1 x Penguin Diplomacy Fic

[delphi]

Further Negotiations Amongst the Penguins by starfishstar
Fandom: John Finnemore's Double Acts: Penguin Diplomacy
Ship: George Bunning/Søndergaard
Medium: Fic
Length: 2404 words
Rating: General
My Tags: romance, happy ending, getting together, script, proposals, domesticity, animals, science
Author's Summary: Stuck inside on a stormy night, Søndergaard and Bunning talk about divorce, love, loneliness, and what it takes to build a nest together. They’re talking about the penguins. Obviously.

Excerpt:

BUNNING: And when they go out to sea, once they’re done nesting for the season...do they always stay in their pairs? Seems like that would be a rather crowded life for a penguin, never getting to go off on one’s own.

SØNDERGAARD: Oh, no, no, they’re very independent! Well, I can’t speak to any other sorts of penguins, but lancelot penguins allow one another a great deal of independence. For much of the year, they swim off to wherever they like. It’s only that they know there’s a mate they can return to, back on land, when it’s time to build a nest again. Someone to come home to, as it were.

BUNNING: (QUIETLY) What a striking thought.

For those not familiar with it, Penguin Diplomacy is a half-hour radio play from 2017, set in the South Atlantic just after WWII. It involves a British government official both getting into an international incident with and befriending an eccentric Dane who has laid claim to a small island while studying the penguins there. This story nails the charm and comedy of the original as it picks up shortly post-canon with Bunning paying a social call to Søndergaard and his little lancelot penguins (all named for film stars of the day, including male couple Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne, who are raising a chick together) and seamlessly takes the original's romantic subtext into the realm of requited love. It's the sort of note-perfect "everything I wanted" sequel that I sometimes forget isn't official.