this simple feeling
I searched for fics by this title, and not finding many I took the results to be a more conclusive go-ahead for me to give my own isolated take on this moment. I hope you'll enjoy (and here's a clip link for all of our convenience).
It's like a breath he takes in not because he's asked for it, not because he's opened himself to the desperate reach and grasp of air, but because he is drowning, not in it but around it.
It hurts, not as a dull ache or a sharp pain but as fission and fusion hurt; stars cannot experience pain. They simply die. They simply are born.
They simply are. The universe simply is. Really, there's no explaining it.
But it hurts not to explain. It hurts not to be able to tell, by the fervor of his mind made manifest in physical space, to say what, to say why, to say who, to say how. If he cannot do that, then how will he ever be able to recall, once he has had to let go?
If he described it as his lungs being filled, that would not be correct; this is not air. If he described it as his heart being filled, that would not be correct; this is not blood. And so on and so forth; this is not water, this is not the pressure of earth, this is not the burn of fire.
Logically, by elimination rather than deduction or induction (the sun will rise, ever the sun will rise, as ever the sun will rise), by casting out what is wrong instead of settling upon what is right.
No, no. That's not logical. So try again.
Indeed, if he described it as his chest being filled in its entirety regardless of substantiation, then likely Bones would have cause for alarm. Long has he learned not to describe things in so carelessly a manner as that. Let carelessness be the only descriptor made apt, here.
As Mr. Spock - Spock, Spock, Spock - takes his hand--
It can't even be casual, a side effect and a side note. No, this is monumental - very nearly, it is preposterous.
Executive Officer Spock, of half Human and half Vulcan heritage and of wholly unpronounceable last name despite the hybridization, has taken Rear Admiral James T. Kirk's hand. Of his own volition; indeed, as a correction and an amendment to Kirk's own overly emotional though not illogical behavior, which had been to grasp at Spock's shoulders to arrest him back to life.
The impetus of it had shaken Kirk nearly as much as Spock's own hand upon his forearm had. For Spock, the impassive moon, to look up at Kirk, the inactive sun, and tell him that the way he was affecting tactile affection was incorrect, was unduly complicated, was something that could be done more correctly yet not with a calculated arc, neither hyperbolic nor linear but instead parabolic like the bowl of the setting Vulcan sun?
It had been Spock's decision. He must have considered it logical. He must have considered it an essential action to take in order to facilitate the remainder of the conversation, further elucidation for the captain (still the captain, always his captain) as to Spock's viewpoint post-V'ger.
And he called it simple. Everything Spock has ever done has been simple, because everything is simple when it is logical, so long as one is sufficiently equipped to follow that logic and goodness knows that by now Jim Kirk is more than equipped. But this?
Not simple. Not simple at all. Kirk can only possibly think to agree to call it so because his other hand moves to grasp the back of Spock's almost without his thinking.
He is still breathing in. He thinks, with a tremendous fright and a silent shout, that he never will be. And that he is not afraid of it, not even as he has never been truly afraid of the vast universe through which he directs his crew to steer his ship. By new stars every time, they have guided themselves and been guided.
But this...simple, indeed. Always the same star. Always the point of anchor, by arched brows matching wide smiles.
In a flash of ununderstanding, Kirk remembers, recalls, realizes, that Vulcans only control their emotions to the point of stranglehold, rather than simply not feeling them; they feel infinitely more deeply than humans do, or so he has been told, and if that scale is the one to which he has been applied, then maybe that's why it's taken this long. Only naturally.
Very simple. Everything is simple when it is taken slowly.
But that's the question that lingers. If he cannot breathe for the preoccupation of his heart's inhalation, at this "simple feeling" that Spock tenderly (yes, tenderly) informs him of, then what must Spock be feeling?
What is...?
And then he knows. And then he truly does understand.
It is simple, for it is shared. Across all stars and minds' vistas, it is the very same thing.
He does not call it love, for Spock has not, and that is for a reason. Love is an act as much as it is an emotion, as much as it is a feeling.
Spock does not speak of their history or their future, merely of this simple feeling, in the right here and the right now.
I should have known, Kirk thinks. I should have known.
But I couldn't have. For we have never approached this specific singularity of our shared orbit before.
If we had, perhaps V'ger would have been able to understand it. But because we had and have not, it is the inordinate, inexorable privilege that is bestowed unto us to experience it.
It is not something that can be known, in any textual sense of the word. Only in the vaguest impressions of metaphysics, can we describe it.
That is the reason t'hy'la has always felt like such an imprecise word, served poorly for its translations into Standard, into something less like Vulcan and more like English.
Vulcan describes it. Human experiences it. And they share, and they swap, and they exchange.
Only together do they feel it, to its extent and intent both, complete.