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Polar Explorer RPF - Prompt Post 1
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:
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:
Regular view: https://coldboys.dreamwidth.org/925.html
Regular view, last page: https://coldboys.dreamwidth.org/925.html?page=999#comments
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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Karluk any/any
(Anonymous) 2022-11-11 06:31 am (UTC)(link)Re: Karluk any/any
(Anonymous) 2022-12-30 09:46 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Karluk any/any
(Anonymous) 2023-01-01 04:46 pm (UTC)(link)FILL: “Beautiful Roses in His Heart," William McKinlay/Bob Bartlett, T, just sad
(Anonymous) 2023-01-05 12:19 am (UTC)(link)“Beautiful Roses in His Heart”
(Inspired by one particular episode from The Ice Master)
William Laird McKinlay shifted on his side, trying to get comfortable, the hard-packed snow floor making its presence felt against the bones in his hip and on his propped-up elbow. Two years ago, McKinlay would have never imagined sleeping in a snow house one day, like the explorers he’d read about in books. Now here he was, curled together with Bartlett under the skins, protected from the wind by stacks of sturdy snow blocks and the pelts under their bodies. The igloo did a surprisingly good job insulating them, he had to admit, but after months on the ice in the same damp, moldering clothes the cold had seeped into his bones so much that he found he could not truly get warm, and the snow under their caribou skins made a poor substitute for a spring mattress.
At least he and Bob - Bartlett - were together. He exhaled, his eyes finding the captain’s even in the pitch black of the Arctic night, finding the contours of his long face and the stubbly reddish beard that graced his chin after months without a shave.
“You should try to get some sleep,” McKinlay said. He stroked the pad of his thumb over Bartlett’s lower lip, deeply chapped as it was from the cold and the wind. You’ll need every ounce of strength to get to Siberia. We’ve all been on reduced rations...I’m worried for you.
“You’re not helping in that regard by touching my face,” came the reply in the dark, gently teasing.
“I’ll stop then.”
“Don’t.”
There was silence inside the igloo then, save for the sound of wind whistling outside so loud it could be heard through the thick snow blocks. Bartlett and Kataktovik would be heading out into that wind, into the biting and hellish cold in only a few hours, on the slim chance that they could survive long enough to reach the coast of Siberia and find some way to send help back to the stranded men left behind. McKinlay feared for Bartlett, for Bob, as he’d begun to call the captain sometimes when they were alone, and he feared for what would become of the rest of the Karluk’s survivors, left alone on Wrangel without Bartlett’s steadying presence - tenuous as it had become, given some of the quarrelsome and underhanded personalities among their small group. The scientist worried what would become of their party, worried what would happen if the game failed to return within two months and their provisions ran out. He worried what would happen if rescuers failed to arrive, and they had to spend the next winter in this forlorn place. You’re our real leader, he wanted to say. You’ve always held us together, God only knows how. We are going to splinter and fracture once you’re gone. We won’t make it.
He mustn’t burden the captain with these worries. McKinlay must try to reassure him, so that he could devote his mind to the journey to Siberia. He wished, for the hundredth time, that he could find the words that would comfort and reassure Bartlett. But that was impossible. Their predicament was not something that could be gotten out of with sheer optimism. He knew it, everyone knew it. The mission to Siberia was a desperate gamble, just the next in a series of desperate gambles ever since the Karluk had become locked in ice and Stefansson had left the men to die in September. The explorer, their leader on paper, had announced his plan with such casualness that McKinlay’s blood had boiled. Despite his ingrained habit of respect and deference, had found it impossible not to confront Stefansson directly.
“We need fresh meat,” their expedition leader had said, in a blithe tone as if he was remarking on a day of mild weather. “The ship is fast in the ice, and we’ll all have scurvy before long with no fresh provisions. I know this. I know the Arctic,” he’d said, emphasizing each syllable as if McKinlay were stupid, or hard of hearing. “Or do you not trust your leader?” Something had gleamed in his eyes then, something hard and mean and arrogant and even a little lecherous as his gaze flicked over McKinlay, and the scientist had left Stefansson’s cabin feeling grimy and hateful. Stefansson had left the ship the next day, with two of the native hunters, and hadn’t returned.
