Alternate Universe Meme

[ptahrrific]

Give me a character or pairing and I will write snippets of ten different alternate universes for it. One line, ten lines, a ficlet if you're lucky.

01. Wild West
02. Cyberpunk
03. Shapeshifters
04. Pirates
05. …In SPACE!!
06. Born Another Gender
07. Schoolfic
08. Police/Firefighters
09. Urban Fantasy
10. Harem

Fandoms I'm up for writing: fake news, Hellsing, Doctor Who, Madoka Magica, Sailor Moon, But I'm A Cat Person, Read or Die, Tek Jansen. (Feel free to suggest an alternate for "IN SPACE" if you ask for a character who's canonically there!)


FILLS

Doctor Who
+Ten Doctors, Ten AUs (Teaspoon | AO3) (Jack, One through Ten, Ace, Romana, Rose | PG)
+What This AU Needs Is More Nitro-9 (Teaspoon | AO3) (Ace, Seven | G)

Fake News
+Ten Wyatt&Jessica AUs (Wyatt, Jessica | PG)
+It's What Lincoln Would Have AU'd (Jon, "Stephen", the Wørd, Charlene, Neil, Kilborn, Oprah | through R)
+Ten Olivia/Kristen AUs (Olivia/Kristen, Jon, "Stephen", correspondents | through PG-13)
Note: all three fakenews harem AUs are part of the same continuity.

Read Or Die
+AUs From Beyond The Ceiling (AO3) (Nenene/Yomiko, Maggie, Michelle, Anita, Junior, Nancy | through PG)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Jon/"Stephen"!

It's What Lincoln Would Have AU'd (1-4)

[ptahrrific]

01. Wild West

"Stephen, this is ridiculous. They may look a little different, they may have weird customs, but they're still people. Why shouldn't we help them out?"

"Why? Jon, haven't you been listening to a word I've said? These illegal immigrants are taking American land and sucking all the buffalo out of the system without giving anything back! And have you seen the kind of violence they bring with them? We need to close our borders, and do whatever we can to make these people go back where they came from!"

"How can you be so heartless? There are kids out there! Kids who are potentially dying of thirst, and could be saved if we would just show them how to take full advantage of a cactus."

"I'll show them what to do with a cactus, all right."

"That's enough, Stephen. You've said your piece. It's time for us to vote."

"Fine. But anyone who votes down my proposal is going to be sorry fifty years from now when we're all speaking English."



02. Cyberpunk

"Right again! You're always so intelligent, Stephen."

"I know I am," said Stephen smugly. "But it never hurts to hear you say it."

"Intelligent. Witty. Moral. Steadfast. Handsome. Devastatingly handsome."

"Why, Jon, if I didn't hear that from everyone who passes me on the street, I'd say you were flirting with me."

Raised eyebrows; a half-smirk overflowing with roguish charm. "And what if I am?"

"Well, in that case...run sex scenario #82."

The simulacrum kisses him, slow and gentle, a composite sensation randomly generated from details in Stephen's initial memory-dump. This VR program is the best on the market: even with only a handful of memories, it can record enough data to extrapolate nearly ten to the power of some-large-number-Stephen-didn't-bother-remembering variations.

That figure is for physical experiences only, of course. Without a scan of Jon's brain, it has no hope of even approaching the man's wit.

But as the imitation Jon pushes Stephen up against the wall in uncharacteristic silence, Stephen reminds himself that it doesn't matter. After all the mean things Jon said at the end there, he doesn't want to be reminded of what Jon's authentic voice sounds like. The VR version will skip all the nonsense and get straight to banging him, which is all Stephen really wants anyway.

Isn't it?



03. Shapeshifters

Jon keeps his abilities rigidly buttoned-down in public, whenever he's able. Employees get used to the fact that sometimes, when his temper or some other strong emotion gets the better of him, he locks himself in his office and they have to settle for being directed by phone.

There's no way he can keep it under control in bed.

Stephen gets used to running his hands across any part of Jon's body and finding the fur thicker than usual. He tries not to pout when he goes for a kiss and Jon refuses, afraid of mauling his lips and tongue with temporarily knife-sharp teeth. He accepts the apology promptly after Jon's claws punch through the surface of the mattress inches from his head, leaving puffs of stuffing dribbling out from fabric wounds.

It's a flaw, a handicap, a freakish problem. It's supposed to be the kind of thing you tolerate, out of generosity of spirit (of which Stephen has plenty, thank you very much).

There's no way a fine upstanding pillar of the community is supposed to enjoy it.

So Stephen pretends. When his heart beats faster at even a glimpse of Jon's irises swelling green-gold, he firmly stamps it down. When Jon apologizes for not being able to top him, Stephen insists that he wouldn't care for it anyway, even without the danger to soft internal tissues. When a photo of a younger Jon with full fuzzy ears on display makes the rounds of the news services, temptingly adorable, he does the unthinkable and turns off FOX for the duration.

But there's always going to be some trapped corner of him that yearns to taste blood in his mouth, and won't be sated until he has Jon inside him, barbs and all.



