Correspondence in Void

by ladyarachnid

Summary:

Five letters James T. Kirk wrote to Spock that he never sent + the one letter he finally did.

Notes:

Preemptively, I'm gonna apologize. This fic is rife with yearning, gay suffering, and the innermost thoughts of a man in pain, with no other place to dump his feelings. Things do eventually get better, but they get so much worse first. *Posting daily until complete.*

Chapter 1: Letter #1: Operation – Annihilate!

Dear Spock,

 

I love you. 

 

Not that you’re ever going to read this, but I had to put it down somewhere. God, I feel almost crazy. I’m awake at 0300, writing you a letter I never intend to send. I feel like a teenager again, no control or discipline, venting my feelings like so much garbage out of the airlock. It’s a step up from my teenage self’s methods of attaining peace—at least with this nobody gets hurt. No black eyes, no blood, no broken friendships, and hopefully, no broken trust. As you seem to do, I strive to keep things cordial this way. I don’t think I need to say how deeply I regard you.

 

You’d certainly find this practice foolish, at any rate. Not in a negative way, but in the way it must have been for you throughout Starfleet. We humans do a lot of things that at first glance don’t make a lot of sense. After all, on principle it's illogical to write a message that’s never meant to be sent. I imagine your raised eyebrow of amused befuddlement, your long suffering sigh. I can almost hear your voice. In every scenario I can think of, you would encourage me to excise these emotions within the ordered planes of reality, not slip through the shadows of fantasy. You would tell me to speak plainly with the object of my affections. 

 

Except it’s you. 

 

It’s always been you, but I couldn’t tell you when I caught on to the fact. Was it that night we spent under the stars on Observation Deck Two, chatting well into the early hours of Delta shift? Was it when you checkmated me in my quarters while I tried to hide my flush by calling for lights at twenty percent? It was everything. I’ve been starting to realize that I was doomed for you as soon as you walked onto my ship. Every interaction since then has had me caught in your orbit, spiraling closer to you. Dangerous proximity. I would say it’s fate, but I know you’re a man of science. You would give me the probability of it all down to the decimal. It’s just another reason to love you.

 

But there’s a cost. Our line of work is inherently dangerous. Often, there is no time for fantasy, and thus you know me most as a man of action. What you do not know is how deeply, wretchedly terrified I am for you. Whenever it’s looking like we won’t make it back from a mission, I wonder how many times I should have said it, if you’ll ever really know. The three words that are always on my mind, but never in my mouth. 

 

And then we pull through, we laugh it off, (figuratively for you of course) and I go back to my quarters, and I sit in the dark. I think about how foolish you’d find me, but I also think about how foolish I find myself. How terrified I am of losing you, yet I find myself unable to pull you closer. I try not to think about the man I would be without you.

 

Do you know what it would do to me if you left, Spock? 

 

We still haven’t really talked about Deneva, and at this point I’m not sure how to bring it up organically. There is no organic conversation when things get short between us like this. I want you to know that I love you, but I was angry with you today. You were so willing to sacrifice yourself, to be the guinea pig, to disappear from the universe like it was an acceptable course of action. 

 

I thought you might die. Then I thought you might never see again. Do you know how I felt, signing off on that? As a captain, yes, but also as your friend. I don’t relish putting you in harm’s way on purpose, but neither do I relish the thought of thousands dying from something we could have prevented. It was an impossible decision, but you pleaded with me to make it. Selfishly, I wished that I could take your place, that anyone else could.

 

I lost so much today that the thought of you being part of it nearly broke me. It’s backwards but I feel like I’m just getting around now to acknowledging everything else. My brother died, his wife died, my nephew is left abandoned in the wake of my career. An entire planet, nearly wiped out. In the moment, none of it compared to the loss of you. It’s selfish, but I don’t care. I’m too tired to care. 

 

I love you, you bastard. 

 

I love you so much it hurts, especially on days like today. I want to say it and slap you in the face. I want to lead you back to your quarters, slip underneath the covers with you where I know you’ll be safe and warm and keep nighttime vigil over you, never letting you out of my sight. On days like today, when I come back to my quarters, and I sit in the dark, I love you in a way that twists my guts and leaves me shaking like a leaf. I stare at the ceiling, trying to sleep, and I think about how it would feel to have you in my arms. How badly it would hurt to have you torn from them once they’ve known the touch of you.