That’s when Bartlett had become the real leader of the expedition. Determining the course of action, making the roster of daily duties, making sure that they could stretch their provisions as long as possible. And, when that awful day in January finally came, giving the order to abandon the ship, to remove all of the supplies and make camp on the ice as the Karluk went down, speared through by the pack. And he’d done it all while those blackguards, Mackay, Murray, and Beauchat, had openly plotted mutiny right in front of him. During those long awful months before the ship sank McKinlay had longed to find some way to put the captain’s mind at ease, to relieve the skipper - with his watery blue eyes and quietly upturned mouth - of some of his worries. But Bartlett had been a hard shell to crack. At first he’d refused to confide in anyone, keeping his concerns to himself, diplomatically giving out orders and going about his work before retreating to the solitude of his quarters. Yet the scientist had slowly drawn him out, through long conversations in his cabin. Long conversations that had turned into reassuring squeezes of arms, of gentle brushes of hands, then touches that were much less chaste exchanged in Bartlett’s cramped bunk…
Now, two months later, the careworn captain had gotten what remained of the expedition across the pack and to the relative safety of solid land on Wrangel Island, though it was a desolate spit of rock. The ordeals that began with Stefansson’s departure, the weight of the men they’d lost and those who were seriously injured, their chances at survival should the rescue attempt to Siberia fail - it was all weighing down on Bartlett’s mind. McKinlay could tell, though the captain tried to keep the strain off of his unassumingly handsome face. But McKinlay knew. And there was nothing really he could do about it.
Well, almost nothing. He shifted closer to Bartlett under the caribou skin, too thin and constantly molting – damn Stefansson’s carelessness in choosing supplies, blast it all – and wrapped his left arm tighter around Bartlett’s side. With his right, still propped on his elbow, he skimmed his fingers over the stubbly growth on Bartlett’s cheek. He leaned over and placed a kiss on the captain’s lips, then his cheek just below his right eye, then his brow. He let his lips linger there, his nose pressed against Bartlett’s skin, inhaling the scent of skin and sweat and grease that covered all of the men’s bodies, and finding once again that on the captain he welcomed it fully. He knew the Inuit did something like this. “They call it kunik,” Beauchat the high-strung, traitorous anthropologist had told him once. “It’s a gesture of affection. Between family members. Or lovers.” McKinlay inhaled again. “Bob...” he started, wanting to say something, anything, reassuring, but finding his mouth empty. Instead he pressed another kiss to Bartlett’s lips, mouth slightly open, sighing softly.
“Mac,” the captain said, pulling back, and McKinlay startled and drew his head back but did not shift his body. “Mac, I need to ask you something.” Bartlett huffed a little sigh. “I need you to keep an eye on Munro. Help him keep the peace. Keep track of the stores and see that they’re divided out evenly.” McKinlay understood at once. Munro, the chief engineer, would be the highest ranking officer on the expedition with Bartlett gone, and so would naturally need to assume the role of leader of their small group. But Munro could be indecisive and sometimes downright shifty, and he was already on the outs with several other members of the crew. Under any other circumstances, he could never have been selected as a leader of anything.
“I would have much preferred you take his place,” Bartlett continued, “but it wouldn’t be possible.” McKinlay understood. As an expedition scientist, he had no official rank that would qualify him to lead the expedition, diminished as it now was, in any way. That was fine with McKinlay. He would do his best for the captain anyway.
“I understand. And I wouldn’t take Munro’s job, not for all the tea in China.”
Bartlett pressed his calloused palm to McKinlay’s cheek. “Canny Scot.”
He leaned in and kissed McKinlay, slow and firm, unhurried. “I will miss my Wee Mac,” he said, drawing back slightly. His breath as the words came out ghosted McKinlay’s lips, before the older man leaned forward to kiss him again. Bartlett skimmed a hand over McKinlay’s side and down his hip and thigh under the fur, as if to emphasize how “wee,” he was. (McKinlay didn’t mind. It was one of the things Bartlett had said first he loved about him, squeezing him close in his bunk all of those nights ago, bundling him up against his taller frame.) Bartlett leaned back again, just a hair’s breadth from McKinlay’s face. “I’ll grow a rose garden for you in my mind.”
McKinlay felt his face scrunch reflexively. “How’s that?”
“Do you remember,” Bartlett began, the Newfoundland brogue creeping into his voice, “when we read that book on roses together? In the cabin?”
“Mmm, yes, how could I forget?” McKinlay had always been amazed at the depth of Bartlett’s intellectual curiosity and his love of reading. At first, the fact that the rough-hewn man from the little Canadian fishing village, veteran of the Arctic seas, had been able to quote Shakespeare and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam had astonished him, before he’d quickly realized that was just a reflection of his own prejudices. That was the start of many happy afternoons paging through Bartlett’s eclectic personal library, discussing books and huddling close to read aloud to each other.
