#childerrell

Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Gilbert Norrell/Jonathan Strange, John Childermass/Gilbert Norrell Additional Tags: Unrequited Love, Light Angst Summary:

This morning, Book had the idea for a prompt to explore the impications of two jsmn quotes - "Childermass knows, Childermass understands" and "I understood you before you wrote a word", where understanding is a metaphor for love. We decided we each wanted to write a little ficlet exploring it, partly because we were talking about the difference in our styles, and so here they are! As such both involve Snorrell and Childerrell and unrequited love, but the angst isn't especially heavy in either one.

scīre:

tell me how to reach you

(I got this twice, diolch both!)

I’m not normally confident enough to rec myself but I guess if I’m asked it’s not so bad?

restless in the unquiet earth is my jsmn big bang fic, it’s a jsmn/wuthering heights fic and it is my longest fic ever, seriously, it’s a beast. Features Childerrell and Johnsquared and Norrell/Strange, a way out of the darkness, and Vinculus getting his prophesies mixed up.

build myself a home out of the cinders and the dust is the only time I’ve managed to write Childermass/Strange, and it’s a very bleak fic that’s more about Childermass’s mental health (terrible) and both their relationships to sex (a mixture) than it is about them as a ship. If you need something more brightening after that, I direct you to @bookhobbit‘s the consequences of naiads, which is a gorgeous ot3 fic that convinced even me that Childermass/Strange has some potential for success.

a reason to treat you like i love you is…can I call it my Black Joan/Tom Brightwind manifesto fic? is that allowed? Anyway I’m really proud of it, I’ve never got their dynamic better than in this fic I don’t think (except in RP, of course, but credit lies with @tom-brightwind for at least 80% of that).

they both hate and are bad at talking about feelings so whatever they have going on between them is never Discussed

open affection is Bad partly bc of the talking about feelings thing partly bc they’re both hyperaware that it is Not Safe in their time or place

consequently the only way they can express mutual affection for each other is through their Weirdly Informal Employer-Employee Relationship which is part of why it's so Weirdly Informal

Norrell can only express care for Childermass by fussing at him ala "get out of the library and go to bed, I don't want to hear you sniffling or catch your cold"

this is easier for Childermass to accept than being actually outright cared for because he is terrible at self-care and can brush it off as "well I COULD stay and sniffle just to spite him but it's more than it's worth to fight his whims" rather than having to admit to himself that He Needs Rest

“Oh for gods’ sake take some money and get a new coat, you’ll catch your death and then where will I be, I suppose you’ve never thought of THAT,” “sit down stop standing you’re making me uneasy by hovering,” “will you EAT something Childermass, I can tell you’re distracted and I won’t have it” etc etc etc 

Childermass is not even sure that Norrell does it On Purpose because it is not provable, it Could be just a coincidence that Norrell's Whims sometimes align with Childermass's needs-he-won't-admit-are-needs, WHO KNOWS

he returns the favor anyway by silently accommodating Norrell’s various anxieties and sensory-sensitivity-related-quirks, rarely actually outright comforting Norrell, more often just observing what Norrell doesn’t like and arranging things to avoid that stuff as much as possible 

Childermass expresses his trust in Norrell by sassing him endlessly and doing his own thing, safe in the knowledge that Norrell’s not going to fire him for it

Norrell expresses his trust in Childermass by giving him the very high degree of independence and free reign he has over Norrell’s affairs

Childermass can admit in the privacy of his own head that the degree of affection he has for Norrell is higher than he wants it to be, but he doesn’t like doing so bc he knows he can’t do much about it

Norrell is a fervent worshiper at the Church of Denial and also pretty bad at understanding his feelings so he probably...DOESN’T admit this even in the privacy of his own head

in universes where they happen to get themselves together enough to kiss this just becomes...another thing they don’t talk about

“it’s better this way because either of us have to be compromised by any other outlet” is how Norrell thinks of it

he has come up with an elaborate scaffolding of justifications as to why physical intimacy is a logical necessity for both of them (release of stress) and exactly why it should be Childermass that it happens with (trustworthy, comfortingly unsentimental, etc) 

these are completely backformed bc before they kissed he’d never have thought of any of it, but he tries not to think about that

“it’s a bad idea but at least I know with me he won’t get hurt or blackmailed” is how Childermass, very quietly, thinks of it

also he enjoys it for its own sake, which is something he’s dismayed and slightly annoyed about because That’s Dangerous, This Wasn’t Supposed To Happen, Feelings Are Bad

he absolutely does not understand why he likes Norrell this much but he appears to have no control over it

both of them kind of consider this just a sort of natural extension of the way they’ve been living in close quarters for a long time, just another side effect of how closely they’ve worked together

so like, from early on in their acquaintance he knows that Norrell isn't a good person or a nice person or someone that most people would find attractive in any sense of the word, but he's interested in him

and he's also very aware of (and indeed very wary of) his own emotions so when he starts having ~Feelings for Norrell he's like "hm. interesting. bad. should do something about that."

and absolutely none of this stops him from falling way deeper than he expected or wanted to