I managed to maintain my composure as I walked past the captain’s companions. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see disbelief and a bit of humor cross the perpetually annoyed man’s face, Bones, while keeping his eyes on Kirk as he splashed about in the river. The Vulcan, however, kept his intense, critical gaze locked onto me as I strode past.
As soon as I rounded the corner and was clear of the two Starfleet officers, I brought my hands up to my forehead near my hairline and shook my head in disbelief. Kirk. Captain James T. Kirk. Of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The man whose adventures and endeavors across space had been consuming me for the past year. He had approached me. Out of nowhere. At one of my most disgraceful lows.
Throughout our entire, albeit brief, conversation, I could barely look him in the eye. Or even at his face. When you spend a year idolizing someone, seeing their face plastered all over every screen in the city and reading about every mission and every bit of news about their crew and ship … I was derailed. Taller than I imagined. Sturdier than I imagined. I could never have prepared myself for how piercing his blue eyes were — as if making eye contact wasn’t already hard enough. His features were idyllic and edged with something that made him look and feel stoic. I was thoroughly ashamed at the heat that ran through me when I first turned to face him. My pale skin would’ve shown every last bit of reddish pigment flushing my cheeks.
Sure I knew him from the academy. Knew of him. He was a lot different back then — or at least I assumed different. Womanizer. Troublemaker. Always running his mouth and subsequently paying the price for it. He happened to be touring my combat class on one of my … off days. One of my dark, fuming, pretty damn pissed off days.
The instructor had asked Kirk if he’d like for one of the students to demonstrate the skills taught in the course. Of course he accepted the offer, and raised the stakes to actually partake in combat with one of the students, rather than just observe. My instructor called upon me, because he knew how to teach the cocky, smirking cadet a lesson about showmanship for showmanship’s sake.
The memory of him standing across from me in his untrained, laughable bar-fighting posture was strangely clear in my mind. There was a wily look in his tired blue eyes. But I wasn’t interested in pretty boys who feigned superiority. I wanted to ground him in his inferiority. And I did. Easily. He tried to throw clever comments at me, tried to hit on me and bring my guard down. I just stared back at him, waiting for the most embarrassing moment to take him down. It only took me three seconds. My forearm pinned his neck to the ground as I crouched over his torso. Shock with a tinge of fear swam in his blue eyes as he stared up at me, gasping for air.
That was nearly six years ago, and I had no idea how much of that cocky cadet remained. Perhaps some remnants of his past self still lingered, but when I had looked into his eyes now, they were impossible to read. No doubt forever changed by all he had witnessed and accomplished over the years. It seemed that he was less energetic than his younger self, perhaps dimmed by what he had endured as captain of the Enterprise. But that was mere speculation from the few moments I spent interacting with him and what I’d gleaned from how Starfleet touted him every chance they got.
Just as I was nearing the entrance of the bar, I paused and shoved my hands into my jacket pockets. With a deep breath, I considered what would, or could happen in the coming hours as I stared up at the neon sign that advertised the Fueling Hole in all of it’s too-on-the-nose glory.
Captain James T. Kirk would meet me at this bar. To, to what — to talk? To try and take me home? His intentions were beyond my comprehension. What was I supposed to tell him? That I had been obsessing over him and his crew's missions over the years? That I had idolized his life and the purpose he had seemed to find? That I was a Starfleet dropout looking to try and re-enter the academy only to probably end up failing again?
My head throbbed against all the thoughts swirling around relentlessly in my mind. Without another second of overthinking agony, I strode in through the automatic doors and grabbed a stool at the near-full bar, sitting down with an audible sigh. The all-too familiar bartender approached as I folded my arms and leaned onto the shiny metal surface that reflected my tired face back up at me. My eyes remained downcast at my image in the bar top as a glass of my favorite whiskey appeared in front of my arms.
“Looks like you could probably use a few of those, but we’ll start there.”
I nodded and slammed the whiskey, silently communicating my approval. He was already pouring another.
“Long day?”
“Long day. Long night, and it’s not even close to being over.”
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“Why’s that?”
I held the second full glass of whiskey in my hands and contemplated the night ahead, still in utter shock that it was in fact my night.
“I’m meeting up with someone later.”
“Wow, really? You always drink alone.”
Shooting him a look of intense disdain, I tipped back the second whiskey.
“I drink with some of the cadets.”