04. Pirates

Cold blankness sweeps over Jon as he watches Kilborn's gutted rig take water. He's not sure how many people are still on it. Judging by the small size of the group huddled with him (stripped of their weapons and kept in place with bayonets), far too many.

A dark-haired pirate with a red-beaked blue parrot on his shoulder and, incongruously, fine wire-rimmed glasses struts over to them. He'd been giving a speech to the crew; Jon wasn't listening to the details, but it made them clap a lot, and at one point start into a rhythmic chant which broke off with a hush when he made a simple gesture. Now he stares the captives up and down, with a particular focus on Jon — whose cuffs are torn and buttons are half missing, but whose outfit is still in better shape than most — before grabbing the end of the rope around his neck. "I'll take this one."

Jon has to trot across the deck to keep from being strangled by the pirate captain's brisk gait. "It's probably too small for you," he says — babbling like he's at the tailor's, because apparently the more crisis-oriented parts of his mind have decided to pack it in and go fishing. "You'll have to let it out. And replace the buttons. These are a custom-made set, and a bunch of them are gone, and the odds of you getting them back are...."

"Blah, blah, blah," interrupts the pirate. "You're lucky I like a man that can talk about fashion."

A wooden door slams behind them. Jon sees lamps with red glass panels, a sword and striped shield hanging on the wall, a shelf with more artifacts than books, including a sepia-toned globe with MINE scrawled in heavy black strokes across the Atlantic.

"You can keep the coat," the pirate informs him, with an air of great generosity. "I'll even have my people fix it up for you. Now shut up and strip."

Jon's stomach turns. Desperate for time, he stammers, "Don't I get to know your name first?"

"What?" demands the pirate. "Are you telling me you haven't heard of the Dread Pirate Colbert?"

"Uh...it sounds vaguely familiar...is that you?"

The bird on Colbert's shoulder flutters its feathers and squawks, "Legend in his own mind! Legend in his own mind!"

"You shut up," Colbert orders it. To Jon he adds, "This is The Word, so-called because she knows too many of them for her own good. And I'm the feared and revered Stephen Colbert, and if that name doesn't strike terror into your tiny little heart, then hold off on the stripping for a minute and come over to the bookshelf. I've got spoils to show you."

It's What Lincoln Would Have AU'd (5-10)

[ptahrrific]

05. ...In SPACE!!

Jon is a little short for a stormtrooper, and wishes everyone would quit thinking they're the first one to point it out.

Charlene disappears for six months and comes back all about lightsabers. Jon's privately impressed, although he doen't let Stephen know that; Stephen is Very Serious about blasters, to the point that he reads a bedtime story to his every night before putting it away.

Darth Factor turns out to be Stephen's father. Also Charlene's, which in retrospect makes that kiss seriously awkward, even if Stephen did only do it to make Jon jealous in the first place.

It's kind of scary how quickly Stephen raises a rebel army. Jon's not used to being part of anything taken this seriously.

They're the only three who know the whole story; Stephen deserved to know, of course, and they both wanted Jon to hear it. Charlene got Darth Factor to switch sides at the last minute, and he's the one who killed Darth Murdoch, only to expire himself moments later; the battle re-opened old wounds. Before he died, Charlene told him she forgave him.

"I don't," says Stephen flatly.

This time, as the presumptive future king-by-marriage of a recently formed diaspora, Jon privately agrees with Stephen.



06. Born Another Gender

"Sixty-ninth."

"I heard."

"Hotter than all but sixty-eight women on the planet. The planet, Jon."

"It's very impressive, I agree."

"Which means I have boyfriend dibs on all but a maximum of sixty-eight of the world's men."

"Uh, Steph—"

"And you are, at worst, the sixty-ninth luckiest man on Earth."

"Setting aside all the other logical flaws in that statement, couldn't some of the hotter woman be polyamorous?"

"Don't get smart with me, Stewart. You might jeopardize your access to the human race's sixty-ninth most desirable vagina."

"All right, ma'am."

"What I'm trying to say is, I expect worship tonight. And I think the voting readership of Maxim will agree that I deserve it."

"Uh-huh. Hey, Stephanie, have I ever told you that I routinely consider myself the first luckiest man on Earth?"

"That's a good start."



07. Schoolfic

Stephen has loudly questioned the value of every teacher and every subject, even the ones he's never taken, but throws himself into Mr. Tyson's seventh grade science fair assignment with gusto. He comes out with a full scale model of the Milky Way and its adjacent galactic clouds, bristling with scraps of paper containing over two hundred star-related facts, some of which even their astrophiliac professor hadn't been aware of.

In spite of the A+ in-class grade, it gets disqualified from the science fair for not being in "experimental format." Jon writes a scathingly funny letter to the editor of the school paper (one B. Williams) explaining why this is BS.

Stephen normally dismisses the paper too, but Mr. Tyson makes sure he sees this page. And, after finding out that he doesn't actually know the letter's author, decides to make a point of introducing them.



08. Police/Firefighters

"Come on, Colbert, you know I hate to do this."

"Then don't! You know the claims are baseless!"