 

Because this is manageable. I can keep this secret. If it means less pain, less complications in the chain of command. You have no responsibility for how I feel, and I intend not to burden you with that notion. You’re the finest first officer I have ever worked with, and the finest friend I have ever had, and if that’s as far as it goes, I have a lot to be grateful for. 

 

But at 0300, I’m writing a letter to you that I will never send, and I think about the way you smile at me with your eyes when I’ve pleased you, and the easy way you carry yourself, brushing against me, allowing my tactile advances. I think about the desperate way you look at me when the tables are turned, and my life is on the line, and I wonder. 

 

Is it possible that you feel the same?

 

Hopefully,

-JTK

Chapter 2: Letter #2: Amok Time

Summary:

Message logged. (Confirm) Send message? (No) Message not sent. You have two (2) saved drafts. (Exit)

Dear Spock,

 

I should be furious with you. Maybe I am. You didn’t give me the truth until it was already too late, and I nearly paid for that silence with my life. But when I sit here and try to summon that anger, it slips through my fingers like sand in the wind. What I remember instead is your face when you saw me alive.

 

You smiled at me. Not the careful half-curve you let out when you think I’m being charming, not the quiet amusement I sometimes win from you in chess. This was… unguarded. Joy, as plain as I’ve ever seen it. And I can’t stop thinking about it. 

 

You gripped my shoulders and you spun me around and my heart sang. At every moment when I think my emotional defenses are fortified, you reach the very core of me and it all crumbles. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were alone, if you would’ve kissed me. But maybe I’m a bit biased towards that outcome. It is becoming virtually impossible not to fall in love with you under these circumstances. In addition to… other circumstances.

 

I’m sure if you were actually reading this letter, you would read between the lines, and know exactly what I mean. You are capable of both violence and gentleness, my friend, and today I bore witness to that. Every time I close my eyes I’m back on that sand, the weight of Vulcan heat pressing down, your hands on me, your body moving against mine. 

 

I know I should dismiss it as circumstance. Combat, instinct, biology. But I can’t. Because I saw you. The way your eyes darkened, the ragged edge of your breath, the strength in your grip that felt like it wanted more than to pin me down. I tell myself I imagined it, that I was dizzy with heat and strain and fear. But part of me knows I didn’t imagine anything at all.

 

For a moment, it was as if we weren’t fighting. As if you were burning for something else. For me.

 

Do you understand what that does to me? How do you expect me to pretend it meant nothing, that I imagined it all, when my skin is still burning where you touched me? I can’t stop replaying it, searching for proof one way or another. I’m horrified by the thought—and worse, I’m not horrified enough. Because if I’m right, it means you wanted me. And if I’m wrong, it means I’m the kind of man who can take a life-or-death struggle and twist it into fantasy. Either way I can’t sleep, and I don’t dare lie to myself why.

 

If I want you, and you want me, then things seem deceptively simple. Would it not be logical for us to reap the benefits of love rather than languish in its sorrows? To operate in all respects the same, but deeper? I thought of making you this proposal, but soon enough the day was over, and we both needed our rest. As you bade me goodnight, a moment’s hesitation stilling your sure movements, I cowardly returned to my quiet, empty quarters, the words deliquescing in my throat. I sit in the dark, and I write to a you that will never know. 

 

God, I love you Spock, but how can I say the thing that damns me? And then, once I’ve said it you’ll feel expected to answer. I couldn’t imagine what it would cost you, after a lifetime of keeping your emotions in check. How could I ever demand of you what I myself fear? How could I ever deserve you?  There are many things I can't have by virtue of my position and person, but it is difficult to accept you are one of them.

 

Let me be honest, if not to you than to myself: I fear I would ruin you. Not in any sense of self-flattery or sexual prowess, though I doubt you would take anything as an innuendo at face value. I worry that you would inevitably come to know the ghosts I carry with me. They are not kind. They follow me like shadows, and they whisper in my ear from time to time to remind me of their weight. Souls should be massless, but as the years have gone by, and I’ve lost people, I find they become quite heavy. I find that sometimes, I am crushed beneath them, and I deserve nothing more than to join them. 

