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Codes: J/K, J/7, K/f

Summary: Harry writes to Janeway. Erotic fiction and unrequited desire. Not in that order.

Author's note(s): My stories are getting weirder by the second. In answer to a challenge someone issued a long time ago on ASC. This one's a little maudlin. Sorry.

Credits: jenn, for that final push...that I should have made a while ago.

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Out in old San Francisco town there's this old coffee shop. The woman who runs it is robust, and round, and pretty in an old fashioned sort of way. She waits outside, leans against the door frame, her fat arms crossed over her chest, and she stares. She's a wonderful woman, her clothes and her hair smell of coffee and she smiles at you as you enter the little shop and duck down to get through the low door. You remind me of her. Protective. Or else it's just the coffee. Which would work too, I guess.

I like to go there on a Sunday morning. Sometimes I'll pick out a flavour, a brand, for Amé and me to enjoy over brunch. There's one they mix with chilli that Amé treats like some kind of psychotropic drug. She'll only drink it late at night, cradling her cup to her chest and telling stories. She'll ramble on about the way her grandmother used to wear her hair in such a way that would cast shadows of witches and demons across the tiled kitchen floor.

One night, late, she told me about Lydell. Lydell was a student of hers whom she'd taught at the University. She told me, plainly, that she'd been in love with him. And that she'd wanted him, and dreamed about him across the classroom, and held his manuscript padds with a little more care.

She was very lucid, intimate details about the way he held himself, the cut of his clothes against his body, his dark eyes that would sparkle or something else that sounded good at the time, I seem to remember. She giggled when she told me she took him against her bookcase. She said she liked the way he looked at her one day after class and just decided that she'd have him. He was young and innocent and wide-eyed and asked her questions and expected her to know the answers. She loved it, she loved him, she told me she liked the feel of his youth under her fingertips. She said she liked the control, liked the feel of him hard against her thigh, liked the way he'd moan when she took him in her mouth.

In the morning she threatened to pack her bag. She apologised. She wept on our shared bed and held me until I felt I couldn't breathe. I told her I loved her. I told her I always had. I told her I knew what it felt like.

I told her what I'm going to tell you.

Amé was fascinated by me. She curled her head to my chest and listened to my guilt. I felt guilty. This story makes me guilty.

I was an angrier young man than I looked. It seems easy to tell you this now. I'll turn fifty-four on Thursday. But what do you care? Me? I've just begun to roll the syllables over in my mouth. Doesn't sound right, you know? I was meant to be important when I was older. I was meant to be fifty-four and someone. That's how I coped with being twenty-three and no one.

I began with you, sitting across from me in the Mess Hall. It was quiet; it always was in the early hours of the morning. We'd been on the ship for five years. I'd been your Ensign for five years and you looked me in the eyes and said, 'Are you in love with Seven?'

'Why,' I returned, 'Are you?'

It was the strangest moment. And you were the woman who clutched my shoulder and lifted yourself up onto that pedestal I put you on, clambering at the worn red velveteen on the way. But nothing was as strange as that moment. You looked at me and your eyes drifted over my features. I told Amé I wondered if you were seeing me for the first time. Maybe you were inspecting me, expecting me to judge you as you sat before me and your eyes found mine. I never figured that part out. I was going to make some important statement and then nothing seemed to fit. But I was edging for realism, and falling into romance novel.

'Yes,' you said, 'I am.'

I swallowed at that. You saw and your hand found mine. It never occurred to me that you were in love with Seven until then. The woman who stood over me and said 'Love is not a disease' in her strident monotone. The woman whose fingertips were cold against my skin, the woman whom I'd come to pity as much as accept.

'Does Seven love you?' I asked.

At that, you smiled and bent your head, letting out a long breath. Your hand squeezed mine harder. 'Harry,' you mumbled, 'you know, I'm really not sure.' Your face lit then and your features creased into a smile.

I used to wonder, did perfection come easy to you? You survived assimilation, which is a neat irony. I tried to despise you then. For endangering B'Elanna. I decided that was something I could accept, I could distance myself from you with. It worked too well. I became cold quick.

I remember for some reason telling you to follow me to the viewport. I think I pointed out Tal's warp trail and the blue colour it was leaving on the sky. It was a stupid question; I asked you what you thought of me.

You told me you thought I was a good man. I told you I wanted to know what you really thought.

'I think you're very kind,' you said.

'Thank you,' I returned. 'But I've been very kind all my life. Isn't there anything else there? Am I just this 'nice guy' who sits on your bridge? Is that all I'll ever be Captain, because that's the way I'm feeling.'

