#my fanfiction recommendation column
the door by pouxin
james t. kirk / s'chn t'gai spock, star trek: kelvin timeline
Mom, what's at the end of the sky? And she'd say, well, space, the universe. And I knew that, because of dad and everything. But then I'd ask: what's at the end of the universe? And she'd say, nothing, nothing; and I'd say, but what's actually there?; and she'd say OK, OK then Jimmy, a brick wall. A big brick wall. A big red brick wall. Is there a door? I'd ask. No, she'd say. No door.
It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love. raymond carver, 'what we talk about when we talk about love'
I have a complicated relationship with this story because it's too intimate, too personal, too angsty, one that gets under my skin and reminds me of things I don't always want to think about.
But this is without a doubt one of the best, literary-heartbreakingly-written AOS fics. There's a lot of talking about books, thinking about love and grief, and having sex. And it's all expressed through a wonderful play on words. Strangely, I find this a very AOS thing, my personal headcanon, something from my youth that I miss in this easy way - forgotten Allen Ginsberg's Howl on the table, paperbacks in jacket pocket, the muted jazz of Morphine, the deserted streets of the heat of stifling summer nights, the feel of hot asphalt under bare feet, the shared moisture of kisses, that incomprehensible physicality of life. And it is this difference in physicality that, for me, makes AOS and TOS so unlike each other, the result of the half-century lying between them, something that makes AOS simpler, more down-to-earth, not as mythical, not as ancient in its depth, not as fateful as TOS, and that's why I love them so (equally) differently.
It's a replay of STID, but it isn't really tied as much to the external plot as it is to the internal, to the feelings and sensations, to the thoughts and memories, all those things that go on in our heads, and that scream and cry and want to be seen. And this is a fairly rare and good example of working with memories of Tarsus in the AOS universe, with an ofc that really touched me. It's not an easy read, there's a lot of talk about grief and loss and guilt and shame, but it's healing, not destructive. And it's very beautiful.
