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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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"Where No One Would Believe that Someone Could F..." Cook/Amundsen, E eventually, slowburn, Part 4/?
(Anonymous) 2023-01-08 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)Part 4!
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.”
Yikes, that wasn’t supposed to happen. “There’s not much in here to look at, Roald,” Fred bit back defensively.
“What about that map?” Roald gestured with his fork to the map of the Arctic tacked on the opposite wall.
“What about it?”
“That’s the one I told you about all those years ago. The one I had in my room as a boy. When I used to read about the Franklin expedition and dream of growing up to suffer and starve in the freezing cold. Do you remember?” He took another bite.
Fred felt himself soften, involuntarily. It was always such a rare delight when Roald shared a piece of his inner life with him. “Yes, I remember.” He sighed. “You didn’t achieve your goal then,” he said, his voice light. He swept his arm around the cabin. “It seems like you’re surviving just fine.”
It was true. It definitely wasn’t the life Fred would have chosen for himself. Roald’s cabin was nothing out of Tiny House, Big Living on HGTV. It was not fancy or kitted out with expensive accessories. But it was very Roald. Stripped down to the essentials. It felt like he belonged here. “Did you build it all yourself?”
“Of course.” He took another bite. “I had to borrow some carpentry equipment. I take it you met Jørgen?”
“Who?”
“The older man with the beard, the one with the big mutt.”
“Oh, yes. What was he doing all the way out here?”
Roald continued as if he hadn’t heard the question. “He leant me his tools. Other things I brought in from town. I go into one of the villages every once in a while, to buy flour and coffee and things. But not often.”
“So the people out here – they know who you are?”
“Oh yes. But we all respect each others’ privacy out here. I’m not worried they will tell anyone.”
Tell anyone Roald’s location, he meant. After he stopped filming the show, Roald had slowly faded out of the spotlight on purpose. Fred had tried to convince him to take gigs writing for Outside or leading weekend survival skills workshops, a selfish attempt to keep him in New York at least part of the time. It had worked for a while, sort of. Leon had been thrilled, of course, that his brother had a regular source of income and a cell phone. But eventually he’d had it.
Going totally off the grid hadn’t hurt his reputation at all, though. In fact it only seemed to heighten it. Every once in a while, when Fred was stressed and feeling particularly lonely, he’d Google Roald’s name and find dozens of threads on message boards from fans speculating on what had happened to him, outdoorspeople still obsessing over his old videos. The mystique around the great missing Roald Amundsen seemed to only increase with each passing year. Every once in a while someone would pop up claiming to have spotted him in Vanuatu or something, but Fred knew better. He was here, near the top of the world. And now Fred was too.
“I don’t suppose I can ask you for the wifi password?”
“No,” Roald replied, stretching out the syllable in a bemused way. “But please feel free to make any calls on my emergency satellite phone, if you wish to alert the authorities to your whereabouts.”
“That’s it?”
“I’ve also got a radio.”
Fred realized, now that the sun had sunk fully outside the cabin windows, that they were eating by the light of the stove and several old-fashioned oil lamps Roald had going on the shelves. He looked around the cabin again. “Do you have electricity?”
“I have one solar panel on the south-facing side of the roof, and a battery. I bought them in Oslo when I was building the cabin. But I only use them to charge my headlamps and things like that, not for lighting.”
“Do you have indoor plumbing?”
He shook his head, scooping up the last of his potatoes on his fork. “When I first moved up here I had to haul water from a stream nearby. It was extremely tedious.” He smiled slightly at the memory. “Two years ago I dug a well near the house, so I can crank water up by hand. And I have a barrel out back for rain water. When I need some in the house I bring some in in a bucket.”
Fred involuntarily made a face. As much as he loved Roald’s ease with this kind of living, he had been removed from it, from Roald, for long enough that some aspects of it took him by surprise. Maybe that had always been the case and it was just easier to put those thoughts aside when they were still fucking. “So how do you keep yourself clean? Or do you just revel in being dirty all the time?”
Roald’s lips quirked. “If you behave yourself, you’ll find out.” He felt a slipper-covered foot nudge his leg under the table. Fuck. Well, he’d walked into that one and had only himself to blame.
After dinner, Roald poured some water from his bucket into a plastic tub in the kitchen nook, and scrubbed the plates and cutlery in it with some soap and a rag. Fred had pulled one of Roald’s books off of a shelf, a dogeared copy of Maurice Herzog’s Annapurna in English translation, but found he could scarcely keep his eyes open to read. He’d been running on adrenaline for more than 72 hours, but now that he was here, having spent hours trekking through the snow and flooded with relief that Roald wouldn’t turn him away, he was exhausted. Roald stepped closer to the chair just as Fred was seized by a truly spectacular yawn.
“Ah, yes, we should both turn in for the night.” He knelt and pulled out a wooden drawer under one of the wide benches, and retrieved a heavy wool blanket and several pillows. These he arranged on top of the sheepskin. He then patted the bench. “Off you go.” He turned to extinguish the oil lamps.
Fred began to unzip his Patagonia bag, then stopped halfway and frowned. He hadn’t thrown pajamas into his bag, in his haste to leave New York. Roald seemed to sense the issue without even turning around. “Just strip down to your base layers.”
Fred blushed, even though Roald had seen him many times in far less. Of course, back then they were an item. He attempted some levity. “You’re not going to chew me out for wearing cotton longjohns?”