 

That kind of burden could do many things to a man. I’d like to think that it’s made me better at my job, and perhaps it has, but I think it’s made me worse as a person. I am a survivor, in every terrible sense of the word. You got to see a little of that today. 

 

Every time when others die, I get to live. Except this time, at least to you, I didn’t. Part of me is glad I didn’t have to see the look on your face after you thought you’d killed me. Another, deeply festering part wishes I could. To know what it all meant to you, in the end. 

 

Because I think that if I had really died, I would become your ghost. Always your shadow, becoming illogically heavier over time. The thought makes me ill. I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about the hole your loss would leave in me, but only now am I giving much thought to the reverse. I fear I would ruin you Spock, if not now, then whenever Death gets sick of my cheating. I can’t do that to you. 

 

You’re simply too much to risk.

 

As always,

-JTK

Notes:

Oh Kirk, you really talk yourself out of everything good in your life, don't you?

Chapter 3: Letter #3: The Motion Picture

Summary:

Message logged. (Confirm) Send message? (No) Message not sent. You have three (3) saved drafts. Send message? (Yes) Network error. Recipient not found. (Confirm) Delete draft? (No) (Exit)

Dear Spock,

 

The last few weeks of our five year mission blew by so fast, filled with reports, briefings, the inevitable monotony of wrap up. I blinked and the mission was over, Earth’s familiar blue oceans reflecting across the view screen. I watched myself give the command to bring her in and dock. The next moment I was walking beside you, the last two people on the ship, and it all crashed down on me. Everyone was scattering like dust in the wind, and I remember thinking: “this is your chance, Jim, don’t screw it up,” because we never discussed our dirtside plans. I threw out an offer like a lifeline. “Stay with me,” I said, more desperate than I should have been, “Let me show you some spots I know.” 

 

God knows why you said yes, but you did. Bones drove back to Georgia, Scotty stayed with the ship, Uhura took the first shuttle out to Nairobi, and Sulu and Chekov were already halfway to the alps for their little camping trip before my meetings with the admiralty were over. In that last one with Nogura, I hardly paid attention because you were in the room, and my eyes kept straying to you, my skin itching under your gaze. 

 

That night, I took you back to my empty, Starlfleet provided apartment on the presidio, and you didn’t flinch at my measly offer to stay. After all, we’ve spent quite a bit of time in close proximity, and I’m sure you construed my eagerness as something far more innocent. You always assume the best of me, don’t you? 

 

We were living like that for awhile. Me, showing you the old stomping grounds and classic haunts of my academy days. You, patiently tagging along, always with something interesting to say, relaying overtures of your own time in Starfleet and on Vulcan. We walked and talked for hours. You took a keen interest in the happenings of my old life, and it was easy to indulge you. It was thrilling and terrifying to let you see more of me, the versions of me before I met you. 

 

It was far too simple to be with you, and then I found myself asking why I had ever considered distance. Like gravity, we orbited closer to each other as the days wore on, and when I let my knee brush yours, you did not move away. When you stood close enough to me that I could feel your warmth, I could tell you delighted in my smile. Everything else aside, I think you would agree, it was going well.

 

And then, one night I took it too far. I know I did. 

 

“Let’s go to a bar”, I said, “It’ll be fun,” I said. It was a silly idea, and not one I had particularly thought through. Of course we’d be recognized at the academy’s favorite watering hole. Three hours and seven insistent drinks “on the house” later, you carried my staggering, delirious body through the San Francisco streets. My arm slung over your shoulders, I leaned into you gratefully. I breathed you in, so close, and I relished in you. The gentle fire where you touched me spread across my chest and over my cheeks and before I knew it, I was burning for you. 

 

The next thing I remember, I was trying and failing to shove a key in a lock. The floor was spinning under my feet. Before my legs gave out beneath me, I felt you at my back, your long fingers closing over mine to guide the stubborn key into its place. You were pressed along me as we both stumbled inside, my heart beating a mile a minute. 

 

And then we were both laying on my bed, and I was telling you things. Things I’ve told no-one, not even Bones. Things about me that I should have feared you knowing. The trainwreck of my love life. My wounds. My ghosts. Perhaps I should have thrown up in the fresher rather than spew my confessional vomit all over you. But you were holding me, and you stayed with me. I could feel that you understood. 

