Polar Explorer RPF - Prompt Post 1

[coldboys]

This is for prompts for all things general Polar Explorer RPF.

If you've filled (or started filling) a prompt, please make sure to link it in the comments of the Fills Post. And if you would like to cross-post your fills on AO3, here is the collection!

Under this umbrella you can prompt: 

• Historical versions of Franklin Expedition(-adjacent) guys (Rossier, Gore/McClure, etc)
• Madhouse at the End of the Earth/Belgica Expedition
• Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration - Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, Mawson
• Andrée Expedition
  
• Karluk Expedition
• etc

Prompts in line with adaptations of Heroic Age stories can also fit here, for example if you want to specifically prompt Hugh Grant!Cherry from The Last Place On Earth getting wrecked (which someone really should). 

No blorbo too obscure for this post! EXCEPT: NO PEARY ALLOWED. God I hate that guy.



Rules: 

1. Be fucking nice. YKINMATO/KINKTOMATO at all times.

 

2. This meme is CNTW (Choose Not To Warn) but warnings are highly encouraged.

 

3. Prompts should use this format in the subject line: [SHIP], [DESCRIPTION]

e.g.

Mertz/Ninnis, sex crying

 

Solo gen can be prompted as well alongside (a) character name and description

e.g.

Gen, Emil Racovitza, discovering a crazy new fish

 

4. Fills should use this format in the subject line: FILL: [TITLE], [PAIRING], [RATING], [ANY WARNINGS]

e.g.

Fill: The Very Next Day, Cherry/Birdie, E, cw self-harm

 

5. One prompt per comment please. 

 

6. Multiple fills for each prompt are welcome! 

 

7. You don't have to be anon for your prompts or your fills but we do encourage it because of the vibe. You're also welcome to deanon your stuff by posting on AO3/Tumblr as you please! 

 

8. Feedback on prompts and fills is AWESOME; please take longer conversations to the discussion post.

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Scott/Wilson, Gentle Dom/sub

[(Anonymous)]

Discovery-era; Scott is having a hard time dealing with the pressures of his first command. Luckily, Dr. Wilson has an idea that might help and tenderly doms the hell out of his soft, weepy captain.

Please make Scott cry ❤️

FILL: Captain Bill, Scott/Wilson, M, cw death mention

[(Anonymous)]

It’s a few weeks since seaman Vince slipped off a cliff and drowned in the frozen Antarctic sea. The pall of the polar night has spread over the Discovery.

“If only I had been there, Bill, perhaps I could have saved him.” Scott paces around the small cabin, running his hand over his thinning hair repeatedly. The difference between Scott when he is in front of the crew and when he is alone with Bill could not be starker. Captain Scott is cool, self-assured, officious, authoritative. When he speaks, men listen. He inspires loyalty; his orders demand action. But when Scott seeks out Bill for company, the doctor prepares himself for a breakdown. This Scott is shaky, anxiety-ridden, neurotic, second-guessing, and always, always, always worrying about all those lives that are under his care.

“What could you have done?” Bill asks, sitting on the bunk as he adds shading to a sketch.

Scott gestures wildly, searchingly, as he speaks, entreating Bill and the heavens both to understand. “I could have...I could have stopped everyone getting separated in the storm!”

“You can’t be everywhere at once, Con. And this worrying is not healthy for you.”

“Never mind me, Bill, two men are dead! Charles Bonner and George Vince, two good men are dead. The responsibility ultimately falls with the commander. I keep thinking of their poor mothers, how will they feel when they learn what’s happened? Mrs Bonner doubtless already knows-”

“Con.” A small but insistent tug at his jacket silences Scott mid-stride and mid-sentence. He looks down. Bill has put aside his sketchbook, and reaches out with an imploring gaze. Still sat atop the bunk, he holds tight to his commander’s jacket. “You can be as selfless as you like, but if you’re not going to be concerned for yourself, I will do it for you.”

“Oh, Bill.” Scott collapses next to the doctor on the bunk, his thigh quivering next to Bill’s. “How do you do it? How do you remain so calm, so cheerful? How do you stop it all catching up to you?”

When Scott looks at the doctor, it is with tears brimming in his eyes.

Truth be told, Bill is not perfect, and he knows it. He runs out of patience, sometimes. He feels keenly every mistake Scott makes as if it were his own, and he can and does listen and provide comfort. He is the Captain’s dearest friend and confidante. But today is one of those days his reserves of patience are low. He hasn’t the words to help….but, he knows, words are not the only tools available to him.

He has an idea.

“I think it’s easier for me because I don’t hold nearly as much in my hands as you do.” Bill begins, then asks “Con?” Scott is hanging on his every word, expecting wisdom. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” It comes out hoarse, and a little sad. The Captain is fighting back tears.

Bill rises from the bunk. “Good.” He rummages through his medical chest. “Con, I am your surgeon, and therefore, your care and wellbeing fall under my purview.” Finding what he needs, he snips a length of bandage off the roll and turns to dangle it suggestively in front of Scott. “Now, for your health, I insist we have no more of this talk of death. Except, perhaps, for le petit mort.” His eyes glitter with laughter at his own joke. “Is that understood?”

Lips trembling, expression forcibly neutral, Scott nods. He looks as if he’s about to speak. Worried it will be another tirade of fears, Bill leans forward and interrupts him, catching his lips in a long kiss. Scott is at first surprised, then returns this opening salvo. “I’ll have none of that. None of that, do you hear?” Bill whispers, hot breath on Scott’s ear, when he comes up for air. “I want to do things differently this time. For the moment, you aren’t the Captain. I’m taking command.”

Despite himself, Scott lets out a laugh – strained, choked with the tears he’s fighting down, but a laugh nonetheless.

“Is that concept funny to you, middie? Command is hardly a laughing matter.”

“No.” Breathes Scott.

“No, who?” Bill puts a finger under Scott’s chin and lifts it, expectantly.

“No, sir.”

“Good boy. Let me take on your sufferings, I can bear them.” Tenderly, Bill wraps the bandage over Scott’s eyes, tying it in the back of his head. “I’m taking your troubles away. You needn’t worry about a thing, love. That’s an order.”

Blinded to all but the doctor’s touch, Scott lays back on the bunk. He feels the familiar weight of Bill atop him. Bill snakes his thigh between Scott’s legs and applies pressure at the same time as he traces his hands underneath Scott’s shirt. Without his sight, Scott does not know what, precisely, will happen next.

It is an exquisite sensation, this loss of control.

Bill nips his ear, and sucks on his neck, and Scott exhales sharply and digs into the doctor’s back as Bill’s hand finds purchase on his throbbing cock. “Very good boy,” Bill says admiringly, seeing the rising tent of Scott’s trousers.

There is an unbuttoning and a rush of motion, and Scott feels the cold air on his bare skin. Thankfully, this doesn’t last for long as Bill’s warm hand grips him and pumps, his strokes long and strong. Each one sends Scott further away from the Discovery, further away from any thought that doesn’t have to do with Bill, here, now. The good doctor works him to a frenzy until, for once, he has only one need – a need that can easily be fulfilled.

Bill’s hand leaves him and he feels the weight ease. He nearly cries out at how much he needs its return, how alone he feels without his commander, until, blessedly, he feels Bill’s sainted lips part over him and take him, all of him, inside. Blood and feeling rush down as Bill takes a sculptor’s care with his task. Scott grunts with effort as the rhythm beats faster, faster, until the moment of release. Tension leaves his body until he feels as if he is floating.

But the job isn’t done yet. Scott is a midshipman now, subject to the orders of his commanding officer.

“Very eager, aren’t you?” Scott can hear the smile in Bill’s voice. “You’re doing excellent, Middie Scott. Remember, think of nothing, nothing but me. Do you know what would please me, middie?”

In answer, Scott rolls over onto his stomach, positioning himself as if bowing before an emperor. He would do anything for Bill. Anything.

“You do know how to take care of an officer.” Scott hears the soft whump of Bill’s trousers hitting the floor. Feels Bill’s hands on his hips as he is mounted from behind. He readies himself, a bundle of anticipation, letting out a light groan as Bill slides into him solidly.

“Bill,” he breathes, his eyes closed even within the blindfold. He grips the pillow.

In response, Bill pauses, still fully inside Scott but staying maddeningly motionless. “What did you call me?”

Scott sweats. “Captain?” He pleads, hoping this will end his torture.

“That’s right.” Mercifully, the “Captain” starts up again, friction building up between the two of them. “Good boy.” He says again, his voice husky this time.

Bill speeds up as Scott leans into the tempo, alternately flexing and relaxing his muscles until he feels Bill’s nails suddenly dig hard into his shoulders. Shudders and spasms of joy ripple through Bill’s entire body like from a stone dropped in water, and his ragged breathing turns into a gasping sigh of relief. Slowly, he extricates himself from Scott and falls on top of him, burying his flushed face in Scott’s chest. Both men’s breathing slowly evens.

After a moment of silence, Bill props himself up and unties the blindfold from Scott’s face. He realises it has grown damp. His Captain smiles up at him through tearstained eyes. “Thank you, Bill,” he whispers.

worsley/anyone, embarrassing ejaculations

[(Anonymous)]

frank worsley can’t help but shout “yoicks! tally ho!” at the moment of orgasm. his partner (your choice) finds this charming. perhaps enough to make it happen multiple times.

FILL: Arrival, Shackleton/Worsley, E, no cw

[(Anonymous)]

Shackleton’s got three fingers in him, working in deeper with each squelching thrust and then stretching him open; a reprieve to give Worsley time to breathe.

“Come on, Skipper,” Shackleton murmurs. He presses his fingers back in and does something, and Worsley’s vision goes white. He bucks up, pushing his flushed, untouched cock into the air before grinding back down on the Boss’s fingers to chase his pleasure.

“Do it again, Boss,” Worsley chokes out, and Shackleton bends his fingers and rubs, moving with Worsley’s hips as he bucks and writhes on the small bed, Shackleton grinning from where he kneels between his legs.

“You like that, Skipper?” he asks.

“Boss, I’m—I need—“

Shackleton reaches for Worsley’s cock, gripping it tightly in his large, calloused hand. “Come on then,” he says.

“Oh—ah, Christ, I’m— Yoicks! Tally ho!“ he ejaculates, and then Worsley is ejaculating, spend spurting over Shackleton’s hand.


At some point Shackleton has withdrawn his hand. He watches as Worsley clears the stars from his vision, toweling the oil off his hand and looking incredibly smug.

“What on earth was that, Wuzzles?”

“What was what?”

“The ‘tally-ho’ thing.”

Worsley shrugs from where he lies on the bed. “Seemed appropriate.”

Shackleton glances out the open window. “Hopefully it was appropriate for the entire population of South Georgia.”

Worsley cringes. “Was I that loud?”

Shackleton pats his foot. “Think of it this way, Skipper. Frankie Wild and the rest of the men of Elephant Island now have confirmation we’ve made it.”

Worsley grins, sitting up and grasping Shackleton’s still-soiled hand. “He might’ve thought it was a new kind of sea bird,” he says. “We better do it again to make sure.”

Shackleton pushes him back down on the bed, and complies.

Madigan/Bickerton, loud sex

[(Anonymous)]

Madigan and Bickerton are stuck listening to Mertz and Ninnis quietly go at it all night on the top bunk, so they decide the only logical thing to do is have really loud sex to prove how the sound carries in the hut.

Bonus points if Hurley provides a running commentary but they’re kind of into it

FILL: It happened one night... Madigan/Bickerton, E

[(Anonymous)]

You know how difficult it is to write a sex scene when one guy’s name sounds way too close to the words dick, prick, AND cock??? Very difficult. I did my best. Also so sorry this tipped over 4k. When will the universe grant me the power to be concise. Not today, it would seem! Didn't manage to get the Hurley commentary in but he does make an appearance. :3



The first time, Madigan and Bickerton simply made brief, loaded eye contact across the breakfast table the following morning before both had to swiftly look away to avoid bursting into laughter. “About time,” Madigan muttered to Bick later, while they were struggling into Burberrys and crampons in preparation for the outdoors. Bickerton had snorted and agreed, and that had been that.

The second time was slightly less amusing. Bickerton was up next in the rota for night watchman and had been hoping to get a solid rest beforehand, something that was rather difficult with the boards of the bunk above him creaking and the soft but still unmistakeable sounds of passionate lovemaking floating down from on high.

By the time of the fourth incident -non-consecutive; his companions were blessed with youth but probably not even Ninnis could be said to be insatiable, and there were practicalities to be considered- when the hut lights went up and Bickerton met Madigan’s bleary gaze from the perpendicular bunk, he decided something had to be done.

He brought it up to Madigan while working on constructing the aeroplane hangar. Mertz and Ninnis were safely off attempting to wrangle the dogs into some semblance of working sled teams so there was little chance of the subjects of the conversation wandering into the middle of it. “Not much sleep for you either, then?”

Madigan didn’t reply, but what could be seen of his expression through the porthole of his hood was telling.

“Not to say,” Bick continued, shovelling snow with a concentrated air, “that I’m against it from a moral standpoint- I consider myself to be rather liberal, actually, and you can’t begrudge a man his comforts down here, if you ask me-”

“But it would be nice to be able to sleep at night without the two of them going at it like rabbits above our heads, yes,” Madigan completed. “Keep your hair on, Bick. I didn’t think you were about to propose hauling the two of them out for a court martial with ol’ D.I. They probably think they’re being quiet, don’t they? Do they think we haven’t noticed?”

“Oh, they certainly think they’re being discreet. As if we haven’t seen the two of them making eyes at each other just about since the Aurora dropped us off.”

“I don’t think I have the heart to tell them,” said Madigan glumly. “You know the worst part? Nin looked so unfathomably happy this morning that I couldn’t even feel anything but pleased for him. Bloody idiots. If they weren’t so in love I’d have clonked him on the head.”

“Love’s all well and good, but if I lose another six hours of sleep I’m going to smack them both,” said Bick, who was a practical sort. “We’re already in some of the worst conditions this continent has to offer, we can’t become insomniacs on top of it all.”

“Are you volunteering to break the news, then? Oh, Xav, Nin, my dear friends. Congratulations on sorting yourselves out and do let us know when are the upcoming nuptials, but in the meantime, if you would stop screwing each others’ brains out while the rest of us are trying to get some sleep-”

It certainly wasn’t a job to leap at. Mertz might take such a blunt approach in stride, possibly even with pride, but Bick could very vividly imagine how Ninnis would sink immediately through the hut floorboards and descend directly into Hell were he to be told that the entire corner and perhaps even the entire hut could, as a matter of fact, hear him gasping and begging for more of whatever Mertz had been doing to him the night previous (Bick had a fairly clear guess but he was trying not to interrogate it overmuch). No, Ninnis would be incinerated by embarrassment and possibly even pass away of it. He was already a bit of an awkward young man. Such a blow could only cause undue destruction of the fragile psyche, which had made such nice progress over the past few months of hard work and firm friendship.

“Perhaps we could tell them without really telling them,” Bickerton suggested instead. “You know. If we’re at a restaurant and you’ve got some soup in your beard but I don’t want to embarrass you, I might simply use my own serviette in a very exaggerated fashion, and you might pick up on the hint or simply think for yourself ‘Ah, I should also make sure I’ve got nothing on my face’. That sort of thing.”

Madigan squinted at him doubtfully. “But if we were at a restaurant and I had soup in my beard, you would point it out. Loudly. You like embarrassing me. Or trying to,” he added, and winked.

“Alright, I meant ‘you’ as in the general sense. Not ‘you’ you specifically.”

“Hm. But the question still remains: how? They clearly think that they’re being quiet. Or that the ruckus from the outside is loud enough to cover it all up. Should I start wondering loudly at dinner about what an eerie resemblance the wind last night had to the sounds a tall, skinny fellow might make were he having his arsehole licked by a Swiss man with a moustache?”

Bick made a face. “Let’s not go into detail.” Beloved his friends might be, but there were some things that should remain private. “Could always try to clatter about at night a bit more, then they’d pick up on the fact that sound really is travelling in that corner.”

“Time to increase the snoring,” said Madigan cheerfully. “Although really, it’s all faded to the background for me now. Probably won’t be able to sleep easy without it when we leave.”

“You could. You know.”

“What?”

“You know.”

“I really don’t,” said Madigan, perplexed.

Bick rolled his eyes. “You could have a bit of fun with yourself, or at least pretend to, make it loud- that sort of thing.”

“That won’t work,” said Madigan immediately.

“How’d you know?”

“Because I regularly give myself a bit of the ol’ whatsit, and none of you idiots have ever noticed before.”

“What?”

Madigan looked smug. “Oh yes. I haven’t even been particularly quiet. No one ever wakes up. Or at least no one’s ever said anything about it.”

Bickerton was dismayed. “You are part of the problem. You’re accustoming everyone to debauchery and this is the logical conclusion. Now I can’t sleep.”

“Hardly. If everyone could hear me, you certainly could. And it seems to me you’ve never been any the wiser.”

That one was going to require some serious shifting of Bick’s worldview. He regarded Madigan with a new suspicion.

“We could always pretend to be going at it together,” said Madigan, offhand. “Less ridiculous than simply making a nuisance all by one’s lonesome. And it might kill two birds with one stone, that. Alert our fine companions to the fact that we can hear them, but reassure them that we take no issue with the sort of social aspect, simply with the fact that it’s a disruption the old forty winks.”

Bick found himself momentarily at an utter loss for words.

“Because the implication would be that we are also raving sodomites,” Madigan said by way of explanation, evidently taking his silence for incomprehension.

“But we aren’t,” said Bick, regaining the power of speech. “Raving sodomites, I mean.”

“I did say pretend. And anyhow, I could be a raving sodomite. You wouldn’t know, would you? Who told you I wasn’t?” Madigan seemed rather offended, as if Bick was casting aspersions on his depth of character.

