The Penguins' Side of the World (my ridiculous Aubrey-Maturin AU idea)
aka The Penguins of Consolation. Which is what Babbington calls it, because he's pretty sure the penguin babble is just a cover for a serious case of Antartic blue balls. Which is what his are going to be if he doesn't get laid soon, possibly literally, because fuck, it's fucking cold. Or no fucking cold. Seriously. There is no fucking going on in the goddamn camp. Cap - Jack - and Dr. Maturin should be fucking, fuck knows they've been eye-fucking enough, and for Christ's sake, they're practically verbally mating over the fucking penguins - not literally. Either Cap and the doctor or the penguins. Wrong season, and, fuck, they're probably going to be here until it's the right season. And the only alternative to the vicarious lay he is not fucking getting is Tom fucking Pullings, who is a cool dude, but the most relentlessly het bro he has ever fucking seen. This is the Antartic, for fuck's sake. It's like being at sea, just you and the dudes, and sometimes the ladies, but mostly dudes, so, you know, you start realizing you're pretty flexible. Except Tom Pullings never did, so it's just Babbington and his right hand.
Well, there's his best bro Mowett, of course. But dude. Best bro. Not cool.
So yeah, he's just fucking around on this fucking penguin documentary internship, loading up snowmobiles and shit. And watching Cap and Dr. Maturin - their day goes like this:
Dr. Maturin: Penguins blah blah blah penguins something about penguin anatomy penguins.
Cap: You've left your coat unzipped, heart.
Dr. Maturin: Oh, so I have, dear joy. Thank you!
And then they go back to their tent and play fucking duets, which is not, Babbington knows from sad experience, a fucking euphemism for fucking. It attracts penguins. Which he knows, because he had to wade through the fucking birds to tell the doctor since Mowett had a headache and the doctor would yell at them if he found out they hadn't told him. And they were just sitting there playing some classical shit which he was reliably informed was by some dead dude named Bocci or something.
He's beginning to think they'll never realize they should be making the tent walls quiver and scaring the penguins with their banging. No matter how many subtle clues he drops, for fuck's sake.
(and Jack and Stephen are totally trying to hook up him and Mowett so it is META MATCHMAKING, and Preserved Killick is grumpily being expedition chef because no one can cook at all and no one is ever going to get tripped into bed at this rate - they publish the documentary and it becomes a runaway bestseller because of the adorable romantic banter and then they're all '...everyone thinks we're together, whyyyy?' so they watch the documentary and are all '...oh. it is because we are together except not fucking LET US RECTIFY THAT' the end)