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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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Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-10-01 06:28 pm (UTC)(link)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) 2022-10-02 05:12 pm (UTC)(link)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.
Re: Fill: Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-10-02 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-10-03 03:53 pm (UTC)(link)Oh my god I love this so much, author anon! My heart… they’re just so…!! 😭
God that line hits so hard! Something about the nature of a man whose best and worst trait is refusing to admit defeat despite all odds (and sometimes just…factual reality), defeated.
Oh no Fred…
ROALD! 🥺
I’m sad now, the best kind of sadness. They’re so Thank you so much for writing this! 🥹
Re: Fill: Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-11-13 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)I’m going to tear my head off this is so tragically perfect. ahhhhhhhhh.
Re: Fill: Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2023-01-14 01:00 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2023-12-26 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)FILL Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-10-04 09:15 pm (UTC)(link)“They blacken my character,” says Roald bitterly. “But any man would have done the same. They are liars if they say otherwise!”
He took my hand — this is Frederick — and he wept right there, in my prison cell, over the many wrongs that men had done him.
“You know what they are like! They only seek to tear good men down.”
He said, just look at what they did to you, my dear Frederick. I have never doubted that you were first to reach the Pole. If all the world were against you, I would believe in you.
“Sometimes I think there is nothing pure in the world except a good death. A good death in a noble cause, hmm?”
Ah, my friend, Roald said. Sometimes I think of those days on the Belgica. We were so young, so full of hope and love. Perhaps we should have died then, when we were still great.
A wry smile. A moment of recollection. It is almost as though Roald has caught his train of thought. As though their thoughts have brushed against each other. “Do you ever think those days on the Belgica?” Roald asks.
Frederick remembers. He remembers those days. One day above them all.
“Ah,” says Roald. “We are a pair of old fools. You know I still have the tablecloth you made for me? I kept it.”
Roald said to me, I still have the tablecloth you made for me. I kept it.
The unembroidered truth has never been enough for Frederick Cook. But in that moment, he almost believes that it could be.
Re: FILL Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-10-05 01:47 am (UTC)(link)Re: FILL Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-10-06 01:29 am (UTC)(link)🥺 oh no my heart!! oh I love the interplay between the truth and Cook’s cooking of said truth and then again the truest truth running through both versions of the visit!
😭 oh Fred! Another thing I love about this, you can see still that each is a bit of an egotist, and yet the affection between them is simple, stripped of vanity. They ARE an old pair of fools! ❤️
Re: FILL Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2022-10-06 01:30 am (UTC)(link)I feel so lucky and also very sad, in the good way 🥹
Re: FILL Cook/Amundsen - sad old man reflects on what could’ve been
(Anonymous) 2023-01-14 01:02 pm (UTC)(link)