leave?"

McCoy frowned and rubbed at the bags under his eyes. The hope that this wouldn't bounce back to him and that Jim might just remember had apparently been too much to ask. He glanced around the clearly populated medical hall and decisively grabbed Jim around the collar of his precious golden captain's uniform and hauled him into his office.

"Jesus, Bones," Jim gulped at Bones' serious-Bones-is-serious face, "is he okay? What happened?"

"Your boyfriend's fine, Jim, relax," McCoy rolled his eyes and gave Jim's shoulder a downwards shove so he collapsed into a chair.

"He's not my- what are we fourteen? That's not what we call it-" Jim sputtered.

"I just gave him a mental health day," Bones continued, unperturbed. "God knows he needs it, today of all days."

Jim squinted, an impending prickling in his stomach. "Mental health day…? Today of all… Bones, what are you- oh, shit."

Jim's stomach was sucked backwards and replaced with cold stone. Had a year really gone by so fast? He knew that something had been bothering Spock over the past couple days. Anyone else on the ship—except possibly Uhura—would have sworn that Spock was his typical indifferent holier-than-thou Vulcan self, but Jim could pick up minute things that betrayed him. Small twitches in the muscle of his jaw that showed his impatience with an ensign said his temper was waning. The milliseconds of hesitation before answering an order revealed he was deep in brooding thought even on the bridge. Jim knew that Spock's "I am by no means incapable of performing my duties sufficiently, Captain's" were as authentic as Jim's "I'm fine, Bones" after a Tarsus dream. But while Jim could see through the front Spock put up to everyone else, he hit an impasse whenever he tried to breach the subject with Spock.

When Jim had reached the bridge only to find that prat, Ensign Denner, sitting at his favourite science's officer's station, he immediately asked the computer to locate him. When he was told that his first officer had taken sick leave, he'd gone to find Bones, worried that Spock's dark change in demeanor was caused by physical ailment. Jim now rose from his chair and tore out of sickbay, furious with himself to the point of aching. How had he forgotten?

"Yeah, see you later, Jim," McCoy grumbled to the empty chair. "Hope you can fix the hobgoblin."

...

The first chime on Spock's door didn't get a chance to finish before Jim slammed his captain's override into the screen. The door whooshed open and Jim hopped past it into the room. Entering Spock's quarters was always like walking into a hot, dry wall, and Jim coughed against the arid atmosphere.

"Captain," he heard Spock hiss, and Jim strained his eyes to see in the total darkness, "this is a most inappropriate use of your privileges. I require solitude."

"Computer, lights at ten percent," Jim ignored him.

There was a low hum of lights as they illuminated Spock's crunched silhouette on the bed. He was in a strained meditative stance, but his delicate fingers were clenched at his knees instead of tapered into the typical tranquil arrangement. His face was blank, but the hesitant pinch of his already sloping eyebrows conveyed such raw emotion that Jim thought he might as well have been snarling like an animal.

"Spock." Jim strode forward, reaching to embrace the other man. Spock inhaled sharply, raising a hand swiftly to keep the human back so Jim stumbled to a halt.

"I was not attempting a human 'joke' when I said I required solitude, Captain," Spock attempted to deadpan, but a twisted growl rumbled at the back of his throat. "Leave me."

"No," Jim defied, and Spock's arm crumpled back to his lap in exasperated defeat. "Spock, I'm sorry. Let me help you, please."

"You cannot understand-" Spock tried, and Jim was reminded of the pinched strained tone he had heard almost exactly twelve months ago; "Step away from me, Mister Kirk…"

"Then help me understand!" Jim almost pleaded, dropping down onto his knees so he could better meet Spock's downcast gaze. "Talk to me. Let me help you." It wasn't working, Spock wouldn't open up. "Let me see," Jim insisted, and then proceeded to do something stupid.

Jim clumsily placed his fingers with such a haphazard human inaccuracy on Spock's face that had he not pricked the vague crackle of intent beneath Jim's fingertips, Spock would have assumed he chose the positions at random. Jim's entire face was scrunched in concentration, a small dent folding between his furrowed eyebrows in such a way that it made Spock embarrassingly want to reach out and gently smudge out the line of discomfort. He clenched his hand and did not.

Spock leaned back slightly from Jim's crude attempt to locate his psi-points. "Captain, what are you doing?"

Jim's shoulders relaxed in good humoured defeat and he squinted one wide blue eye open to meet Spock's own, narrowed, dark and hiding.

"It's not working, is it?"

Spock could gather that the answer was definitely no, but suppressed the far-too-human desire to roll his eyes and was satisfied with the Vulcan equivalent of cocking an eyebrow. "What is not working, Jim?"

"The, um… the meld?" Jim screwed up his face slightly, as though realizing the daftness of his words and wishing he could take them back midsentence.

Spock couldn't resist the slightly surprised rise of his eyebrows despite Jim only confirming his suspicions. "You are attempting a… mind meld, Captain?"