One of the most surprising volumes in that library was A Book About Roses by a man with the improbable name of Reynolds Hole. McKinlay had been even more astonished to see that book than he had been to find out that Bartlett was a keen and erudite reader, especially since the Scot himself was passionate about roses. He said as much to the redheaded captain.
“Ah, now I miss them terribly,” he’d sighed, letting his fingers trail over Bartlett’s wrist. “I hadn’t thought of them until now. I hope I’ll see those gardens in Glasgow again one day.” He turned then to give Bartlett a shy smile. “But I didn’t expect that you’d also be so fond of roses, Bob. Can you even grow them in Newfoundland?”
“Oh yes,” the skipper replied, his mouth turning up as if he’d found the perfect moment to reveal a long-cherished secret. “It takes patience, and there are only a few varieties that can stand the climate. But if you take care you can have a whole garden. When I’m back in Brigus for a time I always try to grow them.” He turned the slim volume over in his hands. “Ah, this is a strange book, this. For a book about cultivating flowers, can you believe there are no pictures?” He flipped the pages to prove his point, as if McKinlay hadn’t just been browsing the book himself. “But plenty of pieces of advice. And little bits of poetry. Look at this.” He pointed to a pair of lines at the top of a page. “He who would have beautiful Roses in his garden must have beautiful Roses in his heart.”
“Ah, I suppose that’s true,” McKinlay had said then, gently taking the book from Bartlett’s hands and setting it aside on a nearby shelf. “But surely there’s more involved than that. If only it were that easy we could grow a whole garden of roses in the Arctic, right here on the ice.”
“Well, why not?” Bartlett had replied, intertwining their fingers. “Let’s grow a rose garden right here. We already have the necessary supplies in our hearts, if you’re a rose fancier too. We’ll grow it right there, over the side of the railing to the south, where it will get the most sun. We’ll fill it with all sorts of roses, all colors. There’s a kind that grows wild in Newfoundland, pink ones. You can even eat the hips. I’d plant three bushes of them, right there.” Keeping one hand intertwined with McKinlay’s, he turned until he could point out the cabin’s tiny window to the milky expanse beyond, hazy in the weak autumn sunlight. “Right there.”
McKinlay had chuckled then. It was a ridiculous idea, but he’d humor the captain, fine. And so he’d proposed adding several bushes of white Burnet roses, right next to Bartlett’s pink ones. Then they’d added more and more varieties, and talked about how they’d prune the plants, and clip the best flowers to bring inside the Karluk, their scents wafting through the stale air in the inside of the boat. It had been a fantasy, but a pleasant one, discussing their rose garden like some cherished secret, hands entwined, McKinlay’s head on Bartlett’s shoulder.
Now Barlett pressed the tip of his nose against the scientist’s, his skin cold. “I’ve been carrying that garden around with me, in my head. And when Kataktovik and I are hauling across the ice, I’ll go there. And you’ll be there, and we’ll walk around arm-in-arm, pruning and deadheading and making plans for the flowers. It’ll be lovely. Don’t you think so, my Wee Mac?”
McKinlay’s eyes stung, and he leaned forward, burying his face in the crook of Bartlett’s neck, right up against the collar of his thick wool jumper. His left hand snaked under the caribou skin, under the jumper, finding a bare patch of skin on Bob’s side. He held on there, as if by holding fast he could keep the captain from leaving in the morning. “But what if you don’t return?”
“Then I’ll still be walking in that garden. And you’ll be walking with me, together.”
“Truly?”
Bartlett chuckled a tiny bit. “Remember what else that man said in that book? A true rose lover is, how did he put it? Oh yes. Loyal and devoted ever, in storm-fraught or in sunny days.” He nuzzled his lips against McKinlay’s hair. McKinlay squeezed him tighter, wrapping his whole arm around Bartlett’s body, and said no more.
Re: FILL: “Beautiful Roses in His Heart," William McKinlay/Bob Bartlett, T, just sad
(Anonymous) 2023-01-05 02:12 am (UTC)(link)“But what if you don’t return?”
“Then I’ll still be walking in that garden. And you’ll be walking with me, together.”
Thank you so much for filling my prompt and my heart <3
Re: FILL: “Beautiful Roses in His Heart," William McKinlay/Bob Bartlett, T, just sad
(Anonymous) 2023-01-26 02:12 am (UTC)(link)Re: Karluk any/any
(Anonymous) 2024-01-02 03:57 am (UTC)(link)the forehold is for fucking, yeehaw.