“Well I’m sure you have the capacity-”

“Of course I have the capacity. I’m a man of many talents.”

“Yet I’ve never heard any reviews from any former male paramours of yours, so I have to assume that either you’re not an invert at all or you’re a forgettable lover.”

Madigan flung a shovelful of snow at him. It wasn’t a terribly effective assault, as the wind was going crosswise to the way they were standing and most of the snow was whipped away before it could reach Bickerton, but the gesture had unmistakeably been one of war.



“So what do you say?” asked Madigan after the brief ensuing tussle had been more or less resolved and they were back to digging the walls of the hangar, albeit somewhat sweatier and more satisfyingly worn out than before. “Will you, Francis Bickerton, take me, Cecil Madigan, to be your raucous lover for one night and one night only?”

Bick pretended to mull it over, although he had already been onboard with the idea once he’d managed to wrap his head around it. He was usually susceptible to going along with Madigan’s schemes, damn the man. “Alright,” he said, once Madigan had begun to look suitably abashed and as though he were about to start adding backtracks and caveats to the plan. Bick might be easy but he liked to make Madigan twist a bit. It was no fun otherwise. “When you put it like that, how can I refuse?”

Cherry/various, public use/availability

[(Anonymous)]

Cherry's always volunteering for the worst jobs - well, someone's got to make sure morale doesn't slip during the long, dark winter! And how better than by providing a helping hand or a willing body on demand to anyone who asks.

FILL: Worth His Salt, Cherry/various, E, no cw

[(Anonymous)]

The first to have had him was Taff Evans.

Evans was a good judge of character, although even the least perceptive among the men could tell how eager Cherry was to please. He’d volunteer himself without hesitation for even the most unpleasant of jobs, and would practically trip over himself in his eagerness to prove he was worth his salt. When Evans judged that he’d drop to his knees when prompted, he found he’d judged correctly.

He was a pretty thing, Evans mused, as Cherry peered up at him through a thin film of tears after finally managing to stuff Evans’ whole prick down his throat. The light was dim belowdecks, but Evans could make out the deep blush shading his youthful face, the glimmer in his eye, his tousled hair which Evans gripped in his rough fingers.

Cherry let out a small choking cough as Evans pulled him gently halfway off, and was shushed quietly. He would have made to apologize, if not for Evans thrusting shallowly back into his mouth right then. His cock was thick, stretching Cherry’s lips wide, and spit dribbled down his chin as he fucked his mouth. “There, that’s good,” Evans murmured, and Cherry shivered, letting slip a faint, pleasured sound.

It was a sight to behold, in the end, after Evans had finished on Cherry’s face, to see him licking the come off his lips, looking proud of himself, but hesitantly, as if waiting for Evans to confirm he had reason to be.

Indeed, he did. Word soon spread among the men when they reached land and settled in at Cape Evans, rumors whispered behind the bulkhead and out of earshot of the officers.

The next man to take advantage of Cherry’s eagerness to make himself useful was Tom Crean. Cherry’s answer to Crean’s question – “would you let me have you, lad?” – while the two were alone had been to kneel before him without having to be asked twice.

His cheeks were rosy with the cold–the storage annex in which they’d found themselves retained little of the heat of the hut–and his lashes fluttered shut when Crean lifted his hand from under his chin, gently holding the back of his skull to steady him as he fed his cock into Cherry’s mouth with his other hand. “There you are Cherry, taking it so well,” he said, and Cherry squirmed and whimpered, hardening at the praise.

Crean fucked his mouth quickly, but there was a fond gentleness about him, stroking Cherry’s cheek, giving him pause to catch his breath. He was more effusive with his praise than Evans had been, all the while calling him good boy and such a marvel, Cherry. Cherry palmed himself desperately through his trousers, coming messily in them at nearly the same moment that Crean finished down his throat.

Crean breathed heavily as he withdrew himself from Cherry’s mouth, running his thumb along his soft, pink cheek. “Swallowed every drop like you were made for this,” he said, and watched Cherry smile bashfully. “We’re lucky to have you, lad.”

Cherry wiped his chin of spit before it chilled uncomfortably. “It’s my pleasure, sir,” he replied earnestly.

It wasn’t long before word of Cherry’s enthusiasm for extending physical favors to the men made its way past the bulkhead and up the chain of command. He had been afraid of how it would be received, especially by Wilson, whom he couldn’t bring himself to imagine disappointing. Luckily, his worries seem to have been for naught, for he finds himself now on his back on Captain Scott’s bed, his head in the Owner’s lap while Wilson thrusts two slick fingers in and out of Cherry’s hot, clenching core, and Cherry trembles with delight.

“Look how well he takes it, Con,” Wilson comments, and Cherry nearly comes right there and then.

The Owner strokes Cherry’s hair, runs his fingertips delicately across the sensitive skin of his outstretched throat, as Cherry gazes up at him worshipfully. “Yes, from what I hear he’s been quite a comfort to the men.”

Wilson hums his agreement. “I’ve no doubt of that. Sometimes one’s own hand simply won’t do the trick.” He twists his fingers inside Cherry in a way that makes him gasp. “Seaman Evans and Crean spoke glowingly of you. Who else has had you, love?”

Cherry hesitates a moment, but Wilson has stopped moving his fingers within him in anticipation of an answer. “Atch,” he admits, “in the dark room.”

Both Scott and Wilson chuckle at that. “You were right about him, Con,” Wilson says. “He’s so eager to please.”

“Turn him over, Bill,” Scott requests, and Wilson withdraws his fingers, a hand on Cherry’s hip urging him to flip over onto his knees—he quickly complies.

Scott’s cock is before him now, and he immediately latches on, lapping up the length of it before taking the head in his mouth and suckling greedily. Scott groans, and Cherry feels awfully pleased with himself, having become quite adept at this.

Suddenly, Wilson is pressing inside of him, gripping Cherry’s waist firmly and watching his cock sink inside. Cherry lets out a high, desperate moan, muffled by Scott’s length in his mouth. “God, but don’t you feel amazing,” Wilson says, sounding breathless. He caresses Cherry’s thigh gently before he begins to move, setting a pace which soon accelerates. “Our sweet little Cherry.”

“He’s made himself very useful,” Scott agrees, and between the praising words of his superiors, Wilson pounding into him, and his own hand wrapped around his prick to desperately bring himself off, it’s not long before he’s spilling over his fingers and the sheets below.

Scott grunts and spends in his mouth soon after. He does his best to swallow all that he can, and Scott seems more than pleased, leaning down and kissing him gently. Wilson, not yet finished, continues driving into him, and Cherry trembles with overstimulation, high whines escaping him with every inward thrust, which Scott catches sweetly from his lips and swallows.

All of a sudden, Wilson stills, reaching his peak inside of Cherry. When he pulls out, Cherry can feel the spend dripping out of him. He feels sore, used, raw, but all in the best possible way. Scott holds him while Wilson cleans him up, murmuring all the while how good he’s been. “We’re terribly lucky to have you, Cherry,” he tells him, and Cherry’s heart swells, content at having proved his worth.

Aeneas Mackintosh/Reverend Spencer-Smith, “communion” in the darkroom

[(Anonymous)]

At Hut Point, the Padre used to hold Sunday mass in the darkroom but it wasn’t very popular- usually only Mackintosh would show up.

So. Maybe “taking communion” in the darkroom became uh, a little unconventional. Perhaps Mackintosh didn’t leave with the taste of wine in his mouth but rather… something else?

FILL: Taste And See, Aeneas Mackintosh/Reverend Spencer-Smith, “communion” in the darkroom

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for the great prompt, OP! I've been rotating it for months and just figured out how to fill it a couple days ago.

I would also like to apologize to God and the ghost of Spencer-Smith for… you’ll see. All quotes from the BCP are accurate and any errors are mine. CW for priest kink.

***

The Reverend Arnold Spencer-Smith gathers his vasa sacra and makes his way to the darkroom. He wonders if some of the other men in the party might eventually take an interest in spiritual matters and attend services, but it looks like he will be celebrating alone again today. He abandoned the collar and vestments in an attempt to seem more approachable to the men, but so far his efforts seem to have been in vain. It is no matter since the mass is not for them (or for him, for that matter), but he still feels the sting of rejection.

A part of him had hoped that Mackintosh would join him, but perhaps it was for the best that he did not. This… thing is becoming a distraction, and he has no reason to believe that Mackintosh, a stunning man with a beautiful wife, would ever reciprocate his feelings. Any indications otherwise must surely be figments of his imagination. No, it is far better for the commander to stay away.

He is nearly set up for the service when he hears the creak of the darkroom door. Before him stands Aeneas Mackintosh, devastatingly handsome and resplendent in a thick cable knit sweater. Spencer-Smith shivers.

"Smithy," Mackintosh says with a wink, taking a seat directly in front of the padre. Spencer-Smith breathes deeply, trying to slow his suddenly racing heart.

He launches into the service, the words of the liturgy coming as easily as breath. He'd taken to the priesthood almost effortlessly, and the challenging and sometimes strange rituals and practices made intuitive sense to him. Although he enjoyed teaching, this is what he was put on earth to do.

It is only when he feels the heat of Mackintosh's gaze on him that he begins to falter, stumbling over phrases as familiar to him as his own name. His breathing grows ragged, and he can hear his heartbeat pounding inside his ears.

“...specially thy servant Edw- er- George our King; that un- under him we may be godly and quietly governed…”

He dares to glance up at Mackintosh, who is fidgeting in his seat. They lock eyes momentarily, the pupil of Mackintosh's good eye blown wide, and he bites his bottom lip. Spencer-Smith's stomach flutters and he is rendered speechless.

“Continue, Padre.”

He tries to continue— really, he does. It’s just that the darkroom is suddenly intolerably warm and he can feel the sweat rolling down his back and Mackintosh is so close and he’s smiling and he smells of tobacco and clean air and arousal…

He snaps out of it and skips ahead to the words of the institution, fumbling with the implements as he speaks.

“…this is my body which is given for you: do this in remembrance of me. Likewise after supper he took the cup; and, when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink ye all of this; for this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of—no!”

His shaking hand had slipped while pouring the wine into the chalice; an honest mistake but not an acceptable one, for now there are several drips of consecrated wine on the darkroom floor.

He slowly backs away from the spill and places the implements on the table. When he turns around, Mackintosh is on his feet in front of him.

Spencer-Smith watches in stunned silence as Mackintosh drops to his knees, lowers his head to the ground, and licks the spilled wine off the weathered floorboards.

Mackintosh makes no effort to rise, instead looking up into Spencer-Smith's shocked face.

"I've seen you looking, Smithy" he says with a sly grin. "I've been looking too."

A million thoughts race through Spencer-Smith's head, but he finds himself unable to articulate any of them. He gazes at Mackintosh, dumbstruck, his mouth agape. He is absurdly handsome, especially in this position, and Spencer-Smith considers that he might be a little bit in love with him. He also considers that this might be a dream, and that he will wake up in his tiny bunk any moment now with a racing heart and soiled pajamas.

He inches closer, reaches a hand down to Mackintosh's head and runs his thick fingers through the commander's dark hair in disbelief. He feels solid, real. Mackintosh lets out a soft moan in response before grabbing Spencer-Smith's hand and inserting two of his fingers into his mouth. He sucks them vigorously, never breaking eye contact.

It is Spencer-Smith's turn to moan, his eyes wide with pleasure and his rigid member tenting his trousers. He is terrified that Mackintosh won't touch him there; he is terrified that he will.

"Aeneas…wha—?"

Mackintosh removes the fingers from his mouth and strokes the padre's cock through the fabric. "Shhhh," he responds. "You do so much, for all the men and for me. Let me take care of you."

Spencer-Smith has always been a spiritual man, but in a proper Anglican way— not prone to loud outbursts like the Evangelicals or mystical experiences like the Roman Catholics. However, when Mackintosh licks the tip of his throbbing cock, the heavens open up and he sees the face of God for the first time. Rapture, he thinks, this is the rapture of the revival and the psalmists and St. Teresa and John the Divine.

When he comes, it is with Mackintosh's hot mouth around him and his fingers in his hair again, twisting and tugging the dark, soft locks.

Mackintosh rises to his feet, grabs Spencer-Smith's shirt collar and pulls him down for a kiss. The padre tastes his own pleasure on Mackintosh's clever tongue, sharp and briny as the sea. He is more tired than he's ever been in his life, and his knees are threatening to buckle, but he would not interrupt this delicious kiss unless Christ Himself appeared and told him to stop, and even that was debatable.

He pulls Mackintosh closer and feels his hard length against his thigh. When he reaches down to stroke it, the commander slaps his hand away. "Not now," he hisses, breaking the kiss. "Next time."

Mackintosh reaches up to caress Spencer-Smith's cheek, then steps back, panting heavily.

"Next Sunday," he says, making his way toward the darkroom exit. "Wear the collar."

Spencer-Smith is unable to move for a moment, staring slack-jawed at the floor and trying to absorb everything that has happened. When he regains his senses, he grabs the chalice and drinks the abandoned consecrated wine. He does not regret anything that transpired here except the interruption of the Eucharist.

Next Sunday, he will have Morning Prayer instead of a full service. He will also have Mackintosh— of this, he is certain.

***

FUN FACT! Once the bread/wafer and wine have been consecrated, you cannot throw them away! You must dispose of extras by returning them to the earth (burying them), burning them, or consuming them. The events of this fic are TECHNICALLY liturgically correct 😌

Atkinson/Cherry, comfort sex

[(Anonymous)]

It’s post-expedition and Cherry’s not doing great. He still blames himself for the death of his friends. Atch takes time away from his war duties to check up on Cherry, who begs him to “fuck him the way Wilson used to”

Hurt me, anon. Hurt me good.

FILL: mirror image, Atkinson/Cherry, E, idk it's just sad

[(Anonymous)]

I hope this suitably hurts you, anon. <3

enjoy~ (https://archiveofourown.org/works/42126009)

Nils Strindberg/ Anna Charlier, sad ghost sex

[(Anonymous)]

Gilbert is welcome too

FILL: Nils Strindberg/ Anna Charlier, sad ghost sex, mild sexual references

[(Anonymous)]

Nils was shy, when he was courting her. She remembers all their clumsy little subterfuges — Nils, dearest, I seem to have dropped my keys— the innocent pretences to bring about an outcome that they both desired. She catalogues the parts of her body that he touched: hand, hair, lips, leg (once). Small intimacies, a foretaste of the greater ones to come.

When he comes to her now, it is without shyness or hesitation. There is none of the fumbling of the wedding night, the awkwardness of two people learning how to please one another. Is that how it is for the dead? Do they acquire complete and perfect knowledge, in the moment when they pass from one state to another? Perhaps Nils knows all the secrets of the universe now. The distant stars and the frozen north. Anna’s body and all the places where it longs to be touched.

She recalls the times when they played duets. How their two parts came together in a flawless whole, and she believed that it was a promise.

“Men always leave, after the act. Even if they’re still in the bed with you.” So said the married women of her acquaintance, when she was about to join their ranks. Gilbert is not like that. He is generous and unselfish in all things, including this.

As for Nils, each time he leaves is like the first. This is how she always pictures them. Nils drifting from her, growing smaller and smaller as he ascends into the unknown. Anna, the tiny figure on the ground, hoping that he sees her wave goodbye.

Kathleen/Con, pegging

[(Anonymous)]

The fact that it hasn't already been prompted is sheer negligence. That man needs to get railed! Bonus points for praise kink and sex crying, thanks.

FILL: Sculpture, Kathleen/Con, E, pregnancy mention

[(Anonymous)]

“He’s already had a vessel especially built for an expedition, Kathleen!” Scott is in one of his moods, which are coming all too frequently this week. He’s raving with stress. A light sheen of sweat coats his brow, despite the Nordic climate of his environs, as he sits at the desk in their wooden-walled room at the Fefor Høifjellshotell and flips through reams of scrawled notes and motor sledge schematics and prattles on about the young man Nansen introduced them to today. “He’s only 21, and a ski expert at that! When I was his age, I had only just made lieutenant on Amphion! Oh, I’m hopeless, aren’t I? What chance do I have with so many fit young lads eager to have a go at Antarctica?”

Kathleen leans by the window, examining the pictures in a book on skiing she cannot read due to its being printed in Norwegian. By now used to this song-and-dance, she responds by rote. “That young man will be swallowed up by a crevasse the second he and his two poles set foot on the southern continent. He hasn’t an ounce of your experience. And he hasn’t your motor sledges.”

Mentioning the sledges, the trials of which are the reason they have ventured to the mountains of Norway, is a mistake. The harried, dejected, frantic look in Scott’s eyes—that of a man flattened by a great weight of second-guessing and self-doubt—grows, if anything, stronger. He emits a whine that turns into a grumble. “The sledges. Nansen has little faith in them. If only Skelton-”

Snapping the book shut, Kathleen interrupts. “Nansen is of the old ways. You cannot expect him to keep up with the march of progress.” This is unfair to the doctor, but her patience is wearing thin. It always pains her when her husband gets like this, and today it annoys her. He talks himself in circles, and all it ever gets him is a troubled stomach.

“I thought you rather liked Nansen.” Scott sniffs.

“I fear he rather likes me.” Despite her efforts to the contrary, a wry grin smarts at the corner of her mouth as she suggestively emphasises her words. She is gratified that, though her body has grown and shrank and stretched and reshaped in childbirth in the past year, she is still alluring to men. She does so love playing the game—testing her strength, as it were, even though she would never avail herself of their desire.