"Jim," Jim corrected, fingers still sprawled softly across Spock's face, "and, yeah, I was trying but apparently it's not working-"

Spock released his breath with a slight hiss that was, of course, by no means a sigh. "You, a human," Spock clarified, annoyed that he was forced to exercise an illegal level of restraint to prevent himself from leaning slightly into his superior officer's touch, "with extraordinarily unsophisticated nerve endings and nonexistent psi-readings, attempted to initiate a Vulcan mind meld?"

Jim had been growing progressively impatient throughout Spock's longwinded question—which he felt was more of a rhetorical my-God-Jim-can't-you-hear-how-horribly-stupid-you-are? statement than a question—and now made a second face of exasperated annoyance. "Well, you make it sound stupid when you say it like that."

For the briefest of moments Spock was tempted to give the petulant and childish reply It was stupid, but swallowed the desire. He could feel Jim's slightly hurt irritation through the small amount of contact and regretted being the source of Jim's agitation. "Similar to a Vulcan nerve pinch," Spock explained in a softer tone, "the intricacies of detecting and accurately tapping a being's psi-points are usually lost on humans. Your hands are not sensitive enough." While Jim disapproved of Spock's still rather condescending tone, the half-Vulcan's attempt at patience reassured him slightly, and this leaked through his fingertips and encouraged Spock to continue his gentle explanations. "Furthermore, while proper positioning of the hands for a meld can be learned, it is impossible for a human to project themselves onto the mind of another. Members of your species are not touch telepaths, Jim. You have far too low a psi-reading. Did you not pay attention in your xenobiology classes?"

"Okay so that was the one class I didn't get at least ninety in," Jim grinned. His face sobered somewhat and he subconsciously pressed slightly harder, more insistently at Spock's cheek and forehead. "I just want to help, to see- I thought that I'd had enough experience with melding that maybe I could replicate it. Apparently, I was wrong," Jim added when Spock's eyebrow levitated again. "But I wouldn't even have had to go and make a fool of myself if you just let me in-"

"In order to properly complete a meld," Spock avoided swiftly, "your fingertips must be placed in the proper positions." Spock gently enveloped the back of Jim's hand in his, guiding it slightly across his face. Jim's surprise, intrigue, hope, all seeped from his skin, and Spock blinked the mild bombardment of foreign emotion away. "Here," Spock adjusted Jim's pinkie finger to the correct psi-point, "here," the ring finger, "here and here." Spock brushed his captain's middle and index fingers into their proper places, and the jolt of Jim's anticipation and arousal at the unintended sweeping kiss of fingers bit into Spock's nerves. Spock stiffened, thrashing up a protective veil against the constant onslaught of Jim's emotions, but Jim's consequential surge of guilt and disappointed restraint still prickled in his hand.

Spock's face twitched slightly against the uninvited emotional transfer and for a moment he was almost angry. How rude of Jim to constantly send flashes of his feelings; could he not restrain himself for courtesy's sake? How could he be so inconsiderate, when Spock was emotionally compromised, to so blatantly project every little-

"Jim," Spock forced out, retracting his hand so it merely hovered over Jim's. Spock pulled away slightly from the steady stream of thought and feeling from the other's hand across his face, but not enough to completely rid himself of the touch.

"Sorry," Jim mumbled, and Spock could feel him rein himself inwards somewhat.

Spock gave a minute nod of thanks and carefully resumed his arrangement of Jim's hand, hardly touching him as he slid Jim's thumb and final digit into place.

Jim swallowed, and Spock was vaguely amused when he felt Jim's general feeling of anticlimax. "Then what?" Jim asked.

"Then you project yourself," Spock supplied, closing his eyes as he tried to anchor himself in the calm and robotic explanation. "Your thoughts and feelings. You project your katra while allowing the other participant's to mingle with yours. It is difficult to explain, Jim-"

"Got it," Jim nodded, and then squinted in concentration again.

Spock had let his already crumbling guard down somewhat in relief when Jim had agreed to restrain himself, so he was not braced for the sudden and uncontained attack of Jim's emotions; want, sadness, pain, regret, determination, hope, guilt, more want, more pain, and all for Spock. The first officer tried to toss up thin and shattering barriers against Jim; he was not prepared, he was not stable, and with his psi-points being teased open by the touch, Jim was going to make him-

Slip.

Jim was engulfed in black so suddenly that he mentally staggered. He was unmistakably swirling in Spock. He knew it with ever fibre of his essence for reasons that could not be explained so much as they just somehow fit. He was given a brief moment of fascination before a violent rush of torture he knew far too well ripped him into pieces. Hurt, pain, suffering, regret, loss, sadness, longing, ache, heavy leaden guilt- ow, Jim screamed without a mouth.

Eighty seven—and some persistent sense of precision allowed Jim to know that that was exactly how many there were—images suffocated him all at once. He couldn't fathom how he saw every image at one time, just that he did, and it hurt. There was an image of a beautiful woman and Jim could feel her adjusting the collar of… his? hand-knit sweater.

"You will have a proud mother…"

On top of that were fearful eyes, her eyes, as they locked with his and said a silent, knowing goodbye before they were wrenched away. An outstretched hand, his hand, trying to grasp at her before he was tugged away.

