Your Master & Commander posting entertains me a lot, I've never read it or seen the movie so literally 100% of my entirely secondhand knowledge about Aubrey and Maturin at this point comes from you.
And I was just sitting here looking at the gifset of Russell Crow Aubrey and thinking about your depiction of him and going, "I love how Leona's drawings of Maturin and Aubrey interacting have this undertone that reads to me like Leona is saying 'oh I guess you COULD say I ship them, but actually getting around to fucking would be the sanest and also least interesting thing these freaks could do'"
And I love that for you. Never stop.
Thats incredibly exact read on how I feel about them.
I am also a big fan of yearning, and characters not getting what they desire/deserve. Or characters not realizing there is something they could desire within reach.
And...to me as an ace, them being in some kind of codependent/symbiotic queerplatonic relationship, where when together, they work as one mostly functional organism, is enough.