Of course, this only sets a new dark shadow flitting over her husband’s face. The heap of papers in front of him is held precariously in limbo as he is distracted. He searches for words, sputters “Kath—you don’t—Nansen is—”

“Con.” Kathleen snaps; for he is being ridiculous, and she is in a mood, today, too. The transformative whirlwind of her post-partum body has caused her bouts of aggression, extreme happiness, and intense despair, and made her even worse at hiding these swings than she already was. Today she is feeling particularly prickly, and restless. Being away from home is terribly trying, and she does not wish to babysit her husband in Peter’s stead. When Scott is this worked up, and she lacks the energy and tact to rebuff his doubts with her usual words and candour, there is one other remedy that tends to help.

She crosses the room to where her husband sits, now silent, and perches herself in his lap, sidesaddle. He lets out an exhale as her weight settles atop his bunched-up, tense thigh muscles. His blue eyes, so ringed with worry, look up at her, the (ironic) ski jump of his nose angling up towards her stronger profile. “Don’t be a fool, darling.” Kathleen whispers, her breath barely voiced, as she leans forward and takes him in a kiss. When he seems about to speak, she thrusts out her tongue to quiet him, tracing it over his teeth. It works.

His hands have dropped the papers. Fingers now settle, at first jumpily, then steadily, at her hips. Scott’s hands, which hold the ghost of former callouses, are warm and possessive. They begin to work their way up Kathleen’s twisted torso to settle over her clothed bust, and she breaks the kiss with a discontented groan.

“What’s wrong?” Scott asks quickly.

Kathleen observes him from a remove she knows must be torturous, her hands clasped on his shoulders. She studies him as if he were one of her works in progress, waiting to be moulded and wrought by her hands. Her husband is sharply dressed (as always when he’s trying to make an impression) from speaking to Nansen earlier today, but everything else about him is dishevelled—perhaps not physically, but in all other manners. He is tired, he fidgets, his mind runs in a million directions at once. Despite this, she is having an effect. She feels a strain at the seat of his trousers, pushing against her hip, and his eyes are struck with a violet glint, a sign his wayward thoughts are narrowing to focus on her. She could fuck him the way they normally do. It would smooth away the knots in his body, cool her own agitation, but for a short spell, only. No. She is hungry. She wants more than that, wants control, and he needs to lose control. To lose himself to something. It would be good for them, both. Perhaps it’s time.

Kathleen stands, and draws the curtains over the window, plunging them into a darkness save for the orange glow of the crackling fireplace.

“I have a gift for you, Con.”

---

The sculpture is small, at least compared to Kathleen’s other works, but Scott regards it with a nervous apprehension when she explains to him the intended use. The bronze flashes deep and warm in the firelight, and makes his nether regions clench pre-emptively.

“Wherever did you get such an idea?”

His wife’s eyes sparkle, her head cocks to the side. “You know the circles I’ve spent time with in France are hardly…conventional.”

He did have some inkling of this, yes; though he has spent much of his life in a sterile officer’s uniform he is not completely ignorant of this world, which was the cause of such concern for him during their courtship. It is all rather foreign to him…French, he supposes. “But you never partook…?” He cannot stop the question leaking out, even for the thousandth time.

“No.” She reassures, also for the thousandth time, squeezing his forearm. He wants to embrace her, only stops himself because he is worried she will pull away again. “That does not mean I did not listen and learn.”

Scott regards her creation once more, considering it more objectively as the original shock fades. Kathleen is full of surprises, after all, and though that fact tries him sorely, it is also what he loves about her. “And how do you mean to control it? With your hands?”

Kathleen laughs, and deviously produces a sort of complicated leather belt. “I’ll attach it. Just here.” Her free hand trails down her front, pausing at a spot well below her waist.

“As a man.”

“As a man.” She sounds delighted, and is unable to hide the colour in her cheeks. “Oh, for once I might not be a silly woman! Imagine!”

He does. Since he was small, Scott has always put on a buttoned-up uniform, both literally and in personality. But he has always known he is so much more than that, and his unconventional marriage was one of the times he has let this side of him break free, even a little. Scott wants her; oh, he wants her, even as a man—maybe especially as a man—but hearing the joy bubbling in her voice, he is terribly conflicted. Quite frankly, he does not know if he is strong enough to bear her proposal. Clearing his throat, he begins “Kath, I don’t know if—it looks terribly hard, and cold, and I’m not sure…not sure if…” he trails off, feeling wretchedly exposed and insufficient.

“Hush, now, Con, oh, did you think we would use the bronze one?” Her hand is on his cheek, wiping away a tear. “Don’t worry, darling, I’ve only made that as an inspiration—here…” And to Scott’s immense relief, a similar object, made of rubber, emerges from her suitcase, the depths of which he is beginning to regard with some suspicion. “I don’t want to hurt you. If you want to try this, we can use this one. And plenty of this.” Now she holds up a tin of petroleum jelly. “What do you say?”

Husband and wife stand facing one another in the dimly lit hotel room, posed, Scott thinks, as at the alter, but for the crucial difference of the vulgar and titillating objects arrayed in Kathleen’s fine artist’s hands. It is almost ridiculous, this proposed reversal, so dependent on a strange set of tools he has no experience with. And yet, he realises, he has not dwelled on the minutiae of expedition logistics since he laid eyes on the bronze sculpture. No, that quite blew everything else out of the water.

And there is more. What might it feel like to be entered by Kathleen? It’s something he’s never considered, but now, first glimpsed, it has taken ahold of him. He knows what it is to be inside her, but now, for the first time, he feels strangely hollow to think that he has never experienced the opposite. He has always admired her tenacity, her certainty—surely, he can cede himself to her.

“Ready.” He says, simply.

Hands still full, she kisses him, nipping his lip. “Aye, ready?” Kathleen breathes. Full-voiced, she commands, “We’ll disrobe at once, and work you up to it. If you don’t like it, we’ll stop. You need only say. But otherwise, I’m in charge.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His pulse flutters in nearly-virginal anticipation.

Kathleen undresses rapidly, clinically, not taking her eyes off him as she undoes buttons and slips off stockings. Scott finds he is quite transfixed by the whole process, or perhaps frozen with the forethought of what they are about to do, and he only manages his way out of his jacket by the time she is naked before him. “Oh, Con,” she chides, walking forward and undoing his belt with a sharp tug, letting his trousers fall to the floor. “Unbutton your shirt.” He does so as she regards him coolly, running her hands over him testingly, again making him feel as if he is a sculpture himself. Somehow, the objectification makes him ever more eager to perform to his utmost, and he reaches down to remove his socks and undergarments without being asked. “Very good.” Kathleen’s voice is low.

She walks him backwards to the bed, where they fall atop the wool runner. Kathleen straddles him, and they kiss, long and deep, as Scott runs his hands up and down her arcing spine. Her pert nipples press into his chest, and further down, his hard prick butts achingly against her thigh. She starts to kiss his neck, slow and sucking, trying to warm him up, but he is impatient. Automatically, he starts to turn her over, to reach down and feel if she is wet, if he can make her wetter, but—

“No.” She bites, fiercely, wrenching him gently but firmly back beneath her. She holds each bicep down with a hand, sits atop him just where his aching prick cannot reach what it wants. “Don’t you want this to work? You’ll feel ever so good if it does.”

“Yes…” he breathes.

“You won’t have a thought in your pretty little head. You’ll like that.”

He would. He really would. For even now, with a naked and flushed Kathleen atop him, his wayward mind is thinking of who he must speak to tomorrow, of what letters he must write, of what parts he must order—and then, when she is sure he will stay still, she starts to move south. Kathleen trails kisses down his chest, his stomach, lightly flicking at his nipple, twirling his chest hair. He cups her own head in his hands, encouraging her, down, down. But again she ignores his hard-on, working right past it and coming up for air.

“Kath-”

“Hush.” She says huskily. Kathleen scoops a finger’s worth of petroleum jelly. “Spread your legs, Con.”

He does.

“Lift your hips.”

He does, and she places a pillow beneath them, and waits.

“You can lower them now.”

He does so.

“Good boy.”

And before he can say anything at all, Scott feels the electrifying cold of the petroleum jelly as Kathleen circles the rim of his arsehole and slowly plunges a finger in.

“Oh!”

“Hm?”

“It’s cold.” He says, rather stupidly. Cold, and tight, and this pressure is strange, and he does not know if he likes it, and Kathleen’s mouth is so close to his prick, and won’t she just take that in instead of probing his hole, and if he cannot even handle this sort of exploration, how on earth does he think he is the right man to break new ground in a hostile continent? He feels his muscles clenching, exactly when they should be relaxing, and his toes grow cold, and oh, oh, this is never going to work, he’s going to bungle it—

“Con?” Kathleen’s gaze is cold, sharp, authoritative. “I need you to relax.”

“I don’t know if I can.” He says quite honestly. He feels the prick of tears threatening at the corners of his eyes.

“Of course you can.”

He is trying, really, he is trying, as she slides her slick finger in and out of him, but he remains as tight and cold as a crevasse, which incidentally is where his mind has sunken.

“Don’t you want to be mine, Con?”

“I do, but-”

“Listen, Con, there’s a spot, if I just-”

He’s trying and he’s trying desperately but he blurts “Kath, I really want to but I don’t think that I’m able to pl-OH.” For she has done something, twisted her finger some such way inside him, that sends a ripple of joy throughout his body. As if she has flipped a magic switch. She crooks the finger again. And again, deliciously thrusting it in and out of his now welcoming, pulsing hole. Scott’s breathing quickens.

“I daresay that’s the one. Let’s open you up.”

When he opens his eyes and looks down, she is knelt between his legs, her hair dishevelled, a sheen of sweat on her red face. Lubricating a second finger, she slides both in at once, and the effect knocks the breath out of him. His hips buck up as she teases the magic spot. He’s never felt something like this before—not while enveloped inside her, nor while spending. This is entirely new. When Kathleen plunges in a third wet finger, he is throbbing with need.

But instead of speeding up, she slows down. Heartbeat thudding in places he didn’t realise it reached, Scott looks up at her, alarmed. Bereft. He is so close to spending, and she stops now?

Kathleen’s fingers slide out, and the effect is as twisting a knife as it exits a wound. He is empty, wet, and gaping, blubbering questions which Kathleen answers with a cool “One moment. You’ll wait for me, won’t you? Of course you will.”

She stands aside the bed, towering over his helpless form, which lies ready and wanting. But he bites his tongue and trusts in her, however awful his need. Scott watches as his wife steps into the leather harness, as he has done so many times into sledging traces, and tightens them around her thighs and waist. Her rubber cock, ever perky, bobs in front of her. It strikes a handsome silhouette, he thinks, somewhere deep and base in the part of his mind that still has the capacity for anything other than raw desire at this moment.

“Lift up your legs again, dear sweet boy.” She orders, and he gulps, and does so at once, and spreads them as wide as he can, making his wet opening as inviting as possible. “Good.” She coos. “You’re doing ever so well.” And he gulps, and nods. He yearns for her to hit that marvellous place deep inside him again. She pushes his knees up to his chest and wraps his calves around her hips, inserting herself between his thighs.

She kneels, fully upright, and slathers her cock with the jelly, stroking it as if deciding in her studio what it is to become. Its base pushes against her mound, he notices, exactly where he would press his fingers if he were working her up to a frenzy. It’s a clever design. He fights the desire to hurry her in.

Robert McClure/ Mary McClure, unsatisfying sex

[(Anonymous)]

Angst is good

FILL: untitled, Robert McClure/Mary McClure, E, cw probably a bit dubcon

[(Anonymous)]

He’d brought her a posy of violets, which she’d crushed into a tumbler. But she must have liked them, a little, because she put them in the bedroom. Their scent turns the air lurid with sweetness.



She’s already under the covers. One graceful little white hand makes its languid way to the lamp.



“Leave it on,” he says quickly.



The hand halts in mid-air. ‘Graceful little white hand’ was an automatic gallantry. It’s how one is supposed to imagine one’s wife. Actually Mary has bony pianist’s fingers and knuckles so red they look as if they’ve been rapped with a cane. They excite him, the ever-beaten scarlet knuckles. He’s never told her this. He isn’t sure she’d be pleased.



He slides under the covers, his nightshirt tangling between his thighs. His haste is unseemly. It is a husband’s right to claim his wife. He cups the nearest part of her. Her shoulder, as it happens.



“Oh, Robert, your hands are cold!”



“They will warm up,” he mutters. She frowns at him. He tries kissing the furrowed brow, which does at least unknit. He tries her mouth. She turns her lips up like an umbrella but doesn’t kiss him back. No matter. Her lips are soft. They feel nice. He moves his hands and there’s more softness and niceness. Her nipples press through the chemise like the dot at the base of a question mark.



“Cold,” she says into his mouth, but it’s a whisper, and that’s a surrender.



He’s been hard since he walked in to the smell of violets, before they’d even undressed. When she puts things he gives her in their bedroom – a bouquet, a mirror, a pretty jug for the washstand – it’s like watching her put her fingers inside herself. When he makes her a present and it goes into the chamber where he fucks her, that is surely because she wants to think of him when she is in this bedroom by herself. She surely, surely imagines him.



He’s kneading at her breasts with both hands now. “That what Pussy does on the bedcovers in the mornings,” she whispers. “When she wants treats.”



In his head he says, ironically, Well, I want treats, or else he purrs into her ear that she’s his little pussycat, but what comes out is a strangled noise. He tries again, and gasps, “Well, I want pussycat.”



Disaster – but she laughs, she does laugh, and puts her arms around his neck. He has to flatten his hands on either side of her so as not to fall. It brings him naturally to a position where he is on top of her.



“Not yet,” says Mary, and pulls his hips down. The mound between her legs is very hot, even through their nightshirts. She starts to rub it against his yard. It feels so good it’s almost painful. They make a sticky coin of glue between them. He feels his nightshirt stick and unstick from the wetness.



Before their wedding night, she’d only ever felt him through his trowsers (though finding them fumbling in the study was enough for her father to march him, practically gun to head, up the church aisle). The first time she saw him naked, she’d said, alarmed, “Is it supposed to get that big? With -veins? Are you sure it’s normal?” In fact she’d technically remained a virgin for three weeks after their marriage; so terrified was she of letting him force this accidental weapon inside her that he didn’t penetrate far enough to breach her maidenhead, finishing with moans of mingled pleasure and frustration with her petals stretched to take a half-inch. Soaking the gates of Heaven, he’d called it, much to her disgust.



Now she’s beginning to slip and heat, breathing hard and staring at a point just beyond his head. Mary’s sex has a full, strong scent – stronger than violets and thick as mushrooms and mussels. He adores it. He used to lean his cheek against her inner thigh and take deep breaths of her. What are you doing? she asked, and when he’d explained, she’d burst into humiliated tears. But I like it, I like it, he’d protested. On the night she finally gave up her virtue, he dabbed a handkerchief into her shell when he’d finished. Blood, seed and woman’s wax soaked the linen. He keeps it folded like a love letter in his breast pocket. If she ever finds it, she’ll burn it.



She’s making a low groaning noise. She’s going to find her end before he’s even pulled her nightshirt up. What if she decides she doesn’t want him after that? Many’s been the night he’s had to tug himself to completion, while she lies with the pillow folded around her ears so she can sleep through the moment he cries out her name.



“No, Robbie, stay!” she gasps as he pulls back.



“Let me,” he says hurriedly. “Mary, you must. Your duty.”



He almost feels her skin cool. But she goes still, and he yanks her chemise up. His nails catches her thigh and she winces.



Her belly is white and yielding, her breasts are shaped like tear-drops. He wants to lay his head down and have her stroke his hair and call him tender things, but if he stops even for a moment she might change her mind. He presses into her and knows in an instant that he is almost done for.



“Oh Mary,” he says. He’s thrust up to the hilt. “Oh God.”



For a moment, she’s still as a gravestone. Then she says, “Don’t blaspheme.”



She sounds amused, and that’s as good as affection, so starved is he of affection. He wants her to stroke his face, so he grabs her wrist and sticks her raw red knuckles in her mouth. He wants to hear her say his name, so he whimpers hers. “Please, Mary, please,” he groans as he pumps.



“You have me,” she says, a touch crossly, as she’s pounded into the mattress.



“Please, oh,” he says. He thinks he is about to cry, or else he’s about to climax. It’s not always easy for him to tell the difference. The truth is, he hates her duty. He wants her welcome. Why doesn’t she enjoy him? What’s wrong with him? Didn’t he bring her flowers?



He finishes with the noisy flamboyance of a man being stabbed. She actually recoils. She’s remarked before on the loudness of his pleasure and pain; for that matter, she’s not the first person to express surprise that he groans so loudly when he hurts, that his rages are so absolute when he’s angry. All his life he’s been begging people to notice him. See him, care for him, don’t abandon him. What does he have to do to attain visibility? Discover the North-West Passage?



“Off,” she says briskly, and he rolls off her with a grunt of defeat. He hears a faint sloppy sound as Mary curls her fingers into the place where he’s left the cream of his pleasure. He reaches for her.



“Don’t,” she barks. He flinches back. He lies curled on the bed, his yard stickily deflating, as his wife turns her head away and begins to fuck herself. They are as good as strangers. The bedframe sighs.

Cook/Amundsen, hurt/comfort and grooming

[(Anonymous)]

Fred is running himself ragged trying to keep all the men alive and healthy during the winter on the Belgica. Roald notices he's neglecting his own well-being in the process and decides, matter-of-factly, that something must be done about it. Cue massage, hair-washing, perhaps even some [gasp] cuddling???

FILL: Who Shaves the Barber?, Cook/Amundsen, E

[(Anonymous)]

Cook’s cabin was very rarely empty, of late.

With the disappearance of the sun came a mysterious ailment from which most everyone was by that point suffering. Cook was one of the only men on the ship whose days were full and hectic. It had its benefits–mentally, he remained more stable than most of them–but physically, it took its toll.