 

I should have stopped there, I should have left it alone. But once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. There was something worse pressing at the back of my throat, something I’ve carried for years, and it was clawing its way out. And then I started talking about you. 

 

I couldn’t help it. Five years of pent up love and anguish, mixing until they were practically insoluble. It started as a trickle, but soon I was saying all too much. The three words that are always on my mind, but never in my mouth. I held your face in my hands, and my breath hot and sour with drink, I told you.

 

“I love you”, I said. 

 

And you stiffened. 

 

I could see the naked panic in your eyes. I felt the rigid line of your body where you were pressed against me, as frozen as the ice in my veins. “It’s okay,” I said, but it clearly wasn’t. 

 

Your eyes shuttered off then, the spark gone. Retreating inside yourself, beyond my reach. You gently pried my hands from your cheeks, and you sat up, turning your back to me. Your shoulders hunched in defeat, a fine tremble overtaking your tense frame, you sat in silence. I watched the moonlight from the bay spill across the back of your head and scatter over the sheets. 

 

“I cannot”, you finally said, and then in a whisper I'm sure was meant just for yourself, “I cannot.” 

 

You didn’t look back as I watched the door close behind you. You left me in tangled sheets, my heart tangled in cold cords of flesh, my body a gnarled corpse to be dug up come morning. But the sun rose over the horizon, and you hadn’t returned, so I did the digging myself. 

 

You left. Full stop. You didn’t say a word to me of where you were going, and you just… left. I had to find out from Bones of all people that you were no longer on the same planet as me. There had been a flame of hope, or perhaps denial, but by this point, you’ve made your intentions clear. My friend, my heart calcifies to stone in my chest as I realize you aren’t coming back. 

 

I’m sorry. I can say it as many times as I wish here, where the words won’t find you, but I fear I’ll never get to say it to your face. It’s been a month since you’ve disappeared, and all I can do is replay our last hours over and over. Being in your arms, spilling my soul, and everything ending so abruptly. Five years and then nothing at all. Just like that. 

 

Voices buzz around me. Offers, commendations, a surefire place as a Commodore. The words rattle around in the empty outline of my head, the cold steel cage of my ribs, because you have stolen away my thoughts, you have excised my heart. I never knew what kind of man I would be without you, and now I realize I am a man frozen in time. “What next?” everybody seems to be asking, but I say “what now?”

 

What now, Spock?

 

Regretfully,

-JTK

Notes:

They were so close this time.

Chapter 4: Letter #4: Wrath of Khan

Summary:

Message logged. (Confirm) Send message? (No) Message not sent. You have four (4) saved drafts. Delete draft? (No) Delete draft? (No) Delete all four (4) saved drafts? (…) Error. Request timed out. (Exit)

Dear Spock,

 

I can’t do it. I can’t.

 

I’ve picked up the pen to write your eulogy and put it down about seventeen times. Real paper and ink—the words feel far too final this way, but I thought you would appreciate the gesture. Has it been days since it happened? It feels more like hours, even minutes. People ask me for reports, the world carries on. But those last precious seconds play behind my eyelids on horrific soundless loop—your eyes staring through me, already half-blind, your hand against the glass. Then you turned your back to me, so I wouldn’t have to see… 

 

I’m sitting in my quarters, and I don’t dare look at the clock. It’s been too many hours to keep count of for lack of sleep, food, and general hygiene, because I feel as though my body is the one in the casket. I’m dead. James T. Kirk is no more, and whatever life occupies this vessel is the variety of maggots and bacteria. I haven’t been a real person since it’s happened. All this? It’s happening to somebody else. None of it feels real, Spock. 

 

And maybe that’s why I can’t do this. I can’t write about you in the past tense. Not when I see your silhouette out of the corner of my eye at your science station. Not when your shadow follows me, too warm, prickling sharp on the back of my neck. My right side throbs with the nearness of you, but when I turn, there’s nothing there. Part of me hopes wildly for… something. Anything. We’ve pulled out of tight spots in the past, haven’t we? Any work of fate seems less impossible than what’s happened. 

