Kirk: I'm coming with you
Spock: I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it
Kirk: See, you are getting to know me.

V.

"The storm's getting too dangerous!" Kirk shouted at Spock, barely making himself heard over the icy wind. Spock turned nonetheless, cocking his head slightly and nodding at Kirk's words, his one eyebrow going up even covered with ice.

"We need to find Hughes and Sulu…beam back up to the Enterprise." The communicators weren't working, but the time for the rendezvous was nearing, and the transmitter beacon back to the ship was functioning: barely, allowing for the transporter to work past the ion radiation in the atmosphere to beam back those standing within the beacon's sphere.

Spock moved closer, so the shouting with no longer necessary. "It is dangerous to move away from the crash site while the snow persists, captain." Spock was staring just over Kirk's head, at the snow-covered wreckage of the alien ship, the thing they'd come down to this miserable planet to investigate.

"Don't go too far, then, but we need to get out of here soon." Kirk ran his hands up his arms, trying to create some warmth. "I'm freezing."

So was Spock, but he wasn't about to say that. Instead, he barely nodded his head before moving in the opposite direction of the captain. Kirk stared after him for a moment before turning away and shouting into the wind, "Sulu! Hughes!" as he walked across the slippery, snow-covered turf.

They had been sent down to examine the debris of a craft that was suspected to be Klingon, or maybe Romulan, they weren't quite sure. Either way, both races were volatile at best and violent at worst and knowing what their ships looked like, what they were equipped with, couldn't hurt.

At least that's what Star Fleet said when Kirk told them about the ship. What they'd neglected to mention was that, at its hottest, the planet they were "exploring" was ten degrees below zero.

The ship was destroyed beyond recognition by the time they beamed down. Kirk sent Hughes and Sulu in search of survivors, not really thinking they'd find any. He and Spock examined the ship, finding few salvageable parts and no 'black box' to tell them how the vessel had been destroyed.

And now they needed to get up to the Enterprise, because there was something in the atmosphere that had been interfering with the transporter, because the temperature was dropping by the minute as what little heat from the sun evaporated as it set, because there was nothing left for them here. "Sulu! Hughes!"

"Captain!" The call was tinged with worry but was still strong. Kirk jogged a few paces and the frigid air sliced right through his lungs. He went slower, eyes scanning the white, flat landscape. The whipping wind and layer of snow muffled the sound, so one second it sounded like he was close to his men and the next they sounded miles away.

"Captain!" Kirk almost tripped over Hughes, bent over Sulu who was sitting up, looking resolutely away from his leg which was bent at an odd angle.

"What happened?" Kirk knelt and peered at the nasty compound fracture. Both Sulu and Hughes looked embarrassed.

"The Lieutenant thought he heard something and started running forward…ended up slipping on the ice."

"I tripped over my own feet." Sulu corrected, shaking his head. "And the communicators weren't working so we couldn't get back to the rendezvous." He winced.

Kirk quickly explained that he would get the beacon and bring it to Sulu. "It's pretty obvious you can't walk. Just sit tight and Bones'll be lecturing you – and me – about the dangers of away missions." Sulu smiled weakly and Kirk took off…

…and was back within ten minutes. "You two beam up. I need to find Spock and tell him the change of plans." He waited until his men had fully disappeared from sight before heading back to the deserted ship.

Spock was just walking back from the other direction, looking worried and cold. "There is no sign of either Lt. Hughes or Lt. Sulu, and the temperature is dropping dangerously." He took a double take of the crash site. "Where is the beacon?" And worry was such a human emotion…

And so Kirk explained about Sulu's broken leg, how the only way for the Enterprise to beam anyone up was if they were next to the beacon. "C'mon, we should be going, too."

Spock's eyelashes were already thick with snow when he looked at Kirk unblinkingly. "How do you suggest we find the beacon, captain?"

Kirk spun on the spot, looking first one way, than another, but no matter which way he turned he couldn't see past the blinding, thick wall of snow. "We could go looking for it." Kirk suggested without any real hope.

Spock raised an icy eyebrow. "The chances of us finding a single point in a blizzard are…" he trailed off at Kirk's sputter of annoyance, adding, quietly, "Very slim."

"Thanks, captain obvious." Kirk muttered, edging back in the direction they had come. Already their footprints were being covered in a layer of snow. "Come on, mine as well find some shelter. Bones will send a rescue team down…he's really a mother hen about that kind of thing."

Spock followed Kirk, the cold slicing through his thin uniform shirt and chilling his already cold blood. He couldn't keep the tremble out of his body, or his voice, "I will never understand human idioms. How is the doctor like a fowl?"