Missing, one person missing on the transporter pad. He couldn't reach when his calculating mind told him it was impossible, that there was no way he could, by sheer force of will, will her molecules to reassemble on that dead silently glowing pad-

"Mother!"

Another layer of clip ran on the surface of the previous. Blue, ice cold blue, eyes piercing into him, accusing him, shouting every feeling he already inwardly screamed at himself. It was his fault; he wasn't fast enough. It was his fault and she would never know-

"It must not even compute for you-"

He had never said it, he had never said it and now he never could. No one would ever know, she would never know that he-

"You never loved her!"

His hands were around the accuser's throat now. He was killing him, as though silencing him would silence every thought he had voiced… every thought he had already accused himself of. Would it go away? Would the guilt finally stop if the person who made him feel it even sharper was gone?

"Fire everything!"

A new face seared through all the images, burning Jim, tattoos writhing across his face in countless other scenes that all made Jim want to scream, but that were all impossible to blink against. Anger choked Jim, he couldn't breathe through it, it was like inhaling flame and snow, a volcanic core exploding all around him and inside him. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to break every single vow or cultural promise he had ever made, just to seek revenge, something so ugly and never gratifying.

Further still, the string of guilt returned, an endless loop. Because despite his best attempts to restrain himself, he felt what the monster felt. He felt the loss of everything he had ever known-

"I am now a member of an endangered species."

-and that was his fault too. His responsibility. Somewhere, somehow, in some other form of life, it was his fault. His other image, the person he was mirrored in, was unable to save the murderous beast's planet just as he was unable to save his. Unable to save his own-

"Mother!"

The images were looping now, and Jim couldn't understand and grasp which thoughts were his and which belonged to someone else. It was like trying to focus on something far too close, something his eyes couldn't register. It was so near his face it was in him. It hurt to stay, he needed to leave, how could he leave?

"Let go!"

Jim hit the floor roughly. His eyes were wide but he couldn't see, and he had to remind himself to blink so he could focus again. He instinctively curled up onto his haunches, terrible feeling still haunting him. He jammed the butts of his palms against his eyes quickly to trammel up any stinging moisture from escaping.

"Well, that worked," Jim wheezed into his hands. Trying to prevent his voice from wavering was difficult, but he was recovering quickly.

"Forgive me," Spock whispered, still hunched over on his bed, "emotional transference is-"

"An effect of a mind meld, I know," Jim nodded, rubbing his palms across his face to shake off the déjà vu.

Jim glanced down at the hand that had only recently allowed him entrance to Spock's mind. He felt nothing, not even a tingling in his fingers.

"That wasn't me," he concluded, kicking himself when slight disappointment threatened to stir inside him.

"No," Spock answered through gritted teeth. "I was responsible. Your projection of your emotions was unexpected and overwhelming. I triggered the meld rather unintentionally. I apologize-"

"Stop that," Jim ordered, sniffing back any remaining emotional transfer and looking up at Spock with a tight sigh. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I projected and made you do that, I'm sorry I forgot, I'm sorry I wasn't there and that you have to feel that alone, and I'm-"

Jim cut himself off and rubbed the back of his neck in exasperation. Words were stupid sometimes. He gave another shaky sigh and briskly offered his two fingers. Spock swallowed, sat up somewhat and made to gently tap the fingers to acknowledge the gesture. At the touch Jim pressed back and intertwined his entire hand in Spock's while attempting to blissfully rid himself of any stressful or imposing thoughts. Jim let Spock help him off the floor and smoothly rose to cup the half-Vulcan's face in his free hand. He ghosted his thumb over the once again hidden psi-points before tiling Spock's head up into a gentle kiss.

"Spock," he whispered, leaning his forehead against the still rigid Vulcan, "you have to let me in."

"I believe this accidental invasion of my mind was sufficient for one day," Spock muttered under his breath, and then sat up and away from Jim.

Jim let Spock go and sat back into a crouch at Spock's feet. "Please, share this with me," he whispered, still trying to catch Spock's eye. "It's not fair that you have to do this alone." Spock started to protest stubbornly but Jim held up a finger. "And don't give me any of that crap about me not being able to understand. Spock, I've seen shit, and I've had to deal with it since I was twelve. I can help you."

"Since you were-?" Spock began, his squint less angry and more curious.

"And we're focusing on you, right now," Jim diverted quickly. He reached out slowly and was relieved when Spock allowed him to take his hand. He raised it to his own face and held it there. "Show me, Spock. Let me in and let me help you."

Jim sat there, keeping Spock's downcast gaze and trying to project only his will to help. The longest moment passed before he felt long fingers shift under his hand until they spread across his face in five tingling ports.

"Please brace yourself, Jim," Spock grunted, still seeming hesitantly embarrassed. "I do not wish to harm you-"

"I'll be fine," Jim assured him.

Spock took a deep breath and closed his eyes, Jim followed suit and tensed slightly, willing his mind to open and welcome the other, help him.

"My mind to your mind…"

My thoughts to your thoughts…

...

A/N: Hope you enjoyed! Reviews would be most appreciated. Voldemort is our homeboy. Don't make us call him up.