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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"Where No One Would Believe that Someone Could F..." Cook/Amundsen, E eventually, slowburn, Part 3/?

[(Anonymous)]

Listen. Listen. I tried to get to the smutty part, I really did, but I can’t stop inventing backstory for these two and now it’s slowburn and there will be several more chapters. I hope OP is happy with themselves because they have unleashed a monster!! There will definitely be smut soon though.

Also, I spent a lot of time looking at cabin porn to find something that matched the inside of Roald’s cabin in my mind, and this was the closest I could find:

https://www.tinyhousetown.net/2017/01/norwegian-ski-cabin-118-sq-ft.html?m=1

Imagine this but painted blue on the outside, with a slightly bigger stove, and more lived-in: lots more books and gear and maps on the walls, but still neat.

Roald reached to close the door behind Fred. They were standing in some kind of vestibule, with boxes of gear and food stacked against one wall, and a place to remove outer layers on the other. Roald gestured to a row of coat pegs on the wall and a row of boots, all sized to fit Roald’s gigantic feet. “Please take your things off.” And then, as if there wasn’t an expedition’s worth of baggage between them, Roald stepped back through the inner door into the main room of the cabin. Fred could hear Roald start to putter around as Fred leaned on the wall for balance while he removed his own boots. He peeled his heavy outer gloves off and stuffed them into the pockets of the coat before hanging it up on the peg. “Coffee?” came the shout from inside.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” Fred shouted back, his brow furrowing. At the very least he would have expected surprise, or anger, or annoyance. After three years… Christ, Roald always played his cards so close to his chest. Fred couldn’t help taking an angry little stomp over the threshold.

Inside, the cabin was small but cozy. The walls were made of plain wood, with rows of built-in shelves here and there, full of neatly-stacked books and boxes of tools. The centerpiece of the cabin was a sizable black cast iron stove with a glass front and a fire roaring inside. Near the stove was a small table, and on two sides around the table, built into the walls in an L-shape, were two wide benches, each covered in thick sheepskin rugs. A nook in one of the opposite corners held cooking implements, dried food staples in jars, a large plastic tub, and two hot plates. A map of Antarctica had been tacked up on one wall, and a map of Alaska and the Canadian Arctic with its patchwork of islands, slightly worn around the edges, graced another.

“I thought you’d come and visit eventually.” Smug bastard.

“Thought or hoped?”

Roald shrugged, his broad shoulders moving under the heavy wool sweater. “Coffee?” he asked again. He grabbed a dish towel and turned to retrieve a kettle sitting on top of the stove. Wrapping the towel around his hand, he lifted the kettle by the handle, then tipped it to pour hot water through the glass vessel on the table, topped with a filter.

“I never knew you were a pour-over kind of guy.”

Roald shrugged. “That’s because everytime we shared coffee we were in the middle of a jungle or the side of some mountain, and we were lucky to have packets of instant.” He shrugged again, but this time gave a tiny, close-mouthed smile. “Or we had Michotte’s terrible coffee from the catering trailer on-set.” He finished pouring out the hot water and stood back as he let the liquid run through the grounds. “Do you still take it black?”

“You’re really not surprised to see me after three years.”

Roald looked up then. “Should I be? I know I haven’t made myself easy to get in touch with, but I left you that note for a reason.” He seemed to realize something then. “Fred, has something happened?”

“I take it you’re not out here checking Twitter when you’re not busy hunting bears.”

“There are no bears around here, Fred. We have moose though.”

Ugh. There was silence for a few beats as Fred waffled on what to say next. Roald met his eyes, then took a few steps forward, brushing past Fred as he continued to stand near the door in his stocking feet, and Fred inhaled slightly despite himself. Roald’s shoulder brushed his ever so slightly as the taller man smoothly maneuvered into the tiny kitchen area and retrieved two mugs, then returned to the table to pour out the coffee.

“So you’re not here to take a break from gallivanting around with your tech friends, then? No unplugged retreat in the wilderness?” He reached out one long arm – Fred had almost forgotten how large his wingspan was – to hand Fred one of the mugs. Fred took it, warming his hands, still wrapped in the woolen fingerless mitts he’d worn under the heavy Gore-tex gloves. The mug bore the emblem of an Antarctic cruise company Roald had briefly worked for as a guide years ago, before the National Geographic show.

How to say this…

“And I suppose it’s too much to hope for that you came to apologize?”

“Christ, Roald.” Fred removed a hand from the mug to swipe it across his face in frustration, the stress of the last week crashing over him. “I’m on the run from the law. North Pole… North Pole blew up. I’m wanted by the FBI for wire fraud and racketeering. And I took money from…” News of FTX’s existence, let alone their demise, probably had not reached the backwoods of northern Norway. “I took money from some people I shouldn’t have, who are themselves under investigation by the FBI.”

“And is it true?”

Fred started. “What?”

“Is it true? You said the FBI was after you for fraud, and… and…”

“Racketeering.”

“Whatever that is. Did you really do it?”