Amundsen noticed at once. The doctor, who had fast become Amundsen’s closest friend in the expedition, was tense, unkempt and underslept. He had extended his excellent care to everyone onboard, save for himself.

Amundsen slipped inside of Cook’s cabin when it became empty of patients at last. The doctor didn’t notice him at first, his head in his hands while he massaged his temples. Amundsen cleared his throat to alert him to his presence without startling him.

Cook sighed, but did not lift his head from his hands. “Long day,” he supplemented, and Amundsen huffed a cheerless not-quite laugh in acknowledgement.

After only another short moment, Cook roused himself from his very brief repose, lifting his face from his hands. “Are you still feeling well?” he asked, and Amundsen sensed earnest worry in his voice.

“Quite well, my friend,” Amundsen was quick to reassure him. He had not come to worry Cook any more, or to be another body to tend to–quite the opposite, in fact. Amundsen found a box to sit on, pulled it up, settled down facing his friend. He held out his hand, palm-up, and somehow Cook knew to place his own hand, palm-down, on top of it. Amundsen rubbed his thumb across the back of Cook’s hand, applied gentle pressure to the meat of his palm, finding the muscles tense even there. Cook was strung fast as new stays, tight as violin strings–plucking the tendons in his hands may give forth a clear, ringing note, Amundsen thought to himself.

“I fear you are neglecting yourself,” Amundsen stated plainly. It was a fair observation, and he had evidence to back it up.

Cook scoffed, staring absently at his own hand, dwarfed somewhat by Amundsen’s. “I’ve never had so much business. If only I could charge down here, eh?” he joked. Amundsen’s amusement whenever Cook joked was silent–barely manifested itself as a smile, much less a laugh, but radiated warmly and perceptibly from him all the same. Cook could tell he won’t get Amundsen off his back with a few half-hearted attempts at humor, however, and tempered himself. “I’m alright, Roald. It’s good. It keeps me busy. God knows that’s one of our worst enemies now–inactivity.”

“I mean to take care of you,” Amundsen said conclusively. “This will keep me busy.”

He left little room for Cook to protest. So Cook resigned himself, not all too unwillingly, and stood when Amundsen stood. Their hands remained clasped together as Amundsen led Cook to the bathing room, where he’d already drawn a tub of water. Amundsen released Cook’s hand then, and made a move to begin undressing him.

Cook stopped Amundsen’s hand where it grasped the hem of his shirt. “I think I can do this next part of this myself, don’t you?” he asked, containing his surprise at Amundsen’s forwardness. Amundsen’s expression was dire, and Cook realized that he was very much subject to his decisions, now–what Amundsen said would go. Even so, Amundsen relented, his arms dropping to his sides, but his gaze remained pointedly fixed on Cook as he undressed. Cook did not lock eyes with him, but resolutely continued undressing–there was little room for modesty or bashfulness, on a ship so tightly packed.

Cook eased himself into the tub, allowing himself to close his eyes and release the slightest bit of tension that kept his muscles wound up tight like rope around a capstan. When was the last time he’d had a proper night’s sleep, in lieu of slipping briefly into unconsciousness for a scant few minutes intermittently these past few weeks? As darkness gained, the confused half-night that swallowed up more and more hours of each day reflected his own state of mind–he spent his days in a civil twilight of consciousness.

Cook was drifting when he felt fingers sink into his hair, and he could hardly be held accountable for the throaty moan that left him. He felt the weight of water in his hair as Amundsen scooped handfuls in his cupped hands and showered them gently down onto him. Amundsen nimbly teased tangles out of his locks, which were beginning to grow out long, a visual record of how long they’d been trapped in the ice. The feeling was euphoric, all the more so because of how little he’d anticipated such gentle attentiveness from Amundsen.

After several minutes, the fingers in his hair were drawn away, and began trailing down his chest. Amundsen’s touch was not light, he pressed his palms into Cook’s skin, made his presence known and impossible to ignore. There was no hesitation in the way he ran his hands back up, cupping Cook’s jaw before doubling back to stroke down his chest again, dipping just below the water where Cook’s ribs ended. Cook opened his eyes then, fixed them on his friend’s face. Amundsen looked just as focused and intent as he did while surveying the pack, while scaling the face of a sheer ridge. Cook once again arrested the progress of Amundsen’s hand by taking it in his own. He didn’t ask aloud, but Amundsen understood his silent inquiry nevertheless.

“Let me,” Amundsen murmured, and then his face broke into one of those elusive smiles. “You don’t really believe that drivel about causing impotence, do you?”

Cooks groaned and let his head fall back–he throbbed between his legs at the confirmation of Amundsen’s intentions, and couldn’t believably refuse the proposition any more than he could hide his growing arousal in response to Amundsen’s touch.

“Just keep quiet,” Cook said by way of permission, as if Amundsen was the one who needed to be reminded, and he heard a low chuckle in response. Amundsen’s fingers wrapped around his cock, then, and Cook gave an involuntary start forward, the water sloshing about him.

Amundsen bent over Cook as he pulled him off, his face tucked into the crook of Cook’s neck. His breath was hot against Cook’s skin, open-mouthed, panting breaths attesting to the fact that Cook was not alone in drawing pleasure from the act. Still, the motion of Amundsen’s hand was fast, practiced and unrelenting–focused solely on the end goal of bringing Cook to his peak, which at this rate wouldn’t take long.

“Slow down, Roald, shit,” Cook hissed through gritted teeth, and Amundsen stopped at once, recoiling his hand from Cook’s erection, all his stolid surety gone in a moment. That was far from Cook’s intention, so he gave a little upward cant of his hips, urging Amundsen back. “Now, I didn’t say stop,” he said, bringing his hand to grasp the back of Amundsen’s neck and hold him in place while he tilted his face closer, their noses bumping lightly. “Just take your time, yeah? Make it last, sweetheart.” Cook tilted his head, pressed his lips to Amundsen’s, and could tell from the sharp intake of breath through his nose that it had come unexpectedly. Even so, Amundsen reciprocated almost immediately, pressing forward and opening his mouth to him. He groped at Cook’s length below the water again, squeezed, and took to stroking at a pace more languid and refined, but no less confident.

They kissed heatedly while Cook fucked Amundsen’s fist, quiet groans muffled in each others’ mouths, and drowned out all the same by the sounds of the men who had not retired for the night still socializing in the wardroom.

Cook’s mouth dropped open with a strangled sound as he came. Amundsen stroked him through it, and seemed reluctant to pull away–he pressed a lingering kiss to the corner of Cook’s mouth before drawing back, his hands at last leaving Cook’s body.

Cook slumped bonelessly in the tub, a smug smile stretched across his face and a low laugh bubbling up from his chest. “Oh, darlin’,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “I could go for a smoke, couldn’t you?”

Amundsen ignored him. “You need sleep,” he insisted, back on track: from one accomplished task to the next.

“‘Course I do,” Cook agreed, hoisting himself upright in the tub. “You know just what I need, don’t you?” He didn’t mean at all to sound sardonic, and although the language barrier between them was as thin as paper, to ensure he communicated his earnestness, he held out a hand to Amundsen, knocking their fingers together lightly. “Thank you, Roald.”

Amundsen accepted the thanks with a gentle squeeze to Cook’s hand and another one of his coveted smiles, which, when simply seeing wouldn’t suffice, Cook leaned over to taste.

“Come spend the night with me, hm?” Cook murmured. Amundsen nodded his agreement.

A short while later found the two curled together on Cook’s bed—a tight fit, given especially Amundsen’s grand stature, but with Amundsen half atop Cook, they managed a comfortable position. Cook’s fingers ran through Amundsen’s hair. “You know, for the sake of the crew,” Cook mused aloud, “I hope you’ve been extending these favors to everyone.”

Amundsen grumbled, well on his way to falling asleep.

“For my own sake,” Cook continued, “I hope the hell not.”

Gen, Robert McClure, haunted fairytale nonsense

[(Anonymous)]

McClure anthropomorphosised (idk... spelling) every animal he met. What if the Arctic was Wonderland and Alice was either a miserable 29-year-old or a miserable 41-year-old, depending on which expedition.

FILL, untitled, gen, Robert McClure, refs to hunting and vague foreboding

[(Anonymous)]

The little fox is beautiful. It makes his heart ache helplessly for all the beautiful things he has never known.

“Don’t mind me,” he tells it. “I mean no harm. Not to a dapper little fellow like you.”

He is about to reply to himself, in the gruff voice that he always uses when he pretends to be a talking animal. But, to his amazement, the fox pauses on the edge of flight and says, “Oh. I mistook you for your friend. The one who likes to shoot small things.”

“Gore?” He is almost too shocked to speak, but the little syllable comes readily to his lips; it always does, in the absence of the man himself.

“Is that his name? He shot one of my uncles. Not a favourite uncle, but an uncle nonetheless.”

Robert suspects that Graham Gore is not going to be a fruitful topic of conversation. Changing the subject, he admits that he did not know foxes could talk.

“I was wondering the same about you and your friends,” says the fox. “Have you only just learned this very moment? Or have you been able to talk all along and were merely making those strange growling noises for your own amusement?”

Robert says that he thinks he has always been able to talk. (Already he is growing a little unsure. Would it not explain many things if nobody in his life has ever been able to understand a word he says?)

“Well,” says the fox, in a tone indicating polite disbelief. “Let’s not make an argument of it. Can I offer you anything to eat or drink?”

Robert sees that the fox has a string round its neck, and hanging from the string a little bottle labelled “DRINK ME” and a little wrapped parcel labelled “EAT ME”. “What happens if I do?” he asks.

“Oh, if you drink from the bottle you will grow and grow, and if you eat from the package then you will shrink. Or perhaps it is the other way round.”

He says hastily that he does not need any food or drink at present, thank you.

“Probably wise,” says the fox. “You are about the right size as you are. That is to say, you are a small enough person that nobody notices you, but you do big things, or at least you will do. It balances out.”

Robert asks — because he cannot possible be any more miserable, and one might as well make the most of magic when one encounters it — if the fox will please tell him his future.

“Do I look like a carnival attraction?” says the fox, affronted. But it relents. “Very well. Here is your future. You will love. You will be married. And you will not have to serve in the army.”

Robert thinks, “Mary and I will come to love each other. The circumstances of our marriage were not auspicious, but we can learn to be kind.”

“I didn’t say,” says the fox, as though reading his thoughts, “that the person you love and the person to whom you are married will be the same.”

His head is beginning to ache. He says, “The Arctic is a strange, upside-down place. I cannot make sense of it.”

The fox says coolly, “The Arctic is just a place where some of us live. Have you considered that maybe you brought your own strangeness here with you?”

The fox is going now. No, it is not walking away. It is fading, like a chalk drawing slowly being effaced.

Now only its little needle teeth remain, sharp as a woman’s sigh of disappointment. Sharp as being on the outside of a joke between other men.

The last thing the fox says is, “If you care about him, you should tell him not to go. Your friend who likes to shoot small things, I mean.”

Robert wakes to find that someone is shaking him. Not Graham. Someone whose name he cannot immediately recall. “We thought we’d lost you for a moment there,” says a voice, kind but somehow impersonal.

His eyes are still weak, his head swimming. Where is Graham? There is blinding whiteness in every direction, and he cannot find Graham anywhere.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard/Lawrence Oates - Virginity/inexperience

[(Anonymous)]

One should be inexperienced and/or a virgin and the other should be more experienced. It could be tender or filthy or both.

FILL: Never have I ever, Apsley Cherry-Garrard/Lawrence Oates, E, Virginity/inexperience

[(Anonymous)]

“You’ve really—never?”

Titus drew deeply from his pipe, and slowly exhaled. “Mm. No.”

“But you must have. Not even at Eton?”

He stared at Cherry, frowning slightly. He seemed confused as to how they had gotten on the topic. That was all well and good—Cherry had brought them around to it with great delicacy, steering the conversation slowly through detours of Army life and school, until it had arrived at its natural conclusion. Sensing no resistance, Cherry had confided in him some of his more sordid tales of the 1st VIII; and though Titus had seemed amused, in the end his response had amounted to a gruff “I wouldn’t know about any of that.”

Now, realization having sunk well in, Cherry had to resist squirming under the Soldier’s heavy-lidded squint. It wasn’t wholly judgmental: if it was, Cherry would have known precisely the manner in which he ought to shut up and slink away. It was placid, perhaps a little curious—which meant he still might be in with a chance.

“So—so you only rely on yourself, is that it?”

Titus shrugged. “Hardly ever.”

“Really?”

“I have enough vices to be getting on with. No need to acquire any more.”

As if he were simply choosing not to buy more polo ponies! Instead of resisting what surely must be one of the most natural of male urges! The chap was a rare breed. Something Cherry had known from first meeting him, of course; it was part of why he had wanted him, this whole time. He had never gone for straightforward sorts: there had to be a hook, something sharp to snare him, for smoothness greatly bored him. But for eccentricity to extend to this veritable celibacy on the part of such an otherwise splendid, amenable chap was so horribly unfair. Hinc illae lacrimae. Oh, and it only made him want Titus more!

“So you have no idea,” Cherry said quietly.

“Hm?”

“How good it can feel.”

Titus scoffed.

“Don’t laugh. I’m serious,” said Cherry, leaning over and sliding a hand up Titus’s knee. “It’s the most pitiful thing I’ve heard. You of all people being deprived like this.”

“You’re a demon,” said Titus matter-of-factly. But he did not shake Cherry off. “I should have seen it sooner.”

“What? I’m not!”

“That face of yours. A succubus sent to torment me, by the Devil himself, is that it?”

“No! No, I just think you’re so wonderful—I do! And I know that’s what they all must have said. Your schoolmates and stewards. But they haven’t known you like I do. And you’ve not known them like you do me…. tell me, if I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.” His hand had reached Titus’s upper thigh. He neither felt nor saw any stirring within the coarse canvas trousers. “Might I…?”

“Cherry,” Titus said, low and admonishing. He was staring off now into the black of the stables, beyond where the stove-light reached. His face in profile was unbearably handsome.

“You can use my mouth,” Cherry blurted. “If that makes it—if you’d like that. You will like it. You’ll feel marvelous afterwards.”

He was hot all over, waiting for Titus to say yes, or no. He was forever throwing himself at men like this perhaps because this moment, this tingling anticipation, gave him more piercing pleasure than the act itself. It was dangerous but he could not stop from chasing after it. A more sensible man would have learned his lesson long ago—but sensible men did not end up in places like the Antarctic.

In the suspended silence Cherry dug his fingertips into Titus’s leg, applying what he hoped was a tempting amount of pressure. An indication of the roughness he was willing to take.

Titus finally looked at him. Blew a cloud of smoke at him, and through it, inclined his head. Yes.

When Cherry had clawed his way eagerly through Titus’s underthings and pried out his member, it was still soft; a lovely shy small thing in his hands. Not for long, though.

Titus filled out on his tongue, and then filled some more, and—good God, he was, well—the joke presented itself even to Cherry, who so often was told he missed the obvious.

He lapped eagerly at the broad thickening tip, kissing and sucking it until it began to leak its delicious warm wetness. Breathing in steadily through his nose, he inhaled the strong, male scent of Titus’s sweat and skin and hair. The unwashed, animal tang to it stirred his own prick as he took Titus’s deeper and deeper.

Titus was not touching him. He wasn’t making any sound at all. Cherry hollowed his cheeks and bobbed back and forth, gliding his tongue along the prominent vein on the underside of Titus’s cock. Ought he to reach up and play with Titus’s balls? Only some men liked that, not all, and Cherry did not want to risk getting slapped away. Not now, when he was finally thrilling at the long-dreamt-of sensation of Titus’s enormous prick battering at the back of his throat. It would choke anyone less expert—but not Cherry, who gripped Titus’s legs tighter for balance as he gave a determined swallow around it once, and then once more.

The wooden bench creaked. Titus had begun to move, unsteadily, perhaps instinctively, fucking into Cherry’s mouth. And through the guttering of the blubber stove Cherry could hear heavy breathing, grunts, increasing in frequency.

Cherry was being so good for him. Who else could take him this deeply and steadily, so sweetly and easily? Nobody for thousands and thousands of miles around. For a first time, surely he was being spoiled. Not a hint of teeth, no gagging at all. Just the pleasure and ease of his yard sliding down Cherry’s tight throat, again and again and again.

And he could have kept on going, for this was like heaven to him—but by the sound of it, Titus was now closing in quick on the end.

“Fuck—“ Titus groaned, and tried to pull away, but Cherry forced himself forward onto him, in order to drink down that reward which he would not be denied.

When was the last time Titus had spent? Surely the flood that came was in proportion to that sadly overlong interval: so much that even Cherry could not marshal it fully, sputtering a bit as it came on.

But he was grinning, as he wiped dribbles of Titus’s hot seed from his lips with his sleeve. Thinking of how perhaps he would be kissed now, as a thank you; how perhaps now he would crawl up into Titus’s lap and feel those marvelous big hands palm at his arse…

Then he saw how Titus was looking at him.

“You’re a fool, to enjoy that so much,” said the Soldier, gazing down.

Cherry’s cheeks burned in the darkness. “Yes. I know that.”

“I won’t be doing it again.”

“Alright.”

“You ought to go to bed. It’s rather late, isn’t it?”

It was clear that despite, or perhaps because of how much Titus had enjoyed it (Cherry was quite sure he had, he must have, for Cherry had done an excellent job) Cherry had been lowered irreversibly in his esteem. It was the sort of thing he ought to have considered before he launched himself at him. Wouldn't it have been easier to leave off? Titus hadn’t even really wanted it, had he. And now it would always from then on be something he had done, and Cherry would forever be to blame, and surely would not be allowed to forget, for as long as they remained here together.