“Begrudgingly.”
“But I still do it from time to time.”
“But this is a planned meeting. Must be pretty special, eh?”
I stared into the empty glass between my hands. Special. Or, you know, slowly crippling me into a hollow shell of anxiety. How pathetic.
“Special. Yeah.”
With that, he patted the shiny metal bar top in front of me and then slid down to take other patrons orders. I glanced down at the watch on my wrist. Only an hour and forty five minutes to go. That is, if he showed up. With a slight shake of my head, I tried to push all thoughts, negative and semi-positive alike, out of my mind.
I focused on observing those sitting at the bar. Some looked to be on first dates. Others looked to be chatting animatedly with good friends. No one else was drinking alone. Just me. Soon, for the first time in countless years, I hoped I would be drinking with someone who might actually end up mattering.
----------------------------------------
Fifteen minutes. Either fifteen minutes late, or fifteen minutes of me returning to the reality of my life before that damn encounter with that damn captain. Maybe I had imagined it. Maybe I was actually delusional and experiencing full-on hallucinations.
I gave my face a fierce rub and raised my hand reflexively to summon the bartender. It was time for my fourth whiskey. Two when I got to the bar, one fifteen minutes ago, and one to finally push me towards starting to forget about the entire unfortunate string of events that had led me to this exact moment.
Just as the bartender set down the whiskey in front me and opened his mouth to no doubt offer his sympathy, several cheers erupted from behind me. My entire body tensed at the sudden shift in the bar’s atmosphere. I could make out ‘captains’ and ‘Kirks’ in the sea of sound.
I gripped the drink in my hand tightly. The bartender raised his eyebrows at the commotion and then smiled as he recognized who had caused the ruckus. I watched, amused as his brows furrowed while he made the highly unlikely connection, turning his head towards me with several dozen questions burning in his eyes as his mouth dropped open — but he would not get the chance to interrogate me for answers. Not yet, anyways.
“Captain Kirk, to what do we owe the pleasure?” Of course he was going to be a smug, brown-nosing prick about it. My eyes rolled so hard into the back of my skull that I could’ve seen my brain. So much for a tip.
“Oh, just stopping in to meet with one of our academy’s alumni.”
“I’m not an alumni. And you’re late.”
I threw back the whiskey and set the empty glass back down on the bar with a little too much force. A hairline crack danced up the side of the glass. The captain spoke again, his voice wavering between being impressed and surprised.
“We’ll take two more of those.”
“Whiskey neat, you got it.”
The intensity of the captain's raised eyebrows was perceptible without needing to shift to look at him.
Several people were still coming up and patting Kirk on the back, offering him their thanks for his most recent success of saving Yorktown, or simply just wanting to say hello. The dull thrumming from earlier returned to my skull as the bartender brought over two more whiskeys.
“Why don’t we move somewhere with a little less ... people, huh?”
My jaw was clenched tightly as I nodded in silent agreement and stood up, drink in hand, to head to the back of the bar. There was an upper loft that no one ever used because it was too far away from the alcohol and buzzing action of the crowd. I walked up to the table in the far corner, tucked away from the railing so no one could see us from the lower level. Several people had said hello as we traversed across the bar — an interaction that was foreign to me.
I sat down at the table as he lingered down on the lower level, interacting with the grateful cadets and citizens of Yorktown. I felt thousands of miles away from any kind of comfort zone that I may have been clinging to before. Resisting the urge to slam the whiskey in my grasp, the overplayed popular music pulsing throughout the bar enticed my foot to start tapping, and as I looked around, the lights began to blur slightly. I leaned onto my forearms and waited for the ever-popular captain to take his seat while trying to get in control of my buzz.
When he finally appeared at the top of the staircase, my heart tripped and stuttered for a moment as it punched into my chest. For the first time since he had come into the bar, I fully took in the captain. He was dressed in his formal commander uniform, the collar undone, drink in his hand, hair slightly mussed.
I tried my damnedest to picture how I kicked his ass so many years ago, to remember how much his cocky and disrespectful attitude filled me with such rage, tried to think of him floundering in the shallow water of the river earlier … But my mind came up empty, and I couldn’t see past the handsome man before me. A man whose proven bravery and leadership commanded the attention of the entire room. I felt incredibly small, and it had nothing to do with existing on this spec of a starbase in the vastness of endless space.