Kirk managed to smile then, huddling under the thin protection of the ruined spacecraft. "It just means he's a worrier." He eyed his first officer dubiously. If it was McCoy stranded on this godforsaken planet, the two would crack some uneasy jokes before latching onto each other for warmth. But Bones was likable, a friend, and Kirk, after a year of being with the Vulcan, still had no idea where the two stood on the whole friendship thing.

They would spend nights together in the mess or one of their cabins, playing chess. Spock didn't talk much as a rule, and would often stare at Kirk unblinkingly for long periods of time, as if analyzing the man's every move, as if the Vulcan was afraid of doing something wrong or offensive that would drive Kirk away.

Which was why Kirk was hesitant about calling out to Spock, even though the body heat would be much appreciated in the bitter cold. The two remained, Kirk squatting under the wreckage, Spock standing, limbs shaking with the force of the cold.

Finally, it was Kirk who succumbed to the cold. "You know, we have better chances of survival if you'd sit next to me."

Spock stared at Kirk for a moment, his head slightly tilted, eyebrows slightly raised, "I fear contact with my skin will only make you colder, captain. Vulcans do not radiate their body heat."

Well, that was a problem, but more for Spock than for Kirk. At least the captain was wearing a heavy jacket over his uniform, and though he could no longer feel his legs (indeed, he couldn't feel much below his heart) his torso was at least not a block of ice, as Spock's was on its way to being. "Well, at least I can make you warmer." At Spock's dubious expression, Kirk continued, "I have a jacket. And my internal temperature is ten degrees higher than yours anyway."

"Vulcans," Spock said, speaking slowly as if to a very young person, keeping his tone light so as not to betray the fact that he could feel the blood freezing in his veins. "Cannot warm their core temperatures by sharing body heat. It needs to be…very, very warm."

Kirk leaned closer to Spock, eyebrows raised, concerned, "How close are you to hypothermia, Spock?"

The lack of response was the only answer Kirk needed. "Shit." He should have known that Vulcans couldn't stand cold temperatures even as well as humans, should have known not to keep Spock on the planet, should have sent him back as soon as they'd landed in the middle of a blizzard.

"At least sit down, Spock." Kirk used his jacket pulled up over his hand to clear a spot in the snow for the science officer, "It may not help you, but at least I won't have to watch you freeze in a snowstorm."

There wasn't much talk after that, mostly because neither could open their mouth without teeth clattering together. Kirk worked an arm hesitantly around Spock's shoulders, aware of the other man tensing under his touch.

And they waited…

It was only three hours. Three hours. Bones had given up on waiting and sent down a rescue party after the captain and Spock. He kept working on Sulu and Hughes long after the threat of hypothermia had passed, if only to give his hands something to do.

Jim would live. Somehow, that one always managed to survive. But McCoy had spent enough time putting the Vulcan back together to know Vulcan anatomy almost as well as any expert. He knew that Kirk would do anything in his power to keep his First alive…

…But he also knew that, at this point, saving Spock may not be within even Kirk's power.

Bones sent the rescue party down after fifteen minutes of waiting. Two hours into the search, and they realized they were going in ever-oblong circles. Their technology couldn't penetrate the snow. Even compasses were out of whack with the strange planet's magnetic field.

Two and a half hours. Bones stopped hoping for Spock to be alive and modified his prayers for Kirk. Jim would live. Jim always lived.

And finally, Scotty got the call, fuzzy with interference. "Found…Doctor stand by…beaming up."

They arrived on the transporter platform, both with closed eyes, blue lips, ice-covered ears. Kirk gasped as the warmth touched his skin, a sharp flinch of pain. Spock made no movement at all.

Bones leaped onto the platform, tricorder out, eyes fixed on Spock but hand reaching automatically for Kirk. Their friendship was years old, ran long and deep, and even though he knew in his mind that Kirk was okay, that Spock was the one who needed hiss services, his heart made him double check just to be sure.

"Spock?" The word was weak, broken, stuttered, and Kirk still didn't open his eyes. Bones doubted if he even could, since ice seemed to have frozen the lids shut.

"Alive." McCoy said, the only real fact he had. Alive, yes, but not for much longer, not if they couldn't warm him up now. He called ahead to sick bay, told them to raise the thermostat fifteen degrees.

When McCoy went to move the duo to sickbay, he found he had to do so with side-by-side gurneys, because Kirk still had an arm draped around his Spock, unwilling to let go even in unconsciousness.

Review?