Consequences! Cherry wished uselessly, as he rose onto shaking legs and retreated, his own erection unflagging between his legs, that one day he might at last learn to recall their existence before, and not after, he made a choice he could not take back.

Emil Racovitza/Georges Lecointe, comedic misunderstanding

[(Anonymous)]

Raco loves to flirt and joke with his boyfriend over a plate of Australian rabbit with stewed prunes! Georges, meanwhile, thinks he's been engaged in the world's most high-stakes game of gay chicken for the entirety of the Antarctic winter. And he plays to win.

FILL: The Most Dangerous Game, Emil Racovitza/Georges Lecointe, comedic misunderstanding, E, [1/2]

[(Anonymous)]

Nonny, writing this awoke something deep inside of me and I will never be the same. Thank you.

Racovitza’s grin was altogether too blindingly bright for this time of morning; without a morsel of food in him yet Lecointe found it difficult to withstand the onslaught of easy charm. Far too damned early.

As Lecointe sat down at the wardroom table, Racovitza returned spooning mealy porridge into his mouth with one hand while scrawling in his diary in the other. “And as Lecointe enters the dining hall,” he narrated slowly as he wrote, “he resembles nothing so much as a toothbrush, hair sticking up at all angles, wiry bristles that would be fit to remove kelp from the baleen of a right whale, an experience extremely pleasurable for the both of them, I would imagine…”

“You slept well?” said Lecointe.

“I slept like a babe in a creche,” said Racovitza, setting down his pencil. “Surrounded by wails and shrieks and the smell of shit! Ha!”

As if on cue the rest of Racovitza’s roommates entered: Danco and Arctowski already deep in conversation; Cook greeting Lecointe and Racovitza with his usual drawl in English of “Good morning to you, gentlemen!”

Racovitza gestured at Lecointe and said in French to Cook, “I think he looks like a toothbrush, don’t you?” As he sat down, Cook made his frequent play of smiling and nodding despite clearly not understanding what Racovitza was saying. “The good doctor agrees!” crowed Racovitza. He reached over the table to run a hand through Lecointe’s hair and ruffle it, which Lecointe permitted with all the clenched patience of a bravely wounded soldier having a bullet removed from his sundered flesh.

Even as Raco pinched his cheek—the nerve!—Lecointe knew he must continue to endure, even as he was humiliated in plain sight of his fellow officers. This game was a familiar one to him, after all. In military training such sport was common.

When had it started? Lecointe couldn’t quite recall. Certainly it had not been an issue on the journey across the Atlantic. Lecointe remembered meeting the naturalist for the first time in Belgium and finding him wholly professional. Handsome and clean, with his waxed mustache and neatly combed hair. And then as Patagonia receded in their wake Racovitza, or “Raco” as everyone had taken to calling him nearly immediately, had let himself loosen and grow jocose, ever more daring with his pranks and puns. Yes, maybe it had begun when he rejoined them in Punta Arenas, quite wild-looking after his naturalizing expedition, practicing his bird-calls and telling each officer which creature of the jungle they resembled most.

Or—perhaps it had truly begun in earnest later, during one of the first truly cold nights as they navigated down the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Lecointe recalled how he had been visibly shivering as he sat reading in the wardroom, as the stove was not set up yet; Raco had bragged of his heat-emitting properties and invited Lecointe to lay beside him on the sofa. He hadn’t been lying: Lecointe, who lacked much in the way of body fat and always ran cold, was stunned at the heat which poured off of Racovitza, even through his layers of clothes.

“Good God, Raco,” said Lecointe. “I would install you in my cabin if I could!”

“Would you?” Raco asked. “Just for tonight? I could really use a break from my lot, you know. Artocho has been whimpering in his sleep again about broken thermometers.” Lecointe considered that there was hardly room for himself in his berth, let alone another man the size of Racovitza, but then he reflected on how lack of restful sleep did not a competent captain make, and another night of sleepless shivering like the last one might make him a liability to his crew should something occur.

So Raco had happily bedded down with Lecointe, not just that night but on many a night afterwards, perhaps once or twice a week… Such warm and peaceful rest he’d never had!

Yes, it all must have started after that…!

“Captain,” said Raco now, interrupting Lecointe’s reverie, “tell Emile what you were telling me last night about your regrets.”

Danco looked up expectantly, eager for a distraction from his disgusting repast of Michotte’s lead-bread and sour jam. “You have regrets, captain? Romantic ones?” The table was always eager for stories of girls.

“No,” said Lecointe with a wry grin, “nothing of that sort. Only, I admitted to Raco last night in a moment of weakness, how I regret promising to at least twenty different well-wishers the skin of the first bear I shot in the Antarctic!”

“But there are no bears in the Antarctic!” laughed Danco. “Not a single one!”

Raco tutted. “Not true.”

“But—that is true,” said Arctowski, a little confused.

“No!” Raco roared, slamming his hands down on the table and leaping to his feet. “The one and only bear below the Antarctic Circle is I, Racovitza! Tremble before me!”

Cook, who had not been following the conversation at all, laughed now at the physical display.

“Come here. Feel my great strength. You, sir!”

Lecointe hesitated. Raco beckoned, his eyes twinkling. Summoning all his discipline Lecointe rose from his seat and let Raco guide his hands to his chest, through which Lecointe could indeed feel a marvelous apparatus of flesh.

“Am I not the closest thing to a furry beast for miles around?”

“Indeed you are,” Lecointe agreed, conscious of the amused gaze of his fellow-officers on him, willing his cheeks not to color.

“And here!” Raco took Lecointe’s hand and moved it from his chest to his arm, which he flexed ostentatiously. “Am I not imposing and fierce?”

Lecointe, relaxing a bit, cried, “Oh, very much! The penguins flee before you! The ice splits at your feet!”

It was true that Racovitza was the second-tallest of everyone on the ship, after Danco, who hardly counted, being such an outlier. And Racovitza was much wider than Danco, as well: thick and solid… Just then, Raco let out another throaty roar and, grasping Lecointe around the waist, lifted him up off the deck.

This got hollers of approbation from their messmates and a groan of “Mon dieu!” from the door to de Gerlache’s cabin, which had just opened up onto the odd scene.

Lecointe made a show of kicking uselessly, his feet far off the floor, as Raco gripped him; but it was just that, a show. Embarrassingly, he did not really wish to be released.

What would Cook say? In his combination of mangled pidgin, sign-language, and monotone translation courtesy of Melaerts he had made it known recently that should they allow arousal to proceed unchecked without release, they might face physical consequences, leaving them impotent as eunuchs!

“Better to give up thoughts of sex completely,” he’d said, “and save your bodies the stress.” This, with a pointed look at Lecointe, who in the interest of showing Racovitza that their game was simply that—a game, a challenge, one which he would win—had been speaking loudly of his betrothed and her many charms during mealtimes.

Lecointe planned to have many children, to carry on his family name! He could not allow any sort of—damage to occur. But he could also not, for reasons of honor, choose to forfeit the game Raco had roped him into, which was the cause of the continued carnal thoughts when Raco did—well, things like this.

Even as Raco let him go at last, and all of them laughed heartily and welcomed the extremely confused commandant to the table with an explanation of the joke (which was then passed on by him in English to Cook at last), Lecointe was thinking, What to do, what to do?

He could decide later: the game as it was played involved escalation on the part of both parties, so Lecointe was obligated to launch his volley in return later today, in response to the show Raco had just put on.

Lecointe had to bear whatever indignity he would bring upon himself. Should he show any weakness and forfeit, Racovitza would triumph over him. It would be an embarrassment not just for Lecointe but for the Belgian Navy and even the entire nation.


***

During work hours, in the quickly dwindling daylight, scientific labors were far too important to waste a single moment. But during the mornings and evenings, all were free to do what they chose. Lecointe was determined to give as good as he got as soon as his duties were ended.

In between tasks that day he searched his mind for what might make the fearless naturalist bow out first, short of—well. They would not come to that, surely.

Overcome with leg cramps and the need for a piss after sitting crouched at his instruments all morning long, Lecointe left his observatory. He was halted almost immediately by the sight of Racovitza hard at work butchering a seal. A blood-spattered apron and massive knife were not usually becoming accessories: except, somehow, on Raco, who looked very good in red.

Raco glanced up and spotted Lecointe; and blew him a kiss with one bloody hand. Lecointe was frozen for a moment, wondering if he should return the gesture; he settled on waving back before hurrying off to relieve himself.

That evening in the wardroom it was Arctowski’s turn on the coelophone. Consummate patriot that he was, he could always be counted on to play Chopin. While cranking it he always had such a beatific expression; tonight Racovitza was sitting backwards on a chair nearby, sketching the scene as the wheezing waltz filled the air.

“Monsieur,” said Lecointe, striding up and standing at attention in front of Racovitza. “May I be honored to have this dance?”

Raco’s brilliant grin appeared. Of all the emotions, delight flattered his features most. Grasping Lecointe’s outstretched hand he sprang up, curtseyed, and allowed himself to be whisked off into a dance around the room, dodging officers and chairs as Lecointe spun him round. “You lead well,” he laughed, to which Lecointe said, “And you follow very well indeed—I’m surprised.”

“How dare you insinuate Romanians don’t know how to dance.”

“Now, I didn’t even—Raco!” Raco, in revenge, had sped up the pace of their dance, and now they were both seriously in danger of tripping and falling.

“Ah, but will you be able to hold my weight for the dip at the end of the figure?”

“Most certainly! How dare you insinuate I won’t be!”

“I don’t believe you, monsieur…”

With that, Raco switched them round; now they began to whirl widdershins about the room, one of Raco’s large hands on the small of Lecointe’s back and the other in an expert leading grip around Lecointe’s fingers. The punch-card stack of the coelophone dwindled on one side and rose on the other, and as the waltz drew to a close, Raco dropped Lecointe to the deck, holding him steady with ease mere inches from the rug. Their faces were quite close together.

“Bravo! Bravo!” shouted Cook, leaping to his feet for a standing ovation.

Cherry/Lillie, post-expedition romance

[(Anonymous)]

Lillie is the mystery girlfriend from the Cherry bio. Can be any mix of fluff/smut but let's face it, it's gonna be sad

FILL: In motion, Cherry/Lillie, post-expedition romance

[(Anonymous)]

“Does Deb get after you, the way he does me?” Cherry asks, tossing down the letter with a frown. “I mean, always asking when you’ll get married, offering to introduce you to girls, and things like that.”

“He means well,” Lillie says.

“Makes me feel rotten.”

“Our friend Deb believes in love. Isn’t that just wonderful to know? And he believes you are worthy of it, and is distressed at the idea of you being denied it. I can’t say I blame him.”

The barest hint of a smile pierces through Cherry’s moue of discomfort. He glances up at Lillie through his lashes, across a table littered with the remnants of a luxurious Lamer breakfast. Through the window of the small parlor where they take their meals swims the golden light of a glorious Hertfordshire summer. Lillie admires the dance of the dust motes suspended; tries to imagine the splendid, unheard music they move to. The dust doesn’t know about the war.

“Put on your specs, darling, why don’t you,” Lillie says, lightly admonishing. “You know I prefer to be really seen by you, not just looked at.”

Cherry reaches across the table and takes his spectacles from where they had lain abandoned beside the teapot. Lillie folds his hands under his chin and holds Cherry’s gaze, trying to embarrass him by thinking terribly dirty things in his direction. They are connected, the two of them—a gossamer braid that grows ever stronger, by the day, the hour, the minute spent in each others’ company. By the end of this precious week Lillie hopes to have entwined his soul with Cherry’s so deeply that they would be able to send each other messages of pleasure from horrid Portsmouth to wonderful Wheathampstead without recourse to earthly devices like the phone or the telegraph.

“Stop it,” says Cherry, the tips of his ears gone red.

“Shan’t. No—don’t you dare look away.”

“You’re horrible.”

“I can be worse. If you want.”

“I’ve only just eaten—Lillie! Oh, come now, please—!”





“I would marry you,” says Cherry, with force. He is always so honest after orgasm; a cloudy solution turning suddenly clear after shaking. “If you were—if I could. I’d want everyone to know. Then Deb wouldn’t be able to say a damn thing about me being so unhappy and lonely. Oh!” Cherry laughed, a bright brittle sound. “Imagine if he knew! Imagine if he knew how happy I was, at this very moment!”

“If you concentrate hard enough,” Lillie says, tracing arcane shapes into Cherry’s downy chest, “he might feel it, through the flux… Perhaps he's sitting down right now, composing a corrective missive, congratulating you on at last finding your lady.”

“He could be your maid of honor,” says Cherry, now stricken with giggles. “They’d report it in the society papers. I can see it: Jessie Debenham wore a gown of finest peach silk… and bride Miss Lillie Ooze, ever the iconoclast, wore nothing at all!”

His face splits in a grin, and Lillie cannot resist: he starts spreading urgent kisses all over Cherry’s face and mouth, pinching at his nipples and tickling his sides and armpits.

He bears bother so well. A creature born for play and joy and very little else: what a pity the world has thrust so much upon him from the start, and continues to. Unnecessary things like money and a large estate and a body which at times is a painful burden. To say nothing of the expectation that he marry—ridiculous. As ridiculous as the idea that Lillie himself would marry! Imagine!

O, would that they had both been born birds… Penguins, perhaps. On the journey home around the Cape, Toffer had shown Lillie his notebook full of the most shocking observations. Adelies, those enlightened creatures, partake plentifully in the vice that, after a minute of tickling, and several more of languorous caresses, Lillie is now contemplating an encore performance of.

“Yes,” says Cherry, “won’t you—?” Reading Lillie’s mind—that, or, feeling the cock resting against his thigh begin to stir into hardness again. In any case, the answer was—would always be—yes.

Cook and Amundsen force feed penguin to de Gerlache

[(Anonymous)]

You have absolute carte blanche to turn this sexy if you want. Or it can stay gen. It can be humorous. Or it can be dark (consider how de Gerlache’s instinctive reaction to direct challenges to his authority is… pretending he didn’t say no).

But no matter what, we need to get some scurvy-curing bird steak into that commandant!!

Lecointe or others being involved is welcome too.

FILL: Cook/Amundsen/de Gerlache, E, dubcon & forcefeeding

[(Anonymous)]

At first he is sure it must be another nightmare. A pair of them, come to find him in his sickbed, more solid than the hordes of phantasmal horrors that dog his mind with flashbulbs and accusations—and Cook's rough hand grasps him by the chin, not softly but not unkindly. The measured efficiency of a doctor. He smells earthy and real, alive, immediate. Cook peers at his waxy face, his glassy darting eyes. Puts a finger on his racing pulse and clucks, an incongruously motherly sound for such a large man. Palpates around the collarbones standing far too sharply through the skin.

"He's in a bad way," he says, turning to his co-conspirator. Amundsen keeps those piercing eyes fixed on him.

"I am not surprised." Finally, de Gerlache finds his voice.

"What—what is the meaning of this?" he demands. "You have intruded upon my private quarters." Both men act as if he had not spoken.

"You still refuse the fresh meat," Amundsen says. De Gerlache wishes he had made it a question.

"...I do," he says, attempting to wrest back some authority. "I—the provisions that our sponsors so generously sent with us are more than sufficient, scientifically speaking. Doctor Cook, your fanaticism for rawness and the company of the bonfire, while inspired—" Amundsen pins him with a look, some enigmatic emotion searing in his gaze—pity, perhaps, or shame? Disgust? A queer and complicated vindication? And then Cook nudges his shoulder with his own, a typically jocular gesture, and Amundsen blinks. The moment burns away, and when he looks at de Gerlache again, there remains only that cold and gymnastic analysis, the gaze with which Amundsen addresses doomed penguins and troublesome arrangements of ice. Despite the stuffiness of his cabin, the uncomfortable heat drawn even higher by two other men so close, he shivers.

"You knew he would," Cook says quietly to Amundsen, then, as if remembering their patient, louder, "Despite my repeated very strong medical suggestions and the obvious results in most of the crew," and his hand tightens on de Gerlache's jaw, as if to emphasize the distance between the men standing over the bed, strong and bright-eyed and hale, and their sagging, useless commandant. "What was the point of hiring a doctor if you won't listen to him?" There's the familiar note of chiding, the broad earnest concern of care so beloved by the men, but beneath that there is a—bitterness, a deeply personal frustration which something in de Gerlache thrills to hear.

"Yes," Amundsen says, blunt. "I knew. I only wanted to give him one last chance at protocol, out of respect." To that the doctor says something de Gerlache cannot catch—a dash of slang or English, perhaps, the tone intimate and wry. Amundsen does not smile, but it might be his equivalent, the way he tells Cook without looking "It is the time."

Amundsen's hand goes to de Gerlache's wrist. The smell of blood explodes from Cook, expanding to fill the whole of the cabin, which has never felt smaller, as he rummages in his bag. For a mad half-moment, he thinks deliriously that they want him dead so badly, so baldly, he can smell it. A bloodlust hanging obviously in the air.

"Is this a mutiny?" he snaps, voice pitching up with alarm. Cook laughs.

"It is almost the opposite," Amundsen tells him, voice cool with distaste. "You cannot lead, in this state. You cannot command. Were I to leave you so, it would be a dereliction of my duty for which I would most likely be promoted." Cook shows him his hand—a penguin steak, uncooked and bloody. The smell grows stronger, and de Gerlache feels dizzy. His mouth fills with saliva, not in the way of hunger but fighting nausea. He is suddenly very aware of all the blood in his body, pounding in his head and other, worse places—he ignores it—the weakness of his limbs.

"So this is a medical intervention," he reasons, betrayed. Cook shrugs gamely. Amundsen gives him a withering look.

