Beyond the Roundels

Title: No Bones Broken, No Harm Done
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 1395
Characters/Pairings: Frank Marker/Helen Mortimer
Notes/Warnings: None.
Summary: The last thing Frank wants is tea and sympathy; it only complicates things.

For the hc_bingo square “assault”. Hopefully, there won't be any more Public Eye for this, but I had ideas for 4 out of 5 squares and then... well, what fictional character do I write who's most likely to get beaten up? (And he spent at least 18 months in Brighton. It must have happened at some point during that time.)

( No Bones Broken )

Crossposted from Dreamwidth -- Comments there:

My unconventionalcourtship fic! Which is long, obscure, and very unexciting! Amazing!

Between Strangers (8918 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Public Eye (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Frank Marker/Helen Mortimer
Characters: Frank Marker, Helen Mortimer
Additional Tags: Snowed In, Trope Subversion/Inversion, 1940s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-Series, Curtain Fic
Summary: Trying to sell encyclopedias in the middle of the worst winter of the century wasn’t the best idea to begin with. And now Frank Marker's wound up trying to rescue a single mother and her baby who’ve been abandoned at a bus stop, and all he’s got to hand is a car that won’t go and several dozen copies of The A-Z of Everything... (Beta-ed by Persiflage).

It doesn't require canon knowledge... but I can't pretend much happens. There is snow and a cute car (I provided a link at the end). And it is a fic. I can say that much for it...

(I very much hope "proper" Public Eye fans don't look at AO3 much. I would probably be strung up for writing Romance novel-inspired Frank/Mrs Mortimer, I really would.)

I was, btw, definitely not signing up for unconventionalcourtship myself this time, oh no. I'd only try and write inappropriate Public Eye fanfic for it, if I could even manage anything.

I looked through the summaries (and mostly boggled, and thought WHY? and questioned characters' life choices) and then I wrote most of this in rough by early this afternoon:

78) Between Strangers – Linda Conrad
Rescuing a stranded mother and baby from a raging blizzard hasn’t been part of Frank Marker’s plans. Yet he couldn’t abandon Helen Mortimer. And ended up getting snowed in with her, tasting those fiery kisses. She was all wrong for him, so why did she feel so right in his arms?

Needless to say, there will not be any fiery kisses in my Public Eye fic, even if it is set 20 years pre-canon in the hard winter of 1947 when Our Heroes were 18 and 24 respectively (or thereabouts) and - if you follow Timeline #1 - Helen was, in canon, a single mother with a baby. (Denis Mortimer did marry her, but only four years later when it was convenient for him, of course.) (My working draft summary is something like this: Frank Marker’s trying to sell encyclopedias in the middle of the worst winter of the century, which probably wasn’t the best idea to start with. And now he’s wound up trying to rescue a single mother and her baby who’ve been abandoned at a bus stop, and all he’s got to hand is a car that won’t go, and a dozen copies of the A-Z of Everything... )

Please send help. Things the world does not need: Public Eye fanfiction. I mean, really. Even aside from nobody watching it but me, it works by showing, not telling, and cleverness, and Alfred Burke's face. I have none of those things; I have a Mills & Boon summary and a due date of May 2nd... /o\

Anyway. It's a fun ficathon - you get the prompt on a plate, full freedom to be as unromantic and trope subverting as you like or the reverse, for those who aren't me and will write fiery kisses for characters they ship. (Mind, I think this one might qualify as more romantic than last time when Silver and Steel got stuck in a romance novel, or, to put it more honestly, I cheated outrageously by use of the nature of S&S.)