carnival_papers
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There were few things Tom Blanky enjoyed more than a good puff on his pipe.
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“With all due respect, sir—if ever you find yourself…needing something, you’re free to come and see me.”
There was a peculiar quirk to Thomas Blanky’s upper lip as he said this, a strange twist in his expression that James could not make sense of. Blanky turned the pipe in his good hand as if inspecting it before tucking it inside the pocket of his coat.
“Mr. Blanky,” James said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
Blanky sighed, then, and glanced up, meeting James’ eyes. In the low lamplight, Blanky’s pupils were small and focused, dark and piercing. “I don’t mean to presume, sir. But you’ve seemed a bit—knotted up, recently. Since Francis has been on the mend.”
The ship creaked, its boards moaning under the crush of the ice, and the blue world outside pressed against the windows. In this moment, James felt a subtle but unmistakeable shift, like electricity standing hairs on end just before a lightning storm. James knew that, as though he were an entomologist’s specimen, he was pinned, caught, seen.
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carve your name (into my bedpost) by carnival_papers for norvegiae
Fandoms: The Terror (TV 2018)
28 Nov 2020
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James had worn Francis’ ring on his smallest finger for two months when Francis presented him with a second, equally unlikely gift. The package was simple: a plain brown box, unadorned but for an ivory ribbon tied in a neat bow and a cream-white gift tag bearing, in Francis’ careful script, the name Mrs. Crozier.
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A Les Misérables AU/fusion.
There was a moment, years ago, when everything changed. Even through the amber haze of intoxication, he remembers this: a boy with forged papers nicking an extra ship’s biscuit. His wide, pleading eyes; the hungry look to his face. How he had begged, said, Lieutenant Crozier, but the choice was already made, Francis Crozier’s life already unspooling a thread that led only to this—the edge of the Thames in the early evening, drunk on cheap whiskey and his own self-loathing.
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A summer by the sea.
“There are stories, you know, of men coming home and being unable to settle back into what's normal. I feel it, sometimes, like an itch at the top of my spine.” James leans forward, clasps his hands together. “You do not have to say yes, but I believe a change in scenery might do us both good.”
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See additional warnings in end notes.
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Even at the worst of it. Even at the eleventh hour, when the weakest of them (James included) were driven round the wheel of breath by brute instinct alone, dead men with beating blood, Francis emanated the kind of muddy half-light that precedes the rising sun. His indefatigable will made manifest in the flesh.
“Don’t be cruel, James,” he is saying now. “I am fat, decrepit. My better days, if ever I had them, are long behind me.”
“Ever the curmudgeon. You’ve no idea how ... splendid you are. I, for one, think these are your finest days.”
Bookmarked by carnival_papers
05 Mar 2021
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“Do you wish to speak, sir?”
“I said a service with him last night. Just the two of us.”
A missing scene from episode 9.
Bookmarked by carnival_papers
26 Dec 2020
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1840s Hygiene And Personal Care, "Cold Men On Boats" Edition by skazka
Fandoms: The Terror (TV 2018), 19th Century CE RPF
09 Dec 2020
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Or, some meta in which many words are spent on Early Victorian bathing, shaving, skincare, and lube.
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“There is barely a ribbon or a feather or a scrap of silk left this side of Exeter.”
“No woman under thirty is left unmoved,” Tom said, grinning around the stem of his pipe.
“Even our Essie is taken up with the idea!” Esther’s dark eyes were dancing in the firelight. “Though she is far too young to think of marrying at present — least of all to Mr James Fitzjames.”
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Francis swirled the last dregs in his glass and peered into its depths. Some kind of grim satisfaction had come over him. “I’ll tell you what you want to hear,” he said. “For a certain price.” It was foolhardy beyond measure. Damning, even.