"It does not surprise me that you take it as something so... personal," he says. De Gerlache's cheeks heat, and he does not dare to glance downward at himself. He doesn't want to know what they see, a man weak and ravished from sickness, and he feels transfixed by Amundsen's accusatory eyes.

"Lecointe," he says, quietly at first, then as loudly as he can muster. "Lecointe!"

"He will not come," Cook informs him, and de Gerlache is afraid to ask—have they arranged a distraction for him elsewhere, did he know of this plan... He relinquishes his hope quickly and quietly, as he has grown practiced at. Amundsen frowns.

"No one will come," Amundsen says. "This is for the expedition's good. You are going to eat." The next moment is somewhat of a blur. He ends up with Amundsen behind him, sitting on his bed and pinning him in his lap, de Gerlache's arms trapped in an iron bear hug. He tries to close his knees, but Cook stands between them, leaning close. He struggles.

"Stop it," Amundsen says directly in his ear. He has the natural ring of command, and an instinctive submission pours through de Gerlache's body a moment before the shame follows. He keeps his mouth shut, daring a small shake of his head, as Cook tentatively prods the steak against his lips. Cook prods more strongly. A part of de Gerlache wants very badly to lick his lips, his nose assaulted with the thick iron tang, but he resists. Cook gives a small, stifled sigh and reaches up with his other hand to pinch his nose shut.

It is an eternity with his air growing thinner, their unyielding grip on him. He shakes. For a moment, he thinks that it feels like climbing a mountain, oxygen dwindling as a higher altitude is reached—his jaw pops open. Without missing a beat, Cook lets go and thrusts his fingers into de Gerlache's mouth, spreading it roughly open. De Gerlache gags around the hand and tells himself his reluctance to bite is for fear of disabling their only doctor, and nothing at all to do with the pleasant stretch of Cook, a faint metallic aftertaste reminiscent of the darkroom under his nails.

A mouthful of penguin is inserted, and Cook withdraws, folding his mouth shut around it and cupping his jaw too tight to open. De Gerlache glares at him, and would glare at Amundsen if he could turn round.

"Is he chewing?" Amundsen asks. "It doesn't feel like he's chewing."

"No," Cook drawls, a touch annoyed. The hand over his mouth is not nearly cruel enough, but the faltering of Cook's trademark bedside warmth is closer, to what he needs for this to nourish him, is getting there, so he writhes against Amundsen's grip again and feels it tighten. Cook squeezes his face. "I can feel the bulge in his cheek." (De Gerlache tries not to think about another way Cook might be moved to say as much, and fails. His cheeks must seem inflamed under his grasp.) Amundsen makes a thoughtful noise, and it vibrates through de Gerlache's spine where they touch.

"I could chew it for him," Amundsen volunteers doubtfully. De Gerlache barely has the chance to let the panic of that idea bowl him over, the thought of Amundsen leaning over him like a baby bird, those harrowing eyes unavoidably close to his own, forcing a disgusting lump of meat-stuff into his mouth with his plundering, muscled tongue—before Cook is shaking his head.

"He needs the blood, and the exercise of his jaw. Like leaving it uncooked. For the full benefits, one must come as close as possible to leaning over and taking a chunk out of the live penguin." His eyes dance with this macabre fancy. Amundsen says something else, and his moustache tickles de Gerlache's neck. Cook smirks. "Yes, but don't let him choke to death. Would be counterproductive."

"You are getting enough air, aren't you," Amundsen says to him, and de Gerlache really thinks that one ought to have been a question. When he's slow to answer, Amundsen gives him an impatient squeeze, as if forcing the last drop from a waterskin, and the surprised puff of air that squeaks out of him against Cook's hand seems to satisfy them.

"I only hope I won't have to move his jaw for him. Like a nutcracker, hah. Your jaw and teeth are not too weak, are they?" Cook gives him the slightest bit of slack. "You can shake your head or nod." Indignantly, de Gerlache shakes his head, and goaded, seeing no way through but capitulation, begins to chew. Cook watches him like a hawk, and though he cannot see Amundsen regarding him the same he surely feels it. The meat is an assault on his senses, bursting oily and metallic over his tongue. He swallows and swallows, gagging on blood and fat and feeling bowled over by the first fresh food he has had in ages. He would spit it out, throw it up and out, but he cannot. De Gerlache keeps his head down and chews. When he tries to swallow it, finally, the mass sticks in his throat. He coughs and stutters against Cook's hand. When it is withdrawn, he is still too breathless and penguin-mouthed to speak.

"Poor man," Cook says idly. "Can only get it down like this. I'll be careful," and he lifts a waterskin to his mouth. What pours forth is not enough, de Gerlache still feels dry and smothered with blubber, but Cook seems reluctant to give him more for fear of drowning him. "There you go."

"Perhaps—" and there is a word de Gerlache knows he doesn't know, Norwegian brusque in Amundsen's voice. "To help."

"Oh, good idea," Cook says, and he massages the lump down de Gerlache's struggling throat with attentive, merciless circles. They come to the end of the first steak like this, Cook and Amundsen un-talkative with their focus on refining a procedure, and de Gerlache unable to converse. He feels small and thwarted and confused and even sicker, possibly, penned in by men and swollen with penguin.

"No more," he begs, as Cook wipes his hand on de Gerlache's shirt and goes for the bag again. "Please, no more. I have—I have eaten, please..."

"That is nowhere near enough," Amundsen informs him. "We are balancing weeks of irresponsibility." De Gerlache whimpers, and it is a pitiful sound, meant to be entirely misery, but he is only a man, and they are being pragmatic and cruel to him, standing close... Cook looks down.

"Ah," he says. "Hmm... Would that help you, do you think?" He has not seized de Gerlache's face again, and he takes the opportunity to look down and notice that beneath Cook's rough, patched trousers there is evidence of a parallel enjoyment. He nods, humiliated. And yet there is no corresponding sign from Amundsen. Cook looks past him openly. "If it is in the service of getting down his portion of meat," he argues. "...Which is to say, for the whole of the expedition." Amundsen grunts, and with de Gerlache's next squirm, he feels Amundsen's cock begin to stiffen against his ass. De Gerlache has the sudden, mad urge to laugh. For that—an aim too far dissociated from the ultimate goal of polar exploration—to be the shame that stayed one's hand, oceans and ice-fields away from female companionship! Only Amundsen, he thinks, not without bitterness for the man's preternatural self-restraint. Singularity of desire. Only Amundsen, explorer extraordinaire more rarefied than them all. This is a mutiny, in its way, no matter what they professed.

This time, de Gerlache does not resist when Cook begins to feed him the second steak. The fingers ram open his mouth anyway, but he laps at them pathetically, like an underfed hound—even the slightly unbathed and workaday savour of Cook's hands are delicious against the cold, greasy penguin. Cook chuckles indulgently.

"There we are," he says. "Hungry, were you? You don't have to deny it anymore. We'll make sure you get what you need."

"What we all need," Amundsen says somewhat pointedly, and is ignored. He grinds against de Gerlache, who feels himself beginning to truly melt into the hold. The second and third steaks go by easily. When he gags, Cook pets his hair and shushes, or gives a casual squeeze to his erection. Each touch leaves him dazed and quiescent for more. They surprised him in his nightshirt, and the fabric offers almost no protection. A wet spot grows, marring the white. Amundsen, for his part, gives the occasional nip, almost surgical in its harsh exactitude, to his shoulder and the base of his throat. De Gerlache cannot recall—it seems foolish, to be so shaken by a love-bite or two, the revelation that Amundsen, too, desires, but their methods are effective. He feels bloated and sated already, and yet every chew and swallow is less effortful. His awareness of his recoiling tongue shrinks to an acute wish that someone would kiss him.

"That's the last of it," Cook says, and de Gerlache hates the taste of blood, and penguin especially, a curdled, oily salt-fish quality to it, but he cannot stop his head from bending forward and carefully licking the remainder of the blood from between Cook's thick fingers, the folds of his knuckles. He makes a surprised, pleased sound, and de Gerlache feels aglow. He swallows, and swallows again. His throat feels creaky.

"Please," he says, again. He motions jerkily with his head to Cook's erection, now straining against his pants. He would not hope for—still more, normally, except for the fact that. Well. Amundsen has not released his arms. "I can—in my—?"

"Well, if you feel you're up to swallowing," Cook says magnanimously, and fishes it out. "You seemed to be having trouble with the penguin." De Gerlache chooses to ignore that bit of indignity, and surges forward as Amundsen shoves him, landing in an ungraceful heap on the floor by the bed, at Cook's feet, still walled in beneath and between the two of them. Amundsen's hands have returned to his wrists, pulling him back like manacles, but de Gerlache does not need the use of his hands to do this. He swallows Cook to the root and enjoys the yelp of surprise. He licks enthusiastically, ignoring the tears that spring to his eyes. They were already welling up. De Gerlache shall replace the horrid fishy, sanguine penguin flavour, he thinks with some satisfaction, and Cook pulls back to come on his face with a shout.

By pure luck he's avoided his eyes, but the rest must be dealt with. Apparently lacking a handkerchief, Cook runs his fingers through the drips on his cheeks and temples, feeding them back into his mouth. He receives his spend hungrily. De Gerlache feels too awkward to make mention of Amundsen, but neither of them seem concerned, making motions to depart.

He wipes a hand across his mouth, and stands. He draws himself up as if his much-abused nightshirt is full dress uniform and his claustrophobic, lonely cabin is his wardroom.

"I thank you, doctor, officer," de Gerlache says. Make this not a mutiny, he thinks. He dares them to remember how he had said no. There is no threat to his authority if it was all something he allowed. "For showing me the importance of an anti-scorbutic diet. Your loyal concern is appreciated." He trails off, unable to say more, but it seems neither are they, and they depart without much further comment or visible emotion. The back of his throat tastes of Cook's hands and cock, and his ribs feel packed with penguin. A part of de Gerlache still feels starved and lightless and unwell. Another part, though, he thinks is stronger, more certain and awake, than he has been in months. His stomach growls.

Shackleton/Worsley, stress relief (spanking?)

[(Anonymous)]

Shackleton is frustrated and anxious while trying to arrange the rescue of the men left on Elephant Island. Good old Wuzzles is happy to help his captain let off some steam. Bonus points for background Shackles/Frank Wild

FILL: Irrepressible Optimism, Shackleton/Worsley, E, spanking

[(Anonymous)]

“This fucking pack ice!” Shackleton growled, slamming the heel of his palm against the bulkhead wall of his cabin hard enough that the shaving mirror tacked to the opposite wall rattled ominously.

Typically, the Boss had refused Captain Thom’s offer of the mildly more spacious captain’s cabin of the whaling vessel Southern Sky, opting instead for the relative privacy of the smaller first mate’s cabin. Tom Crean and I shared the double bunks of the second and third mate’s cabin. These agreed-upon arrangements notwithstanding, I appeared to be spending the bulk of my time with Shackleton as the boat picked its way through the pack toward Elephant Island. Usually I found myself crowded into the Boss’s single-bunk cabin, the two of us tucked closely between the little duffel pack we had been gifted of whalers’ reverently donated sweaters and the built-in writing desk with its multitudinous stacks of charts and navigational instruments.

I fervently hoped that the rest of the volunteer crew of the Sky simply chalked my excessive spending of time with Shackleton up to the fact that I was the now-renowned navigator of our expedition, and as such was helping to guide the ship in its slow progress toward Elephant Island—-not the fact that each evening, and sometimes in the morning, too, and on a couple of instances during the afternoon watch, he and I and sometimes Crean as well were engaging in vigorous and enthusiastic sodomy in various configurations.

“We’ll get there, Boss,” I said in my most reassuring tones, though I too was mired in worry for the men we had left on Elephant Island. Calculating Shackleton’s moods as quickly in my mind as I had learned to calculate the position of the Caird relative to the horizon, to the stars, to the impossibly distant idea of South Georgia Island when we were adrift in the vast turbulent waters of the Atlantic, I tried another tactic: “We’ve certainly been in more desperate straits than these.”

“Our situation is not the desperate one!” Shackleton roared, turning on me. Although this was part of my plan I still experienced a moment of panic: in such a small space as this cabin, such a large man as Ernest Shackleton cut a rather intimidating figure.

“Right,” I continued, attempting an air of nonchalance, “but you must certainly admit that after a warm bath and a shave, the outlook brightens consid—-”

“You, of all people,” Shackleton interrupted, “you should know it is not my welfare for which I’m concerned!” In his vehemence Shackleton had crowded me up against the bunk, leaning intimidatingly over me so that I was quite bent backwards. This close our thighs were laid together knee to hip, the familiar comforting warmth of his body radiating through his trousers and sending an instinctual curl of arousal through me. This must have shown on my face, because the Boss abruptly stepped back and allowed me to (reluctantly) straighten. The cloud of emotion that had darkened his features passed and he gazed at me critically. “You’re riling me on purpose,” he said.

I shrugged, caught out. “It might help to let off some steam?”

His eyes tracked over my face. Our faces were still too wind- and frost-burnt to show much flush, for which I was abruptly glad, because I was quickly becoming embarrassed about the obviousness of my little scheme. Of course the Boss would see right through it. Of course he would be so sensitive to any member of his crew—-my own closeness with him notwithstanding—-as to think critically before allowing frustration to overwhelm him.

“What did you have in mind?” Shackleton asked skeptically.

I turned about, leaning over the edge of the bed so that my arse was pertly displayed for him. “You could try spanking me?”

He folded himself over me, front to my back, touching his forehead to the nape of my neck, the soft waves of his thick, curly hair tickling the exposed skin there. He slid a rough, splayed-wide palm familiarly under the hem of my sweater. His large body trembled like a shock went through it and it took me a moment to realize he was laughing. 



“Skipper, you are incorrigible,” he huffed against my back.

“Is that a no?”

He laughed softly again, then pulled back enough to deliver a sharp slap to one buttock. “No.”

I let out an involuntary yelp; the slap was delicious in its abruptness and Shackleton’s amused acquiescence was its own separate, unique delight. I admit to, historically, having something of a taste for harsher treatment: the incomparable delight found in the juxtaposition of soft words and sharp, stinging slaps. The Boss of course knew of my predilection but something in his nature was usually compelled toward gentler treatment. The evening’s development was a welcome surprise.

“Not too loud now, hm, Skipper?” Shackleton murmured as he shifted behind me, petting and gentling all up and down my flanks and thighs as though I were putty and he a master craftsman. “Don’t want to wake up Tom. Or do you?” With this he gave me another quick slap.

I was able to keep almost quiet at this one, though a surprised squeak may have somehow made its way out of my throat and into the close air of the cabin. Beneath the material of my trousers I felt the tingling warmth imparted by both slaps blossoming upon my skin. I was facedown in Shackleton’s bed, in whose cozy embrace the man himself spent little enough time that I rather had to imagine his familiar comforting scent—-yet even just the knowledge that it was he, of all people, who slept here somehow increased the pleasure I felt at being pressed there.

The trousers I had been gifted by some of the whalers at Grytviken were slightly oversized, which made it that much easier for Shackleton to tug them over the curve of my arse to let the material crumple around my calves. He touched the newly bared skin as gently as he could with his callused, frostburnt hand; the sweet barely-there pressure of his touch contrasted with the rough scrape of the pads of his fingers just heightened my arousal. The first real slap sent a jolt through my whole body; I jerked forward, hands curling into fists in the soft woolen blanket, tasting its scent as I gasped. Heat bloomed beneath my skin. Before I could recover he slapped me again, on the opposite cheek this time, and surprise as much as pleasure drew another little yelp from my mouth.

“I did tell you to keep quiet,” Shackleton growled from somewhere behind and above me.

“Hurgh,” I replied eloquently.

Another slap. What had previously been tingling warmth upon the surface of the skin turned to sharp heat located somewhere deep within my muscles and bones. Another slap, and another. I noticed distantly, as though it were happening to someone else, that the part of the blanket in the vicinity of my mouth was wet with saliva. The sharp, meaty sound of each stroke seemed very far distant, overwhelmed by the deep, quick throbbing of my own blood in my ears.

I quickly lost count, drowned entirely in the sensation of each stroke which rose in succession with the others like waves building upon one another in the ocean: so that each was not a distinct experience but instead the towering end result of their combination crashed over and through me with the same inexorable consistency as the endless wash of the roughest seas we’d traversed in the Caird, until I could no longer remember existing in any state other than the one I currently endured.

The strikes ceased; all at once the elbows upon which I weakly propped myself gave out and I slumped forward against the blanket of the bunk, the ridge of its edge pressing uncomfortably into my stomach. My lips and tongue felt dry and thick, the sensitive skin there strangely cool from my open-mouthed panting. The surface of my arse burned as though recovering from frostbite.

“Let me,” the Boss gasped from behind me, clearly out of breath, “let me,” and he maneuvered my weak body so that I was further up the bed. The touch of his broad rough hands on the newly sensitive skin of my arse was enough to startle a desperate little sob from me, which he quickly quieted with an incongruously gentle brush of his lips to my tailbone. The pressure of his hands stroking over my arse, tenderly exposing my hole, was painful and delicious.

The first touch of his hot tongue to me was transcendent; even before he had really got started I was coming undone from the sweet juxtaposition of the soft slick gentleness of his mouth and the intense burning heat of my spanked-sensitive skin. He was relentless in this as all things, pressing his thick hand into the tight sweat-damp place between my legs to caress my taut bollocks and then, to my relief, the slick curve of my achingly hard cock.

I must have made some kind of sound at this because Shackleton shushed me. “Close, Skipper?” he asked wickedly, mouth moving wetly against the skin of my arse.

“Yes, Boss.”

His big hand stroked me quickly and roughly, his tongue delved deeply into me; like this I edged closer and closer to release, until the hand of his that was not engaged with my cock delivered one final stinging slap to my arse, tipping me over the edge, and I was swept away entirely.

