Written for KCS, because her muse decided to take a holiday. (if you see it please call). Spock's discomfiture made its self known halfway through, and I decided it fit here.
It was a rare thing that Mr. Spock did not know what to do. But he was no good underwater, really, no matter how big his brain was.
"Jim!"
In his half-water logged state he could barely orient himself enough to hang onto Dr. McCoy, who was struggling his damndest to get back into the pool.
"Let go of me you ice-blooded devil! He'll drown!"
He was too cold to respond. Otherwise he would have told the Doctor that a human body would rapidly freeze in such temperatures, and that Jim's chances of survival were already negative, and it was illogical to kill himself as well.
"Jim!"
Blue eyes tried to pierce the murky grey that still sloshed against they're legs, still rebounding from the motion of the crash.
There was no reassuring flash of gold, no quick grin, no signal that they're captain was anywhere but at the bottom of that endless pool.
Eventually, McCoy stopped struggling, and let himself sink against the bony chest behind him.
Spock didn't ease his hold an inch.
"You can let go of me. I'm not going to dive in after him."
The commander hesitated, long enough to mean he doubted the Doctor's sanity, then he let his arms fall to his sides.
Bones would have scrambled away, but the pointy-eared nuisance was rigid from the cold, and too stubborn to shiver. Contact would have to be maintained for any chance of survival.
Fire. Fire would be good, if he could get Spock to stand up and help him mutilate some of these scraggly bushes. And concentrating on something, anything, would keep him from plowing back in after Jim.
"Come on, you." McCoy stood, let his hand hover over the Vulcan's shoulder and stood waiting until the head tilted and brown eyes finally peered up at him, foggy from the cold.
"We've gotta find a way to keep warm," the human insisted already his hair had begun to freeze into icicles. And Spock's looked unusually shiny with its coating of ice.
At last the Vulcan responded. Rocking back on his heels and crouching awkwardly to stretch his legs out and get his feet under him. White hands stretched against the black mud like obscene spiders as he pushed himself upwards.
He towered over Bones as usual, but somehow seemed meeker next to the human's gruffness.
"Good night! That water really does take it out of you doesn't it?"
Spock blinked. "What means of survival did you have in mind, Doctor?"
McCoy shrugged, a little uncomfortable with the position of command. "We've got plenty of stuff for a fire to start out with. Once you're dry I suspect you'll be a lot more use, and I'm so cold my nose is gonna fall off…not to mention your pointy hobgoblin ears."
Spock nodded his dark head, knocking some sleet loose, "Very well," and snapped a branch as thick as Bones' neck off a tree.
He may have been moving on automatic, but the Vulcan was still twice as efficient as anyone else. And pretty soon they had a mound of muddy sticks that smouldered and stank, but burned steadily enough.
Bones went into a limp heap beside it, shivering his guts out, and Spock sat upright, basking like a primitive idol in the flames.
This was why neither of them noticed the creature crawling towards them until its muck-covered hand clutched at Spock's foot.
"Holy—!" Bones cursed as the Vulcan jumped, and both of them pulled away from the black mound that had separated itself from the growing darkness.
McCoy's blue eyes widened like a Georgian sky when Spock suddenly rushed back to it.
"What're you doing?"
No response, the commander's energies were focused on the hand. He watched squeamishly as green-tinged fingers brushed through the muck over curled muddy claws to the foreleg—no…not a leg.
A wrist.
His medical instincts clearly informed him that Spock was searching for the creature's pulse, though he had no idea why.
He sat stupidly for a whole minute before the thing raised its head, peered longingly at the fire, and the flames reflected in its glassy, hazel eyes.
"Son of a gun!"
He shuffled forward before Jim's head fell back into the muck and carefully cupped his patient's chin, noting how quickly Jim's fair hair had turned dark with the dank water.
"His heartbeat is slow and irregular," Spock reported, sounding more like his old self. "I suggest we transport him closer to the fire so that…"
"Yeah, yeah, okay, Dr. Spock. You take his legs, I've got his shoulders. Don't rattle him, he's hypothermic."
He got a Do-you-think-so?-silly-little-monkey-look for that, but it didn't matter with the chilled, goose-pimple skin of his captain under his frozen fingers.
"Good gosh, Jim!" he gasped, seeing that his eyes were still open. "What happened!"
"I would have thought that was apparent, Doctor," Spock laid his half gently beside the flames, and set about tackling the laces of Kirk's boots. Frostbite was more than a possibility and he understood the fragility of human toes.
"H-hit my h-hed," was the slurred response, and a dribble of red among the blackened hair testified of its truthfulness. Jim let out a long, full-body shiver as the warmth washed over him and Bones carefully knelt to make a pillow of his knees.
"Geesh! We could truss you up, throw you in a trunk and you'd still make it out of that lake wouldn't you?"
Jim grinned.
Spock sent him a withering Don't-give-the-illogical-human-even-more-illogical-ideas-glare, and pulled the sodden boots off Kirk's white feet, placing them near the fire to dry.
"Y-you try it first."
"And come out needing a shower bad as you, boy? I don't think so."
Jim wrinkled his nose…at least that's what it looked like he did. it was hard to tell beneath the layer of mud. "You already do."
McCoy ignored the jibe and considered his options. There was little enough he could do in this swamp other than keep Jim warm and wait for daylight to look for their locators. Hopefully the ship was already scanning for their downed exploration pod.
"Alright then, since we all smell the same we can't really complain about being bedmates."
He lowered Jim's head to a soft patch of mud, stretched out beside him and seized the violently shivering young man in a bear-hug.
Spock sat, unusually stiff (which was saying something), and stared at them like they were the most barbaric thing he's seen since the head-shrinkers on Freidish IV.
"Come on, Spock," Bones growled. "You've got the other side."
A mud-encrusted eyebrow rose and almost disappeared in the fringe of dark hair.
"What?"
"It's not hard, you hobgoblin! You don't have to spoon him. Just lie down and keep the wind from getting to him."
The Vulcan blinked, then, reluctantly, slid down and lay on Jim's other side, looking even stiffer than he had sitting up.
Jim snickered.
"Shut up, you. You're delirious."
"Yes'sir.
When the ship found them in the morning, Bones had managed to roll till his head was on Jim's legs (a position that gave him a neck cramp for a week after).
Spock was stretched comfortably beside the ashes of the fire, and the Captain's head was carefully pillowed on his arm.