I was especially pleased when I told this part. All that Harry Kim angst, lost Ops officer, reaching out to his equally lonely captain. And if I wasn't me who was supposed to be saying those words then I guess there would have been a certain victorious quality about it all - the young boy finally standing up for himself, becoming a man. As it was, I don't think I can even hope to imagine myself saying that, to you, back then. But these are the joys of fiction.

I bet, you're within your rights to sue me for the story I told her. You can if you want. My work needs the exposure.

Amé interrupted at this part to tell me about the first time with Lydell. She told me about the way that he lent down to smell her hair when she passed him in the corridor. She told me about the time she captured his mouth with hers and ripped his smock open to touch his warm skin. That was how she phrased it, 'warm skin' - was she telling me I'm cold?

'Amés story sounds nice though, doesn't it? Sounds a hell of a lot better than, 'Don't be bitter Harry.' The starlight was catching your cheekbones then, and I think maybe I'll try and remember you like that. 'Never be bitter, Harry. Take what you want.'

I guess that doesn't sound right, coming from you. I bet you would have quantified it by adding 'out of life' and then smiling and patting my shoulder. I bet you would have smiled at me - laughed, told me to buck my ideas up. I don't think you were ever about 'want.'

I caught your hand. 'You want Seven,' I stated, bluntly, because I had a notion I understood.

'Yes,' you said, almost absently and lightly. Apparently, I wondered later if you were imagining her there instead of me. If you were imagining the starlight against her pale and metallic skin instead of my richer, darker skin.

'Then why--?'

'She's not ready.'

'I don't love her,' I said again. You looked down to where my hand clasped yours and expected me to let go. I surprised myself, I didn't.

'I know, Harry,' you whispered. You laughed lightly. 'You don't have to remind me.'

'No,' I said, and I gripped your hand tighter and dared you to remove me. 'You know I'm sick of this. I am sick of being here on this ship and you...and oh fuck...this...the whole thing's...it's getting to me...'

See? That's a Harry Kim thing to say. I've been living with them for the last fifty years. I can call them when I see them. Anyway, it was all too easy to realise that was a real part of me, Ame's nose bunched up and she frowned. I was never what she expected.

I looked lost. When I first met Amé she asked me if I knew where I was. I responded that I worked on campus. She said she knew that, the question had been metaphorical. At the time I thought that was beautiful, now it seems wrong. But then everything seems wrong. I sat down today, padd in hand, and asked myself out loud if I was having a mid life crisis.

'How do you feel Harry?' you asked me.

'Lonely,' I responded. Of all the stupid things to say. My eyes pricked with tears. Fuck, I think maybe I was manipulating certain emotions. I did need to cry. I was lonely and fucked up and about to do something so ridiculous the images wouldn't even play through my head correctly. Or so the story went. Amé was rapt.

I fell into your arms. I think you told me you were lonely too. Did I look young and innocent to you? Did you see what Amé saw? No. I don't think you were out to corrupt me, were you, Captain Janeway? I think life's having a hard time even making an impact on me. Let alone the debauched corruption that I whispered over coarse cotton sheets to my wife.

I touched your hair and then your face and you didn't back away. You looked human to me then, when I could touch you and feel the strength in your skin. Your skin didn't keep you in; your skin kept the world out. That's how it felt anyway. But everyone has their Janeway theory.

I kissed your check and you apologised to me. I kissed your forehead and you told me this was wrong. My lips found your neck and you told me this was for tonight.

It was you who kissed my lips and took my hair into your hands. I think I whispered as my fingers found your back and the clasps of your uniform that maybe one day Seven would understand.

Your lips trailed across my chest and found bare shoulders that I never remember disrobing and you told me that you had one thing, and one thing alone, that kept you going and that was... I don't know. I was an impatient kid and I had pulled at your pants and you gasped a little. Maybe you finished your sentence, I don't think I'll ever know. It needed to be something important for you to say, and I was thinking on my feet, but I've never been good at profound.

You put a lock on the Mess Hall doors, you threw my jacket across the room. You kissed me, took my mouth in yours. I ran my hands between your legs and found you, you spread yourself for me, you responded to my touch. I was there for you. I think at one point I called you Tal as I trailed words and lips down your arm.

You shuddered as I thrust into you, remember who's telling the story. I was taken; feeling quite pleased with myself to be honest as you tightened around me, with the feel of the carpet on my back. I don't remember much really, of what I told, I remember describing the starlight across your glistening skin; the rhythm of your breathing that punctuated the still air. I remember telling her I came inside you and screamed like some overly shocked virgin, with your hands clenching on my back. I told Amé all of this, with more detail. When I had finished she ran her hand across my chest and kissed my ear lobe. She told me I was beautiful. I shook her off.