Shackleton gentled and petted me through orgasm so that when I finally surfaced from the ripcurrent drag of pleasure I was comfortably ensconced in his embrace, held tightly against his broad chest by those capable arms. I was absently impressed that he had managed to maneuver himself into the tiny bunk alongside my uselessly limp body. That, if nothing else, surely confirmed to me that he would be able to wend this bulky ship successfully through the pack ice to rescue those we had left at Elephant Island.

This thought would amuse the Boss, I thought; I should tell him. His chest rose and fell beneath my cheek as he breathed deeply and steadily. I should tell him. I hoped I would remember it when I awoke.

Rossier, power play

[(Anonymous)]

James decides to take the new middie under his wing, show him the ropes, make him feel welcome, have him suck dick, &c &c

Re: Rossier, power play

[(Anonymous)]

Yes please!

Botverse Fitzjames/Botverse Gore, unrequited desire

[(Anonymous)]

Botverse JFJ is crazed with unrequited lust over Botverse Gore. The more demented a form this takes the better. Bonus points if you can work in Gore's fursona Reginald Balltorture.

Re: Botverse Fitzjames/Botverse Gore, unrequited desire

[(Anonymous)]

losing my fucking GOURD, op!!!!! need this!!!!!!!!!

Henry Le Vesconte/Henrietta Le Feuvre, punishment kink/praise kink

[(Anonymous)]

Dundy is desperate to be punished, Hettie wants to be told she's sweet and good, they both have to grapple with these Confusing New Urges in a mutually pleasurable way.

Mertz/Ninnis, size kink

[(Anonymous)]

A guy so tall must have some impressive length in other places, right?

And/or general height difference related comedy.

shackleton/crean/worsley at grytviken

[(Anonymous)]

please demolish wuzzles but otherwise i’m not picky

FILL: Three Men in a Tub, Shackleton/Crean/Worsley, E, cw literal filth and whale oil as lube

[(Anonymous)]

[Consider your Wuzzles duly demolished. Enjoy!]

The tin bathtub is barely large enough to fit a grown man, but sloshing with steaming water, it is the best thing any of them have seen in months. The housekeeper empties the last scalding kettleful in and shuts the door behind her, leaving the three of them staring at it like desert travellers at a mirage.

“You first, Boss,” Worsley says gallantly.

“No, no, you navigated us safely here,” Shackleton replies firmly.

Crean nods in agreement.

“Go on, Skipper, you’ve earned it.”

Worsley hesitates another moment, until Shackleton stares him down.

“Get in the bath and that’s an order.”

“Yes, Boss,” Worsley says meekly, a twinkle in his eye.

He strips off unselfconsciously, letting out a noise of disgust at the way his long underwear has to be peeled away from his skin. Crean laughs in sympathy. The other two are undressing as well, realising that they can finally be free of the clothing that has become like a second skin. Crean gets tangled in his shirt until Shackleton helps extract him, and he in turn helps pull Shackleton’s trousers away.

Their laughter turns gleeful as they shed the last of their filthy garments, and take in each other’s comically dreadful appearances: blubber-stained, wind-chapped, and frost-bitten on their extremities, faces swarthy and bearded, while the remainder of their bodies display an unhealthy pallor, gaunt and goose-pimpling at the unaccustomed exposure.

“What a sight we are,” Shackleton exclaims, striding purposefully to the tub and taking up the large sponge beside it. “Come on, then, Skipper.”

Worsley dips a toe in and withdraws it quickly, with a hiss of pain. Shackleton tests the water himself with a hand.

“Well, it won’t stay hot for long,” he says, and dunks the sponge in. “At least get that face of yours cleaned up while you wait.” He pulls Worsley down to kneel over the tub, and sets to work on the layers of grime on his face. “You too, Tom, come on.”

Crean joins them, plunging his hands in and groaning. They clean themselves bit by bit, taking turns immersing in the tub, scrubbing one another’s backs and splashing water all over the floor. When the water turns black they sheepishly request a fresh tub, but the motherly housekeeper seems more pitying than annoyed as she tends to their request.

It is Worsley’s turn to get in when the tub is refilled, and Shackleton has him lean forward after he fills up the water jug.

“Tom, will you do the honours?”

“With pleasure, Boss,” Crean replies with a grin, and gradually empties the jug over Worsley’s head as Shackleton scrubs at his hair.

Worsley actually moans at the feeling of Shackleton’s fingers on his scalp, drifting into a torpor of agreeable sensation as the matted hair untangles and the dirt washes away.

“Come on, Crean’s turn,” Shackleton says eventually, and Worsley suddenly realises just how thoroughly his body has registered its pleasure.

“Been a while since this happened,” he says with an embarrassed grimace, indicating his condition.

“Oh dear,” says Shackleton with a laugh, “what are we going to do about that, then?”

“I’m sorry, just give me a minute,” Worsley says, flustered.

“Don’t be,” Crean says, with a glance to Shackleton for confirmation. “I’m sure we can help you out.”

Worsley stands, awkwardly, and Crean re-fills the jug and hands it to him before sitting in the bath himself. He turns Worsley gently by the hips to face him, then grasps Worsley’s arousal, tugging it into full hardness.

“Go on,” Shackleton says, nudging the forgotten jug in Worsley’s hands. He wets Crean’s hair in an ungainly splash, and Shackleton lathers up his hands. “Ready?” he says to Crean, with a grin. Crean nods, eyes glinting, and Shackleton sinks his fingers into his hair, pressing Crean’s mouth forward onto Worsley’s prick. Worsley almost lets out a shout at the contact, and Crean makes a satisfied noise around his mouthful.

Over and over, he sucks Worsley deeper and then pulls away, pushing his head back into Shackleton’s hands like a pleased housecat and tilting it this way and that. Worsley isn’t sure whether he or Crean is enjoying himself more, or even Shackleton, with his proud smile at seeing his men happy. Worsley clutches the water jug with both hands, afraid of dropping it on Crean’s head, and occasionally sloshing more water down when Shackleton reminds him to.

When Crean’s hair is rinsed, he pulls away from Worsley’s prick with an obscene sound and shakes his head, scattering water droplets.

“Your turn, Boss,” he says, rising from the tub, and Worsley is gratified to see that both of them are hard too now. They change places, Crean giving Worsley’s ass a grope in passing. While Crean works on Shackleton’s hair, Worsley leans over the side and takes Shackleton’s prick in hand, as sturdy and thick as the rest of him.

“Oh, that’s good,” Shackleton groans, leaning back, and Worsley glows at the praise. He is aching by the time they are all three clean and towelled off, and by unspoken agreement they tumble together into the double bed at their disposal.

Crean likes to kiss, Worsley discovers, as he ends up with the sailor’s powerful body pressed against his front, and Shackleton hot and hard against his back. Worsley opens his mouth to Crean’s tongue and ruts frantically against his hip while Shackleton’s hands spread his thighs apart. He is too far gone to be self-conscious, even when a blunt finger presses against his hole.

“Just a moment,” Shackleton murmurs, pulling away to fumble with the lamp beside the bed. Then he is back, with greased fingers and a sudden whaley aroma. Worsley laughs in recognition.

“The pleasures of South Georgia, eh?”

Shackleton chuckles.

“I’d rather be covered in whale oil here, than any other place you could name right now.” The laughter stills as they all remember just how many times and ways they might have died on the way to where they are. Shackleton presses a single fervent kiss to the base of Worsley’s neck. “Thank you for getting us here, Skipper.” He finds one of Crean’s hands and kisses it too. “Thank you both.”

It is Crean who breaks the solemn moment.

“Well, are you going to fuck him, Boss, or shall I do it for you?”

Shackleton’s sudden intake of breath in his ear makes Worsley shiver.

“I’ll go first if you don’t mind, gentlemen.”

“Please,” Worsley manages, then devolves into an incoherent stream of begging and praise as Shackleton presses his fingers into him, and Crean takes both their pricks in hand to frig them slowly. Shackleton is careful, even as Worsley writhes back against him, seeking more contact. Finally, he deems him prepared, and the next time Worsley thrusts back, he meets the blunt head of Shackleton’s cock.

As he sinks into him, Shackleton wraps his arm around Worsley’s chest, holding him close. He is surprisingly quiet even as his thrusts pick up pace, huffing out soft grunts. Crean, by contrast, becomes eloquent in pleasure.

“Look at you, Skipper darlin’, taking him so well,” he says, working his hand faster over Worsley’s cock. “I’ll bet you’ve got the sweetest little arsehole, the way the Boss is enjoying it. I’m going to have you when he’s done, all stretched out and filled up with him.”

“Jesus, Tom,” Shackleton pants, “the mouth on you.”

Crean grins and puts his mouth to work swallowing Worsley’s moans as he reaches his crisis and spills over both of them, trembling hard. Shackleton follows him over the edge with a few last hard thrusts and a muffled curse. After a long moment, he pulls out and flops onto his back.

“All yours,” he says with a wink.

“All right, darlin’?” Crean asks Worsley, pushing his damp hair out of his eyes. Worsley’s eyes are wet but he smiles back.

“Give me a sip of water and I’m ready for anything,” he says, but his arms tremble as he pushes himself onto an elbow to drink from the glass that Shackleton hands him. He gulps half of it down before remembering to offer it around. “How do you want me?” he asks when the glass is done, and Crean rolls him onto his knees and elbows.

“Fuck,” Crean says vehemently as he presses into him. “Oh, fuck, that’s good.” Worsley clutches Shackleton’s outstretched hand, buries his face in the pillow, and moans. Crean grips him by the hips, setting up a steady pace. “Skipper, darlin’, I’m not going to last long. Tight as a virgin’s cunny, you are. Twice as wet. Boss filled you up good. I’m gonna–fuck–yes–”

Crean pulls out as he climaxes, pumping his straining cock and painting Worsley’s ass cheeks and pink, swollen hole with his spend. Worsley’s prick twitches and dribbles as he gasps for breath.

The bed shifts and Shackleton gets up. He returns in a moment with the sponge, dunked in the still-tepid bathwater. Worsley is distantly aware of being cleaned up, but he is snoring by the time Shackleton finishes. The other two settle on either side of him again, pulling the blankets up and slotting their bodies together with the ease of long companionship in cold close quarters.

“You know what I’m looking forward to, Boss?” comes Crean’s voice, muffled against Worsley’s shoulder.

“I tremble to think,” Shackleton murmurs, half asleep himself.

“I’m really, really, looking forward to a shave.”

Mertz/Ninnis, first time

[(Anonymous)]

Preferably so sickeningly sweet I get hyperglycemia just from reading it.

FILL: Sunrise, Mertz/Ninnis, E

[(Anonymous)]

Despite the jeers and penguin mating calls (courtesy of Hurley, of course) that follow them to their hotel room, Xavier and Belgrave have the purest of intentions when they retire together for the night.

They sleep—just sleep, despite the luxury of a closed door between them and the rest of the expeditioners put up at the same hotel—unclothed and uncovered, letting the cool night breeze off the ocean dry the sweat that beads where their bodies touch.

Belgrave sleeps with his head pillowed on Xavier’s chest. When his eyelids flutter, Xavier knows he is dreaming of Cape Denison, of the dogs, and of falling. But his eyelashes catch on the dark curls of hair that cover Xavier’s chest, and that is enough to send Belgrave back off to sleep, murmuring commands at the dogs and wrapping a long, thin arm tighter around Xavier’s middle. Occasionally he will make to roll over, and when Xavier isn’t awake to steady him, Belgrave winces in pain from his broken ribs and wakes with a gasp, and Xavier will pet his hair and soothe him, easing him back down until they are once again pressed together and sleep welcomes its arms to them again.

They both awaken at an early hour, unused to their surroundings. The sun’s long rays haven’t yet touched the Tasmanian horizon. The soft sound of the ocean calls them back to sleep, but Belgrave rubs his cheek against Xavier’s chest and whispers touch me, please in such a way that Xavier’s desire immediately rouses him to full consciousness.

He answers by rolling them over, pushing Belgrave onto his back, buffeted by a pillow on either side of his healing ribs. This position isn’t a new one; windy winter nights saw them tucked into the same sleeping bag on the top bunk, rutting against each other and silencing each other’s gasps in soft, breathy kisses as the wind howled against the sides of the hut. But this—the nakedness—is new, and Xavier squeezes in against Belgrave’s side to give his hands purchase to wander. His eyes wander, too, and Belgrave flushes, pink and prettier than any girl Xavier has ever seen.

“Don’t stare,” he says. His arms move to cover his chest but Xavier stops his hands, holding his wrists tightly.

“Let me look,” he says. “Please.”

“I’m not—“

“You are.”

Belgrave’s protests stop and Xavier looks his fill. Pink cheeks framing a shy smile. A long, pale neck that Xavier kisses, down to a sharp clavicle and then back up to an ear. He can hear Belgrave’s breath catch in his throat. He sucks a mark in the space behind Belgrave’s ear. Belgrave squirms and whimpers; Xavier does it again, and again, biting and sucking and licking just to squeeze more helpless sounds out of his friend.

“Everyone will see,” Belgrave protests.

Xavier kisses him. “Only you would be grumpy during sex. Wear a scarf. I will give you mine.”

“That’s not the—oh!” Xavier’s ploy at distracting him from further grumpiness works, and he tightens his fist around Belgrave’s length. It’s long like he is and graceful like he isn’t, and Xavier loves every inch of him. He wants to spend the hours until dawn mapping the newly revealed expanse of Belgrave’s body. He wants to revisit the newly-charted terrain after lunch, following the map made by his eyes with his hands and then with his mouth. And then after dinner, he wants to have Belgrave’s hands on him—in him—until they know each other’s bodies better than they know their own. But there is time, now. Time and a bed and a locked door and each other, whole and safe and happy.

“I want you closer,” Belgrave says. “I want you on top of me again.”

Xavier complies, straddling Belgrave’s lap and laying down, keeping himself propped up on his arms so he doesn’t put too much pressure on the bruises that still cover Belgrave’s ribcage from the fall. He feels a pair of gangly arms wrap around his back, holding him close.

“Closer,” Belgrave says. Xavier tucks his chin against Belgrave’s shoulder. “Not enough, I think—that is to say—I think I’d like—“ Belgrave trails off. Xavier un-tucks his chin to find a deep crimson blush across Belgrave’s face.

“Ah,” he says. “You want me inside?”

Belgrave covers his face with his hands. “You can’t just say it out loud!”

“Why not? It is what we both want, yes?” Xavier pauses. “Or no?”

“Yes! Very much! But you can’t just say it! It’s—I mean, it’s—it’s just not done!“

Xavier tries and fails to hide his grin. “Nin, you are the one I love more than anyone, but you are very silly sometimes. It is only us in this room. Tell me what you want.”

Belgrave uncovers his face. He’s looking at the ceiling rather than Xavier, but he manages to choke out, “There is a certain handsome Swiss bloke named Mertz who should make love to me. Now.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now would be preferable.”

“What if your Swiss lover is busy? Perhaps he has a shed to build.”

Belgrave purses his lips and gives Xavier a Look. “Xav, if you don’t get down there and put your fingers in my arse immediately I’m going to go find another handsome Swiss bloke to do it for you.”

Xavier chuckles, smacks a kiss on Belgrave’s cheek, and crawls down the bed until he is in a position to hoist one of Belgrave’s ridiculously long legs over his shoulder. He kisses the crease of skin where Belgrave’s thigh meets his hip. Belgrave’s hips buck up, and a charmingly embarrassing giggle erupts from Belgrave’s mouth. He slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Your moustache tickles,” he says. Xavier leans down and nuzzles his skin with his moustache, just to be a nuisance. Belgrave’s leg kicks up into the air and his belly heaves with suppressed laughter. “Stop that!”

“You are too cute,” Xavier says. “I will never stop.”

“I’ll make you stop! I’ll jiu jitsu you to the ground!”

“You are welcome to try.” Xavier attacks with a flurry of kisses over Belgrave’s hips and down his legs, taking extra care to rub his moustache against the sensitive skin of Belgrave’s inner thighs and up the length of his yard. Belgrave is laughing so hard he is crying, and he grabs Xavier by the hair to finally pull him away.

“Ouch,” he says, still giggling. His other hand—the one not buried in Xavier’s hair—is holding his side. “Dad won’t be pleased when he finds out you’ve re-broken my rib.”
Xavier worms his way back up the bed to lie beside Belgrave. “Did I hurt you, Nin?”
Belgrave shakes his head. “No, just a bit sore from the laughing. No more tickling tonight, yeah?”

“But there is one more place I would like to tickle,” Xavier says.

“Only one?”

“Yes,” Xavier says with an innocent smile, “only one.”

“I suppose that’s alright, then. If it will make you happy. Just be careful.”
Xavier doesn’t respond, but shuffles back to the foot of the bed and lifts both of Belgrave’s legs over his shoulders. He gets down on his stomach, patting Belgrave’s knees until they are bent and his feet rest on Xavier’s shoulders. He takes a deep breath, exhaling softly against the base of Belgrave’s hard cock, but his quarry is deeper south. Xavier lowers his head and licks a wide, hot stripe over Belgrave’s untouched entrance.

“Oh! Fu—God—Fu—Blimey!” Belgrave finally settles on an exclamation. Xavier is close enough to see the ring of muscle contract as Belgrave clenches in surprise. Xavier licks him again. “Xavier—“ Belgrave says. He cuts himself off when Xavier does it again, and again, and again until Belgrave is panting and can only choke out the first syllable of his name. Xavier stops for a breath and returns to his work, tongue hotter and wetter from his salivating mouth. It’s a delightful texture against his tongue, but it’s nothing compared to the delight of listening to Belgrave come undone above him.
“Please, please, I need you, I need to feel you. I want it—I want to feel it inside, please, Xavier!” Xavier sucks a finger into his mouth and carefully prods at Belgrave’s slick entrance. It’s not slick enough for much, but the tip of his finger slides in easily and Belgrave throws his head back against the pillows. “That’s good, Xav. Feels nice.”