Fred exhaled, slowly. “Some. Yes. But not all of it. I don’t know. I wasn’t able to keep a handle on everything going on all the time, and–” he broke off.

“Hey,” and Roald’s hand was on his shoulder. Fred looked up, meeting Roald’s pale blue eyes, the intense stare that had always thrilled him and terrified everyone else. He hadn’t realized until then he’d been staring at the floor, like an embarrassed teenager. “It’s alright.” He patted Fred’s shoulder once and pulled his hand away. “Drink your coffee.” He moved then, without a second thought, and bent down in front of the stove, pulling open the door and throwing in another log from the pile on the floor next to the stove.

Fred stood there, awkwardly, for another few minutes before Roald continued, almost jauntily. “So you came all the way out here to see me, then. To make me an accessory to your crimes.”

Christ, Fred was such an idiot. He hadn’t even thought of that in the panic of the past few days. “Jesus, Roald, I’m sorry. It’s just that I didn’t know where else to go.”

Roald chuckled, still focused on stoking the fire in the stove. “Don’t worry about that. They won’t find you out here.”

“They might. I bought my plane tickets with a false name and I.D., but they’ll figure it out eventually. We might have helicopters circling the cabin in a few hours.” He hadn’t had much of a head start. Fred’s heart was well and truly racing now. He squeezed his eyes shut. “They could chase us out into the forest and pin us down.”

“Hah.” The loud, sharp syllable was like a gunshot. Fred opened his eyes to find Roald still kneeling on the floor, looking halfway over his shoulder back at him, his unmistakable profile in sharp relief against the light coming from the stove. His gaze was hard and defiant and arrogant. Roald, in all his Roald-ness. “I’d like to see them try.”

Fred swallowed slowly. His heart hadn’t stopped hammering, but now it was motivated by something completely different. Roald rose from the floor and walked unhurriedly towards him.

“I don’t… Roald… I’m sorry…this was a mistake… if you…”

Roald shook his head, bemused. “Don’t stammer. New Yorkers always talk so much.” He continued past him to the kitchen nook. “Venison for dinner?”

---

Dinner was venison sausage (made from a deer Roald had shot himself of course) frozen in Roald’s food cache and brought into the cabin earlier in the day to thaw, with pickled red cabbage and sliced potatoes sprinkled with dried herbs. Roald cooked the sausage and potatoes in a cast iron skillet on top of the stove, and after Fred’s compliments on the food, they ate in silence. A thought came to Fred, that some of the New York VCs who’d backed North Pole and were no doubt now calling for his blood might be eating this very same meal tonight, only they would have spent a small fortune to buy the ingredients at Whole Foods and the Union Square farmer’s market. Only a month ago, before it all came crashing down, he might have been having dinner with them, asking about their recent trips to Jackson Hole and complimenting how the pinot noir went well with the venison, charming everyone around the table. They’d ask him questions about the TV show, and he’d reply that it was a shame it wasn’t picked up for a third season, but that he had been planning his own trip to the Pamirs for next year. Or maybe he’d go caving in Oaxaca, only things at North Pole were so busy these days and it was hard to get away.

It pained him to think about it now, not only because now he was a wanted criminal – although there was that – but because that was the one of the things that had driven a wedge between him and Roald. The show had indeed not been renewed, but not because National Geographic had pulled the plug. Roald had. He was tired of the cameras, tired of taking direction from Adrien, who was moody and indecisive and kept wanting Roald to have more close calls on camera, when Roald was very clear that he thought Adrien’s idea of adventure amounted to poor planning. As the on-set doctor, who had to tend to everyone’s frostbite and ropeburn and the occasional dislocated shoulder, Fred didn’t disagree, although he understood that safety made for bad television. Roald didn’t want to sign on for another season. He wanted to get back to planning his own expeditions, setting new goals for himself that had nothing to do with being famous. He wanted to get back to his little cabin above the Arctic Circle. And he’d wanted Fred to come with him. But Fred didn’t want to go. And he couldn’t make Roald stay in his world either.

They’d had some tremendous fights about it. Roald was stubborn and he could be angry when he wanted to be, but Fred could be stubborn too. They couldn’t compromise, and they couldn’t make it work, it was all so fucking clichéd. Although, given their predicament they had stuck it out a surprisingly long time, mostly because Fred found Roald’s anger to be very hot rather than frightening when it was turned on him. In the end Roald had gone back to Norway as Fred knew he would eventually, leaving Fred with nothing but that piece of paper. National Geographic had tried to make the show work for another season with a new host, some Harvard bro from North Dakota with an Icelandic name and a stupid haircut, but when that guy left some of the film crew behind at an old Soviet military base in the Arctic by accident (was it?), they’d scrapped the production. And when Fred had grown tired of his rotations and learned about an investment opportunity from one of the administrators at his hospital… well. Here they were.

Roald didn’t seem inclined to kick him out, though. Frustratingly, he didn’t seem inclined in any direction. Fred watched him eat, the sexy crows’ feet around his eyes moving as he chewed, his calloused hands wrapped around his knife and fork, methodically slicing his food.

“You’re staring, Fred.”

To be continued...