Roald did turn around at that. “You know how I feel about cotton. You clearly haven’t learned a thing I’ve taught you,” he scolded. He placed his hands on his hips. “But I’ll let you get away with it, just this once, because I like you.” He smiled then, flashing his gold tooth. Fucking hell.
Fred turned around and began to disrobe, but Roald’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “I’m a terrible host. I forgot to offer you some dry socks. One must always sleep in dry socks. You can put these on.” Fred turned, and retrieved – no, not a pair of Smartwool high performance socks in some bland color. They were a regular synthetic blend pair, sky blue, with a repeating pattern of little emperor penguins. Why the hell did Roald have these? He turned to say something, but Roald had disappeared across the cabin again to finish putting out the last lamp. Fred sat on the bed and pulled them on. They fit his smallish feet perfectly. Somehow, out of all of the parts of being in his ex’s home that were giving him feelings, this one was the worst. He flushed and busied himself with tucking his outer clothes back into the duffle bag, then crawled onto the bench and spread the blanket out over his body. It was surprisingly comfortable; Roald must have added some kind of mattress pad to the bench, hidden under the sheepskins. He turned on his side, towards the wall, and curled his legs towards his chest. It was cozy with the skins and the blanket and the heat from the dying fire in the stove, and as the last lamp went out he felt his eyelids begin to slide shut…
He jolted as the bench creaked and Roald sat down. Fred’s eyes flew open and he turned his head over on the pillow. “What the hell, Roald?”
“I’m sleeping here. Move over.” In the dim remaining light from the stove, Fred could see that he was wearing his own set of base layers, including a black synthetic top that clung to his chest and arms. “A splendid set of muscles,” as one of the TV crew had called them once. Fuck fuck fuck.
“Why can’t you sleep on the other bench? Or I’ll sleep on it.”
“That bench is for sitting. This is the one with the mattress pad.” He huffed impatiently.
“Aren’t you the guy who used to, like, sleep on the tundra under a tarp for a living?”
“Move over.”
Well, it’s not like Fred had expected shacking up with his ex while on the run from the law to be easy. “Fine.” He turned his face back to face the wall. “But only if you tell me a bedtime story.”
Roald was not easily dissuaded. He lifted the edge of the blanket and slid in next to Fred. Fred felt as Roald settled on his side, resting his head on the other pillow, and then Roald’s arm came around Fred’s midsection. Christ almighty. What was Roald playing at? Roald slid close to him, and Fred could feel the solid muscle of his chest, rising and falling with each breath. He could feel Roald’s legs tucked up next to him. This close he could smell him with each of his own inhalations, slightly sweaty and musky and like woodsmoke and somehow a bit like the ocean, like the best “skin-scented” perfume ever made. Against his own better judgment, Fred sighed a little and leaned back. He liked being in Roald’s arms. So what? After the week he’d had, he deserved to feel nice and comfortable like this. He could have a little spooning from the ex he’d never gotten over, as a treat.
“What kind of bedtime story?” Roald’s breath ghosted over the back of Fred’s neck. “One about a band of explorers who starved to death, but not before getting frostbite and scurvy and killing and eating each other?”
“God, you’re such a romantic.”
“It’s why you like me, I’m sure.”
Fred was about to do something to seriously embarrass himself, if he wasn’t careful. Then again, Roald was the one who had apparently decided that there was only one bed in this cabin when there clearly were two.
“That’s not why,” he said petulantly, closing his eyes again.
Roald chuckled softly. “Fair enough. No romantic bedtime stories, then. But at least you can sleep easily tonight, hm? You’re safe here.”
Now Fred’s embarrassment really was imminent. He stiffened, about to protest, when Roald gave him a reassuring squeeze around his middle. “You should close your eyes. You’ve been traveling and there’s much to do tomorrow.”
“Are we going shopping? Taking the car for an oil change?”
“Yes, yes, we’ve established that you’re very funny.” Roald gave him another squeeze. “There are always chores to do, when you live like this and you have daylight. But first I’ll make you pancakes.” That seemed like a ruse. Fred had never ever seen Roald cook pancakes before. “And then we’ll wash up, like you asked about.”
Now Fred really regretted bringing that up. “Not if you usually wash up by dumping a bucket of snow over your head or something. I’ll take my chances and be gross.”
Roald chucked again. “No need.” He patted Fred’s stomach with the hand that was draped over his body. “I have a sauna.”
Fred’s eyes flew open. “You have a what?”
“Shhhh. New Yorkers!” Even in the dark, his head turned away, Fred could tell Roald was grinning and flashing that damn gold tooth. “No need to be so loud. I am right here.” Roald patted him again. “Good night, Fred. We can talk in the morning.”
To be continued…
Also I have decided that Fred Cook is a secret Phil Collins fan and “Something Happened on the Way to Heaven” always makes him sentimental about his past with Roald. This is canon now.
Re: "Where No One Would Believe that Someone Could F..." Cook/Amundsen, E eventually, slowburn, Part
(Anonymous) 2023-01-10 10:41 pm (UTC)(link)Roald was very clear that he thought Adrien’s idea of adventure amounted to poor planning LOLOLOLOL
He could have a little spooning from the ex he’d never gotten over, as a treat.
Incredible.
Re: "Where No One Would Believe that Someone Could F..." Cook/Amundsen, E eventually, slowburn, Part
(Anonymous) 2023-01-12 02:53 am (UTC)(link)This is also a very particularly cozy read when I am wrapped up in blankets myself because of the horrendous weather. I am glad that lucky dog Fred managed to fly out of the frying pan into the sauna.