“More?” Xavier asks. Belgrave looks down at him with hazy eyes and a soft smile and nods.

“I always want more of you.”


It’s a slow process, but by the time the sunrise crests over the horizon, Xavier enters Belgrave for the first time and they rock together, barely moving, both overwhelmed by the closeness.

They pant into each other’s mouths, and when Xavier wraps a hand around Belgrave’s length, he comes almost immediately, followed by Xavier shortly after. It should have been anticlimactic. Instead, they hold each other close and laugh at the identical tears that stream down their cheeks, and take turns in the toilet down the hall before falling back into bed together and sleeping, wrapped in each other’s arms, until morning comes.



Morning comes.

“How are you feeling?”

One of Belgrave’s eyes crack open. “Do you mean my ribs or my arsehole?”

Xavier grins. “Both.”

“Sore.”

He leans over Belgrave’s prone body to give him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Well, I am very sorry about your ribs,” he says. Belgrave swats at him ineffectually but pulls him closer when Xavier lies back down beside him.

“Will you stay?”

“Always.”

“I meant for breakfast, but really?”

“Yes. Marry me.”

Belgrave rolls his eyes, fond. “Don’t be silly.”

“Never. I am a very serious man,” Xavier laughs. “When we go south with Shackleton we will be married by the penguins.”

Belgrave leans into Xavier’s shoulder and laughs lightly. “We’ll consummate our love in our wedding tent?”

“I will make love to you everywhere.”

“How scandalous.”

“Yes! On the deck of the ship, against the wall in the dog shed, in Aladdin’s Cave. And before we return south I will make love to you one hundred more times in this bed. We will leave only for strawberries and cream and I will eat it from your fingers.” To illustrate his point, Xavier licks a thick, wet line up Belgrave’s cheek.

“Get off!” he laughs, pushing gently at Xavier’s face. Xavier licks Belgrave’s palm and, finding a moment of weakness, Xavier seizes his opportunity: he pounces (gently, with great care for Belgrave’s poor ribs) and pretends to nibble at Belgrave’s neck.
“Come, Nin! Let me eat you up like a strawberry!”

“No!” Belgrave pretends to protest. “Help, I’m being devoured by the most fearsome beast of the Alps!”

“Oh, but you love me, my silly Cherub,” Xavier says, and his nibbles turn to kisses and then Belgrave’s lips are under his own and they kiss until they’re giggling too hard to continue.

“I do,” Belgrave says. “I really do, Xav.”

“Then you will stay with me? Wherever we go?”

Belgrave nods, pulling Xavier down for another kiss. “I don’t want to think about being without you.”

Xavier smiles wider and wider until Belgrave is kissing more teeth than lip and he pulls away to sit up. “Come on, you silly man. Let’s get up and go find breakfast. I’m rather hungry.”

“You will need to eat a lot,” Xavier says, still smiling. “You will need your strength.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise,” Xavier says.

Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been

[(Anonymous)]

They fucked once on the Belgica, then went on with their storied and heterosexual lives - to greatness and to infamy respectively.

During or after Amundsen visiting Cook in prison, one or the other reflects on what might’ve been.

Bonus: something about the tablecloth from the anecdote about Amundsen breaking up a little upon receiving the gift of an embroidered tablecloth made by Cook in prison, a tablecloth which is still preserved at the Amundsen house to this day (and a tweet that is still paining me to this day).

Fill: Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been

[(Anonymous)]

Frederick doesn't cry. He hasn't for a long while, even when the nights feel like they're choking the life out of him, and his dreams take on the hue of Arctic and Antarctic darkness. He's started at the walls of his cell, eyes burning, throat tightening in the cinch of an invisible noose, but he's never let himself cry.

Tonight, though, it's difficult.

Because Roald stood at his cell door, their fingers brushing through the gaps, one hundred unanswered questions wavering between them in the still, breathless Kansas heat. He knows they spoke, knows Roald asked him how he was, how they were treating him, if he remembered this and that from their time together--

God, of course he remembers.

He remembers being in that small space on the Belgica, Roald's hands running down his torso, feeling along the ridges of too-exposed ribs with a strange, glowing reverence. Or the way the flickering light of the stove made Roald look otherworldly as he basked in the heat, clothes shed, entire body exposed like a Roman god basking in the one-sided worship Frederick could provide.

And that night--

His hands tremble where they clench on his knees, his eyes screwed shut, pulse jumping in the nest of this throat.

Neither of them knew what the results of the long winter would be. At the time, it seemed, their thoughts never cast a net much farther than if they would survive into the next week, if de Gerlache or someone up the chain of hierarchy would make a final, fatal decision that would send them the way of poor men like Danco; if the frozen seas would spit them up in revulsion, if their corpses would remain in awful perpetuity in the colorless landscape. They considered it only briefly, but while some of the crew turned those thoughts into gospel and worshiped their own deaths, the two of them decided that life was a better alternative.

Life, and something like love.

At least, that's what he likes to imagine it was.

He closes his eyes as he leans his head against the wall, stone cool against his cheek. His fingers feel burnt, phantom sensations of Roald's hands on his. Older touches are scars across his body, reminders brought back to life like scorbutic ghosts, his deficiencies rending them open once more.

On his neck, where Roald's lips were hot against his skin despite the caterwaul of the wind against the hull. His shoulders, bare and marked with bruises of teeth. His torso, up to the chest and down to his belly, an explorer's path routed by his tongue, followed by his fingers following the trail. His thighs, gently kissed with unfair reverence, and then mounted upon Roald's shoulders while he concentrated everything into making heat coil inside of Frederick, a new source of warmth like brilliant summer sunshine.

They kept each other quiet, meaningless as the attempt was. The Antarctic's howl drowned out their noises, and the ship's diseased groans eclipsed their own. His hands found Roald's mouth as they pressed themselves together, a desperate friction mounted between them as if they meant to ignite something between their hips. His fingers dipped between Roald's lips, feeling his grunts and moans as vibrations down his phalanges, through the gaps in the bones in his wrists, traveling telegraphically down his arm and right into his heart. A lone telegram making its way into that godforsaken place: do not STOP please never STOP I don't want what we have to STOP.

To this day, to this second, he wishes it wouldn't have. He wishes that they could have died in the Antarctic together, lost in the ice and stone, slipped out of sight hand-in-hand with no hope of ever being found.

And isn't that the most selfish thing he's ever wished for.

Outside his cell, through the small, iron-braced window, a lone cricket gently sings against the silence of the prairie.

Frederick Cook curls his hands close to his chest, feels his old, useless heart ache as it beats, and he weeps.

- - -

In his rented room, Roald Amundsen runs his fingers over the jagged, confused lines of the table runner. He's been awake most of the night, tossing and turning in bed, getting up and walking from one end of the room to the other. At ends, sleep is impossible. When he closes his eyes, he's there again, in that room, on that bed, with--

The dark strings of Cook's embroidery burn against his fingertips.

He's held a strong policy of never thinking what if. That question precedes a certain kind of madness he's observed throughout his career. Too many questions about long-dead people, about trails not taken, about opportunities missed.

But he allows this one to sink in deep at the point of a needle, winding its way through him with a dark, unbreakable thread.

He holds the cloth up to his chest, balling it tight against himself, and sobs into the choking darkness.

Racovitza, anyone, butchery

[(Anonymous)]

There's just something about a man splattered with still-warm blood, ever so careful with his hands, and his GIANT KNIFE. Maybe Lecointe appreciating? Or anyone else. Bonus points for dirty talk about 🥺how would you butcher ME... what cuts would you save... and groping with that lens.

FILL: Expertise, Racovitza/Lecointe, T, cw animal death & talk of cannibalism

[(Anonymous)]

sometimes using cannibalism jokes as a coping mechanism is something that can be so personal....i hope you enjoy, nonny!

**

There is a unique tang in the scent of penguin blubber not unlike the pungent odors wafting through a portside fish market, but different in how it beckons one closer for how curiously mixed it is: the ever present salt, a hint of leather, something acrid and aged like guano, and then the slap across the face of spine-tingling copper when the penguin's blood oozes past muscle and skin. Nausea sweeps over Lecointe at the other end of the table, but the foul cloud passes as abruptly as it took him. The scent drifts from the wardroom down the passageway into the rest of the ship, mingling with the many other odors of their cramped living quarters.

Racovitza is precise with every incision. He pinches the short feathers and pulls the skin taut as he hovers the knife above the bird and practices his cut before slicing to the bone with ease. It is grim work made all the more macabre by Racovitza's cheery demeanor.

Beside him, Cook is recalling a colorful tale. His words are a garbled mess of English, German, and Dutch, and he conveys the most impact with his broad gestures and exaggerated expressions. Lecointe assumes he is talking of his close encounter on the ice; how Lecointe had almost mistaken him for a seal and shot him.

Once he understands—or understands as much of Cook’s story as he can—Racovitza roars with laughter, his whole body shaking. His knife slices upward, nearly nicking his chin, but the close call only causes another round of merriment between him and Cook.
Lecointe's face burns, and he returns his full attention to his own task. The tonite from today's crate is in poor shape, and he is salvaging what he can. He isn't optimistic about the soggy sticks before him, but there is more in the hold to scavenge. He refuses to give up hope yet.

"Kapitein!"

Lecointe raises his eyebrows; the use of his title implies that Racovitza is in a mischievous mood, one that Lecointe is in no mood to currently entertain. True enough, Racovitza is grinning at him from above the butchered corpse of the penguin. His hair is a mess from where he had combed his fingers through, brushing off snow, and there is a smear of blood across his cheekbone where he must have carelessly wiped his hand. His disheveled appearance doesn't deter him (in fact, it would likely only spur him on), and he waves his gleaming knife at Lecointe as he speaks.

"Our American friend says that you are the terror of our neighbors. You see anything moving off ship and—" He clicks his teeth and mimes holding a gun, the knife creating a silly if somewhat sinister pantomime bayonet. "—boom! Dead. More meat for me and for the chef."

Cook is laughing alongside him. Likely more from the display than fully understanding the joke. Regardless, Lecointe does not appreciate being the subject of such attention.

"We don't eat the seals," he reminds Racovitza. He sounds peevish even to himself, so he quickly amends, "Until Dr. Cook finds any benefits from their meat, of course."

Racovitza's eyes crinkle, his smile turning devilish. "We also don't eat people, so all the better that you didn't kill our companion."

Lecointe glowers. The joke is fast losing its momentum. If Cook senses the sudden tension, he doesn’t react to it. His head remains bent over his journal, sketching the penguin in mid-dissection. He seems content with his rendition and soon closes the book. His rising from the table incites the others to return to their work, Racovitza continuing to remove strips of meat from the penguin and Lecointe continuing to reorder the tonite.

Cook bids them goodbye, though all that Lecointe clearly understands is something about an evening walk with Amundsen. He nods as Cook leaves, offering a helpful if unnecessary reminder to watch for patches of thin ice to Cook's retreating back.

He sinks back into his seat. The smell of blubber and blood is nauseating to him again. The repetitive nature of his task—combined with the overpowering smell and the churning embarrassment in his chest—feels impossible. Not to mention futile.

Racovitza has already moved on from the awkward exchange. He is humming to himself as he rids the penguins of its flippers and deftly peels the skin from its back. The sight should disgust Lecointe as the closest he has ever come to such butchery is when he witnessed a cook plucking a chicken.

"You make it look easy," he says.

"Hm? Oh this?" Racovitza shrugs. "Years of practice."

And of course, Lecointe has seen him butcher a seal with such alacrity that his current dissection would appear sluggish. There is no squeamishness on the ice, no guilt weighing one down over the needless killing. There is only the piercing cold air, the crunch of ice underfoot, the burning in one's lungs, and the bounding of blood between one’s ears as they catch their prey. Racovitza has the efficiency of a military surgeon when he field dresses a kill, be it penguin or seal. He retrieves his knife from its sheath and removes the creature's skin with no more than five long gashes. The blood spilling onto the snow always steams into Lecointe's face, his cheeks flushing with satisfaction. When Racovitza hands him the pelt, Lecointe imagines he can feel the heat of its cooling skin seeping into his hands and warming him all the way to his toes. For the briefest of moments, all but his primal nature is stripped away, and his whole body quakes with the strange liberty the feeling affords him. Such a sensation should terrify Lecointe, but instead, he finds himself eagerly drawn to it.

The knife clinks against other tools, the noise loud in the small room. Lecointe's fingers slip on the twine he is knotting around the tonite. The skinned penguin lies open before Racovitza.

He resumes his earlier train of thought: "It is no different than you and your guns. Bombs, whatever." He waves his bloody fingers toward the skylight in a dismissive manner. "You learn about the small things in the larger things until it becomes a structure that makes sense to you. Simple really."

Lecointe snorts. "Yes, that sounds incredibly simple."

Racovitza pauses after removing an organ from the penguin. He brushes some hair from his face with his wrist, but still more flecks of blood cling to his forehead.

"What I said before. It was a joke," he says, after a moment. "A bad one, maybe."

It was a halfhearted apology but an apology nonetheless , and one to which Lecointe doesn't know how to respond.

"It was," agrees Lecointe. "A joke, I mean. Not necessarily bad. Only…unexpected."

Racovitza smiles at his stumbling of words. "But you knew it was just a joke. Good."

He resumes his work, selecting a scalpel—tiny compared to the rather intimidating hunting knife—to cut into the penguin's stomach.

“But I would suggest,” Racovitza continues, his face lighting up when he sees something he deems interesting inside the penguin, “we have more people learning anatomy."

Lecointe frowns. "Why is that?"

"If you shoot our only surgeon, we won't have anyone who knows how to properly butcher him."

Lecointe gapes in stunned silence. Racovitza doesn't look up from the penguin except to drop a specimen of half-digested viscera into a jar. The first puff of air from Lecointe is more a sigh than a laugh, squeezed out of him from pure surprise. Then he is doubled over, laughing so hard that it is nearly painful. By the time he can do little more than wheeze, he slouches back in his chair and wipes the tears from his eyes.

"You are a madman," he says.

Racovitza shrugs, allowing himself to smile.

"Besides," Lecointe adds, feeling rather devious himself now, "wouldn't you be the best one to do it? You already know how to cut up the penguins."

"What praise. Thank you.” He thinks a moment, staring skyward. "I could learn. It might be important to know in a disaster."

"God-willing we don't have a disaster like that," mutters Lecointe.

Racovitza continues undeterred, "Of course, you need to get rid of unwanted body parts. One long cut from chin to groin should do." He mimes the slash, ending with the knife at his hip. The metal glints in the lamplight, drawing Lecointe’s eye. Racovitza trails it suggestively from the front of his trousers to his backside. "Now, the best meat from a human would come from the arse—"

Lecointe barks another laugh. "All right, you've made your point."

"—but that depends on the man, I suppose. I wouldn't suggest Arctowski. No, you need someone large with muscle. I would say myself, but all flattery aside, we can't keep killing our only butchers."

“Deciding by lottery might be best. Or have volunteers.”

“Martyrs, yes! Are you saying you would volunteer yourself?”

Lecointe’s mouth drops open, once again stripped of speech. Unbidden, he imagines what such a scenario would look like, what it might feel like (foolish! he’d be dead), whether or not the metal of the knife would be cold against his skin or warmed from Racovitza’s capable hands. First cut, chin to groin. Those hands on naked skin and underneath his skin, touching in him in impossible, unknowable ways…

As Lecointe’s silence grows, so does the width of Racovitza’s smile. Lecointe knows he has to say something fast to make this conversation less damning to himself.

“Let us hope it does not come to that,” he finally says, the conviction weak in his voice.

There is a second where Racovitza’s eyes gleam, and Lecointe fears he won’t let this go. But he just nods and continues cleaning up the tools from where they’re strewn on the table.

“Yes, let us hope,” he says.

Lecointe hurriedly bundles the rest of the tonite, returning the sticks to their crate. He stands fast enough that his legs collide with the table and his chair squeaks against the deck. He holds the crate fast before himself—carefully positioned at his waist. Racovitza stares at him, eyebrows up and expectant. His hands are suspended in the air, interrupted from cleaning the scalpel.

“Everything fine?” he asks, pointedly glancing at the crate in Lecointe’s hands.

“Yes,” answers Lecointe, too quickly. “I’m needed for next watch—” A lie. A clumsy one, at that. “—I must be going. Enjoy your…penguin.”

Racovitza’s mouth has grown thin and white, his eyes wildly alight with whatever sarcastic remark he’s forcing himself to swallow. “I will.”

“Good.” Lecointe manages to leave the wardroom with some of his dignity intact (he hopes), but Racovitza’s parting words pierce him as he leaves.

“Enjoy your watch, Kapitein! Try to not shoot the surgeon.”

The teasing lilt in Racovitza’s voice makes the comment all the worse. Lecointe hurries into his cabin to compose himself before passing through the forecastle to the hold; he is in no state to be seen by any of the crew.

And what a state. He sits on the edge of his bed, willing a more stubborn part of his anatomy to behave itself. Instead, he thinks of blood-spotted knuckles and a grinning face and a gleaming knife the length of his forearm, and the twinge between his legs only grows more uncomfortable.

He buries his head in his hands with a sigh. “You idiot,” he groans softly to himself. How will he possibly live this down?

Andrée/Strindberg/Frænkel, intercrural sex

[(Anonymous)]

Flight of the Eagle movie version of these boys. They find a way to keep each other warm in the tent. (Sex. The way is sex.) Threesome or any pairing of the three will do!