I remember standing up and feeling like the shittiest person in the known galaxy. You picked yourself up, the hold on the door was lifted, goodbyes were said, you asked me if I wanted to come to your quarters tomorrow. I agreed, easily, desperately. You let me have a secret smile and left the Mess.

Does that sound false? Amé bought it.

I used you. And I hated that you let me. Can you imagine yourself doing that for Tom or Chakotay? You let me use you, it meant nothing to you, it was the physical release if nothing else. When you left me I used to think about the way your fingers would brush my skin and hate myself for being aroused by you. I used to curse myself for being in love with you, and hate you for letting me have you.

See? I found my narrative rhythm. Complete with unanswerable questions that I shoot around my head lying back on my sofa. And you know what? They never seem to hit the answers. Or do you have answers? Or do you just not ask the questions? Maybe that's a way to live. Or not live, if we're using my life as the template.

Maybe you fell in love with the idea. I don't know. You're a good woman, and good people I don't like to over-analyse too much. I once dated a girl who was a Blake scholar, and she used to recite Whitman in bed, she saved Blake for school, but left Whitman for bed. It made me leave her. The description of an emotion, so lyrical, so pure, while I was desperately trying to show her mine became a concept totally repulsive to me. So I made it a rule. No over analysis of the people you love Harry, not good for the soul. And the Blake scholar and her orgasmic Whitman ramblings became a mere joke. Can you imagine it? I guess she thought it was romantic. Or she needed therapy. Most likely both. Maybe I should instigate a psychological vet on all the people I date. Save me the expense.

Why am I telling you that anyway? I told Amé. Amé said she probably knew the same woman. We laughed. I grew bitter and asked Amé if she'd fucked her too. Amé threatened to cry again, and her face bunched up. I suggested the coffee with the chilli cut. She told me I had picked up my coffee habit from you. That, of all things, she'd read your autobiography and seen it there. Yesterday morning before she went to pick up Bessa-May from the transport she called you 'Harry's celebrity fuck' and then plucked an eyebrow and scurried out into the street.

Have I covered the second time? I recalled my turning up at your quarters. You were very gentle, very forgiving, very ready to make me feel better. I don't know what I gave in return, what you were denying yourself from with Seven, denying yourself from Seven.

Sometimes, when I was tired and spent you'd appear distant to me. I'd ask you what was wrong. You would tell me how you had talked to Seven that day. 'I spoke to her,' you'd say, 'And I don't think I can stop myself.'

Okay. So maybe the dialogue wasn't inspired. But I'm Harry, and I try hard, and that's my excuse for just about everything.

'Good,' I'd return and role over so you wouldn't see my erection and be embarrassed by my ignorance. 'Go to Seven. Tell her you love her.'

I think, maybe months after we began, I told you I loved you. I whispered it into your ear as we took on some kind of rhythm and I felt your skin cover mine. And I think, amidst it all, you told me you knew, and that you understood. I don't know, I can never remember.

And how could I hate you? How could I hate a woman who would give me everything I really wanted and keep true to all she had desired? How can anyone hate that? I told Amé. Amé was less impressed. I kissed her, seeing the tears wash over her eyes. She was jealous. I kissed her soft lips, pushed her onto her back, kissed her neck and pressed my body to hers, like I could hold her there, trap her in her own glass cage jealousy.

Sometimes the story failed and I had to think awhile on what to say next. Amé would draw restless or cry again. Her eyes would grow red, her beautiful hair dull. I felt compelled to soothe her with the faults of the story, the plot holes, the emotional gaps. When I wanted to hurt her I described the sex, romanticised, mad, passionate, all of those things that never happen in real life. She'd touch me, touch herself. It almost became surreal. Breathing her adulterous breath on my skin, naked breasts against my chest and wordlessly begging me to continue. I think she realised this was a Harry Kim who never existed. That's why she wanted him.

Amé said that Lydell had the same draw as you. Love with the unattainable, love with the emotionally sheltered. A beautiful concept don't you think? One of Amé's, I think she's quite impressed by it. But she does tend to get so self-important. Am I telling you a story?

I could tell you the parts you never found out. But Amé was disinterested when I tried to go there. She asked me to tell her how it ended. That's a writing thing apparently. With all her talk of great literature she's a very set girl. Beginning, middle, end. And very much a girl. This is what you get if you become a teacher. Flighty wives whom you love more than they realise. Even after the narrative bridge closes and the next story begins.

So I told her how it ended. I told her about the time you took me in your ready room and just let me sit there and stare at the stars. You didn't touch me, I told her. Didn't even look at me.