 

Bones says he’s worried about me. I’ve caught him watching my plate in the mess, and I can tell he knows I’ve been awake more hours than not. He doesn’t threaten me like he usually would, he just looks at me with a face that’s aged ten years in the past few days, and we sit in an uneasy silence that should be filled with the noise of you two bickering. 

 

The flipside of the coin is that I get the feeling he might be worse off. He’s too quiet these days. Sometimes he doesn’t sound like himself at all. Sometimes, funnily enough, he reminds me a lot of you. This however is quite the gamble for me—whenever the subject of you is reminded aloud, it’s difficult to predict how the emotional tumult inside my body will respond, how desperately my heart will claw at my chest for escape. I brace for the pain, and I am never prepared. When Bones starts saying what you would say, I find myself wishing for his abrasiveness. I keep picking fights with him, underhanded and ugly, even though I know there will be no winner. 

 

Pathetically, I find myself hating him, if only for the loss of you. An injured starship captain and a doctor who can’t heal me—we put on a pretty poor show, don’t we? I know he’s trying to help, but every time we talk about you it’s like needling at an open wound. I reach my limit. Like the desperate animal I am, I bite back. The punctures can be mended, but the blood shed on the floor never goes back in. Every time we do it, we push a little further apart. It is not logical, and I’m positive you would tell me so. 

 

The others have been sympathetic, Uhura most of all. She’s checked up on me regularly, and it’s been pinched smiles and half-truths with her, but she’s far too good at deciphering my lies, and for better or worse, it seems she hasn’t given up yet. Scotty keeps dropping his homebrew at my door—we don’t talk about it. Sulu’s comm’d under the guise of politely asking me for lunch, prodding me to ascertain my state of being, but I’ve turned him down enough that he’s stopped. 

 

Then there’s Pavel. Chekov showed up at my quarters once, crying, and I listened to him talk about you, how badly he missed you, as tears burned behind my eyes and my fingernails cut into my palms. I couldn’t speak, I was choking on air, drowning. He talked about all the little holes you’ve left in the science team, on the ship, and in this universe. Something sharp broke inside me listening to him, and the next words I could say were “get out”. 

 

They’ve been patient with my madness, but in a way that tells me they all seem to anticipate my eventual recovery. What they do not know is that there is no healing from this. They simply don’t know what I’ve lost—my first officer, my best friend, my brother, the other half of me. They don’t know why I’ve sealed your quarters, why I still haven’t washed the sheets, clinging to the scent of you, why our chessboard gathers dust, the pieces frozen two moves away from your inevitable checkmate and victory. It’s not their fault, we kept everything behind closed doors, didn’t we? Even just between us, we never really talked about what it all meant. I always thought there would be time. 

 

I appreciate what they’re trying to do, but our friends’ concerns are wasted on a dead man. I try to imagine my future, any possible future from here—and I see your back, the night you left Earth. I see the edge of you in the moonlight, walking into the dark. My dear friend, when you disappeared the first time, you did not take so much of me with you. I keep asking myself: when I finally concede you’re gone, will there be anything of me remaining? 

 

There has to be something left. You told me once that commanding a starship is my first, best destiny. I am still tasked with it, for the time being, and I search for the man you saw in me then. I want to be with you again—God, I do—but when those thoughts come, it’s as if I can feel your eyes on me. Your hand on my shoulder, steadying me. You would disapprove if I tried to follow. You wouldn’t permit it, and I could only imagine the argument we’d have. There’s people who need me, and my duty doesn’t stop just because it feels like my life has. You would tell me to carry your memory—that the you that lives in me, dies with me. 

 

“Don’t grieve,” you told me. I tried to listen, I tried to honor your request. But when I look back at these letters, I see my blood already spilled, written in your name across the page, over and over. I see the orbit of us, spiraling through space—dangerous proximity, destined for collision, ending in mutual destruction. “Live long,” you said, “and prosper”, but I fear I shall do neither. My ghosts are lighter than they should be. They sense my desire to join them, and they sigh, finally. 

 

I can’t help but agree: there’s nothing left to hold me. Not after my worst fear has already come true. Once, I would have been receptive to your wisdom. But now? I challenge you to deny a man who fears nothing.

 

Forever yours,

-JTK 

Notes:

Sorry, folks. I think I broke my own heart a little writing this one :'(