For the WIP Ask Game
@tumblerislovetumblerislife you asked about Frank Matter and Frank in tags, so here you go!
‘Frank’ and 'Frank Matter’ are completely unrelated.
For smutty reasons I’ll talk about 'Frank Matter’ first and then pop discussion of 'Frank’ under a read more.
'Frank Matter’ is a Payneland AU mash up of Frankenstein and Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter.
WW1 veteran Charles joins an American-funded polar science expedition as their radio specialist. His companions are Monty, Thomas and Simon.
After arriving in Svalbard (top of Norway, in the Arctic circle) the team start their experiments.
Due to an unfortunate series of events - an accident that disturbs the ice while they are drilling - the rest of the expedition need to take an injured Thomas back to civilisation.
If they all leave it is unlikely conditions will allow them to return before spring and all their research so far will be for nothing. Charles, who has been assisting the scientists and is the only person able to use the radio agrees to stay. All alone. All winter. (This all ripped off from Dark Matter by Michelle Paver.)
He is alone, but doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes he’s sure he sees a face at the tiny window of his hut, or prints in the snow he hasn’t made.
One day he returns to his hut after doing his checks and there’s a fish on the table. More gifts follow. Until one night, in the middle of a blizzard, there is a knock on the door of the hut.
Enter Creature Edwin who has been frozen in the ice until the incident that lead to Thomas’ injury freed him.
At the moment this WIP is actually a load of notes because I feel like it needs to be epistolatory and although I love that kind of fiction I’ve never written it before.
—
Onto 'Frank’. Which is Ghostcat and based on some erotic fiction that Edwin may have come across at St Hilarion’s. Basically it’s Edwin writing wish-fulfilment smut.
[[MORE]]
Charles arrives back at the office to find Thomas in residence, sprawled over their new larger sofa, reading something intently. Thomas has a soft spot for smutty novels and will happily read them in company, reading out particularly terrible or, in his opinion, sexy passages out loud. So, it’s a surprise when he tries to hide what he’s reading and won’t tell Charles.
Which is interesting because Thomas is half-hard under his kilt and flushed.
They talk about how long Thomas has been waiting in the office, all alone and how lonely he is and where’s Edwin? (Edwin is still over at Niko and Crystal’s flat watching something with Niko.)
Charles says Edwin will be back soon and offers to make the time go a bit faster with an eyebrow wiggle. (Even with two people to practice on, Charles flirting is still terrible.)
Charles crawls into Thomas’s lap. (Yeah, he’s definitely hard). Charles kisses Thomas and when he’s nice and distracted Charles grabs the book from where Thomas has shoved it down the sofa.
A wrestle ensues, but Charles comes out on top. (Thomas is a lover not a fighter.)
It’s not a novel, it’s a notebook. Inside, Charles notes Edwin’s familiar handwriting.
“It wasn’t locked away,” Thomas says.
“But you were reading it any way, knowing it was Edwin’s.”
“I didn’t know at first. And then I did. But I couldn’t stop.”
“Why?”
“It was hot.”
“Hot?” Charles asks.
“Edwin wrote porn.”
“Fuck off.”
“It is. Want me to read it to you and prove it?”
They shouldn’t. It’s bad enough that Thomas has read it. But if Thomas has, why shouldn’t he know too. And Charles loves being read to.
“Read it to me,” Charles says.
[Cut to a pastiche of late Victorian/Edwardian erotic novels. The plot is based on Frank and I, a study of flagellation in England, an early Edwardian erotic novel. The Frank of the title is a girl who conceals her identity and is taken in by a young aristocrat.]
Edward [obviously a stand in for Edwin] runs away from his boarding school at age 17 for unspecified reasons and is taken in by a slightly older rich American ex-pat.
Theodore [it’s Thomas, of course it’s Thomas], is brash and louche but so kind Edward can’t help but like him. After a short time Edward leans, that like him, Edward is attracted to men. But unlike Edward –except for one terrible mistake – Theodore acts on that attraction with other men.
Edward becomes jealous. He knows that Theodore is attracted to him, but Theodore never acts on it.
Edward decides to seduce Montgomery [it’s porn, the reasons are not really sound], a 'friend’ of Theodore’s in the hopes of getting caught.
Theodore finds Edward in the parlour, Monty’s pretty, sweet mouth [that Edward imagines is Theodore’s or perhaps … no, best not to think of Him] round his cock.
Thomas sends Montgomery away. He takes Edward to his room and berates Edward off for taking such a stupid risk where any of the servants could have caught them
“The servants were in bed. It is only you who keeps such late hours,” Edwin says.
“You did this to make me jealous. Because you wanted to have Montgomery?”
Edward will not say.
“You are under my roof. You must abide by my rules,” Theodore says.
Edward replies, “No fucking in the parlour. Is that the rule? Or no fucking in this house unless it’s you doing it? You are not my father, nor my teacher, you are barely older than I am.”
Theodore: “And how would your teachers have punished you for this behaviour?”
[Interjection: Thomas pointing out that Edwin has written Thomas here instead of Theodore and scratched it out.]
“Six of the best.”
“Very well then,” Theodore says. “Trousers down, hands on the bed.”
Edward smiles.
Edward takes down his trousers, widens his stance and bares himself to Theodore’s gaze. He hears an inhale of breath.
Then the hits begin.
The tap of a cane against his bared skin so Theodore can take aim first. Edward flinches. “Get on with it.”
Each hit a bright spark against his skin, pleasure and pain admixing until Edward’s shaking arms give way and he ends sobbing into the crook of his elbow.
When Theodore finishes, he presses his cool hands against the raw heat of Edward’s caned arse, a welcome relief that Edward cannot help but press back into.
Theodore’s fingers wander, trail the cleft of Edward’s arse. He feels the slickness of oil when a finger dips to rub across Edward’s hole.
“You plotted this. All of this,” Theodore says, voice half accusation-half wonder. “Did you bring yourself off imagining this?”
Edward had many times. Fingers inside himself in his lonely bedroom, imagining they belongs to someone else.
“I have, ” Edward says.
“Well, it would be a shame to put such forward thinking to waste.”
[Interjection: Thomas saying that this must have been after Edwin and Thomas first fucked because the description of Theodore’s body and specifically his cock are very accurate and true to life. “Your cock? Your splendid, engorged tool, you mean?” Charles replies. “I mean, serviceable, yeah. Dunno if I’d go for splendid.”]
Theodore and Edwin talk, after. About the reason for Edward running away. His love for a fellow student. Edward confessed this love, but this confession was eavesdropped upon. Edward left before there was an answer from the other boy, as he did not want to cause trouble with his continued presence when (not if) rumours spread
Thomas says, “And that’s the first chapter.”
“He’s gone on you,” Charles says, but there’s a kind of disappointment in his tone. Because there is no version of Charles in Edwin’s tale. Despite how much Edwin loves him, he’s not been written into this fantasy.
“You’re a tool. Who do you think Edward’s first love is?” Thomas says. “There’s a second part.”
***
The second part, and how Charles and Thomas set about making Edwin’s fantasies a reality, is what I’m noodling at right now. But I’m thinking reality isn’t going to be as smooth and easy as wish-fulfilment.