As the story fades you tell me you aren't in love with Seven anymore, that you could live without her. I think I told you that I could understand. I always told you I understood, because you were so overly aware that I had no way of ever understanding. I told Amé that I was shallow to you. She laughed, mumbled something about unhidden depths and then sneezed into a tissue. At this point I wondered if I could hate her again.

I told her about the hand you ran up my face. It was all very important, I told it in this grave voice. Amé's feet were in the air and she waved them appreciatively every time my telling turned to lust or unrequited desire. I thought of Lydell. I've even given him a face, and dark eyebrows that met suspiciously in the middle. This probably means I need the therapy my wife attends and keeps dream diaries for. Those diaries I want to go through, but don't. I trusted her.

She trusts me enough to believe anything I say. I guess that's why it was so easy.

You told me, that day, that you were intrigued by me. You told me I'd stopped in time. You told me that you were my anchor and it was time to be set free. You sounded forced. I wonder if you'd found the sub directory on fucking inferior officers and were reciting from rote. I almost waited for the rule book definition, you disappointed me, it never came. I can be quite amusing when the mood strikes me, or at least tell bad anecdotes across over-dressed tables to people I barely know, to make them think I'm quite amusing.

I told you that I understood. I left. Amé was disappointed that I didn't shout at you and fight for your love. I told Amé I loved her and that was all that really mattered. She didn't reply, merely combed some hair to my head with her fingertips and looked up at me with her insidious, guilty grey eyes. They used to be blue. Sometime ago they turned grey.

Do you remember the time you passed the corridor in the middle of the night and I was just standing there, pretending I was fixing a conduit? This you should actually remember. It was the middle of the night. Tom was with B'Elanna. I was alone. You were walking arm in arm with her. Seven. She was wearing clothes, a shirt, hung about her shoulders and revealing the soft skin of her lower neck. Her hair was loose and was curling. I told Amé this angered me. I remember, distinctly, loving this when I saw it. I remember finding peace in your peace.

I was glad you found her.

I see pictures of Seven's youthful complexion on newsfeeds now. She hasn't aged. I see that and I feel angry for you, a decrepid kind of withered pain that stabs at my gut and then withers as I struggle to recall my own name. I hope you're happy. I know you're not.

Amé was satisfied when I completed the story. She lay her head against mine and said we shouldn't go to work. We made love. She replicated sugar cakes. We talked about the hills and the mountains and stupid things to pass the hours we felt compelled to spend in each other's company. She asked me what I wanted from life. I told her I had always wanted her. Always. She disliked the answer, asked me if I had any drive, ambition.

She told me you had ambition. I told her that you found someone you loved. You lost Seven too, I hear.

You're laughing at me as you read this. I can tell. If I wasn't me I'd be finding this fucking hilarious. Because it's me, Harry Kim, of all the people you ever knew.

I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered you. Something sick in me thought you had a right to know. So I made a strange little sordid tale about being your lover up to appease my wife. So what? Some of it is real. I remember showing you Tal's ship, I remember realising you were in love with Seven. I remember when your fingers trailed along my skin; I remember the day we found the fruit from the shuttle mission. I think I remember being in love with you from the far reaches of the Ops station. Or at least madly in love with the back of your head.

When you turned around to ask me something, you were never quite as beautiful as I remembered you.

I told Amé this make believe story so that she couldn't leave me. She wanted to. I realise this now. I decided to share her guilt so that she wouldn't let me go.

What does it matter anyway? Last night, we cut the coffee again- the brand with the chilli edge. We sat around the fire and she hooked her blanket over her shoulders and let the flames reflect in her eyes. She told me, as she sipped it, that she had been seeing a woman. That they were in love and they wanted to elope. She was drunk. She told me she wanted a divorce.

I felt like telling her I understood. I am a sad old man, Kathryn Janeway.

Was it like this when Seven left you? Did you do anything to hold on? Or are you as dignified in defeat as you are in victory? Did you cry? Can you cry?

I threw her out. My children came home. Tom called by. B'Elanna made me Tarkelian tea. Friends decided to invade my house. I was lucky you didn't come. But then, I guess you don't remember me. I shouldn't be surprised. Most of the time, I don't remember me. And I don't want to, either, that's my privilege of age.

Today is over now. Tomorrow is another cycle of hours we saw fit to give impersonal numbers instead of names. I'll get by. I seem to remember a time before love when I did just fine. I'm hoping after love is just as easy. If I could just work out how to stop loving, I'll be eternally content.

And you know what I learned? Through the hate, and the burn, and Amé whom I despise as much as I adore; I realised one thing. Just one solitary thing. Afterall, I never was the philosophy student.

Maybe I should have kissed you.

I've enclosed some coffee. Chilli cut.