"I hope they are! But you know the department can't just ignore accusations of racial harassment. Especially when they fall against a cop who writes up a group of young Hispanic men for, and I quote, 'acting suspicious'."

"How was I supposed to know they were Hispanic? I don't see race! All I saw is that they were acting suspicious! And...and un-American!"

"Unless you can give me some concrete activity they were engaged in...."

"Well...they were standing in front of a bookstore, looking at the window display...."

"And? Reading's going out of fashion, but it's not un-American yet."

"And...and they were making fun of Bill O'Reilly's new book."

"...I don't think we have a sensitivity training seminar for that."



09. Urban Fantasy

The fame lich sneaks through the studio window one afternoon and tries to suck all The Daily Show's vitality for itself. Craig puts a crossbow through its chest, then, after it recovers, offers it a job.

It's been very good ever since. Rehabilitated, you might say. Having multiple Peabodys and Emmys is a halfway decent salve for the gnawing ever-present hunger. Not a perfect one, though. Oprah had it on, once; it admitted that its existence was a constant challenge, then cried a little, and she hugged it and praised it as an inspiration to dark things everywhere.

By now Jon Stewart looks approximately twenty years past his actual age. Nobody's ever made the connection.



10. Harem
(Same 'verse as the Wyatt&Jessica one. Warning for sex+consent issues.)

Jon has to be seen taking someone to bed every night. In the early days, before he starts picking people for intelligence and trustworthiness more than status, he has to sleep with them all too. Can't give them any reason to get the gossip rolling.

Stephen's his favorite in these days because Stephen is gullible. Jon can tie him to the four-poster, eyes and ears covered, and then go read a book for an hour; Stephen will be no less than half-hard the entire time, and when Jon finally puts the volume down and unties the knots fasting his ankles to the bedposts, he'll assume Jon's been the same way.

That's how it goes for years on end. At some point Jon finds out he can bring in other people, and as long as the blindfold stays on and the rug is thick enough to swallow the tread of unfamilar footsteps, Stephen's story won't change.

This leads to the stretch of almost four months when Jon has almost no sex at all. He doesn't get much reading done, either. Internal conflict and self-loathing take up the bulk of his time. When he finally decides to change things, and damn the risk, the first step is to sit down with Stephen fully clothed and admits the deception.

Stephen looks at him for a long moment, then says, "Does that mean I can stop pretending it was you now?"

That brings Jon up short. "You knew?"

"Well, obviously," says Stephen, rolling his eyes. "Different penises feel different, Jon. At first I freaked out because I thought you didn't want me any more, but then I figured you must have a good reason that I just wasn't meant to know." And, when Jon asks if he isn't angry, "Why would I be? You wouldn't have let any of them hurt me."

(Jon is aware that this doesn't make him less of a horrible person. It just makes him a very, very lucky one.)

These days Jon is surrounded by a comfortable, clever group of people who just happen to look stunning with bare midriffs and poufy pants. They invite themselves into his bedroom, if and when they feel like it. On those nights nobody else volunteers, Stephen comes with him: for sex if they're both interested, cuddling if they're not.

Jon gets a lot of reading done with Stephen's dark head in his lap. He even gets someone to talk about the books with, and Stephen's commentary is earnest and funny, even when (especially when?) he's missed the point by a furlong.

Needless to say, Stephen is still his favorite.

#10, again.

[kribban]

A harem owner with a low libido is hilarious.

That's how it goes for years on end. At some point Jon finds out he can bring in other people, and as long as the blindfold stays on and the rug is thick enough to swallow the tread of unfamilar footsteps, Stephen's story won't change.

:-(

So, wait, he did the "leave Stephen waiting"-trick for years? That's a long time.

And the "ghosting", ick. At least Stephen knew, which makes it slightly more consensual from his end.

Stephen's story won't change.

Interesting. Stephen never told the others he knew, which meant that what Jon heard through the grapevine stayed the same.

And, when Jon asks if he isn't angry, "Why would I be? You wouldn't have let any of them hurt me."

<3 ;_;

Awww, Stephen, so unshakable in his trust in Jon.

He even gets someone to talk about the books with, and Stephen's commentary is earnest and funny, even when (especially when?) he's missed the point by a furlong.

Such a sweet ending. I'm sure "Stephen" is completely, utterly entertaining when he gets into a discussion.

It's both touching and a bit sad that Stephen is Jon's de facto back-up for sex.

Thank you for writing such delicious fic!

Re: #10, again.

[ptahrrific]

The timeline in my head is pretty vague, but yeah, it was a long time. (Not that Jon had Stephen every night -- other correspondents have come and gone, and of course he has travels and events and things.)

I tried to make Stephen as untraumatized as realistically possible by Jon's various abuses. He still has a deeply messed-up mindset, and would get shredded by any other owner. But he wasn't pushed beyond his limits in the past, and since we know through the Power of Authorial Fiat that Jon is really changing his ways, we know he'll get actual respect going forward.

Sad in the sense that Jon doesn't have a healthier relationship to go to instead? I can see that. At this point, though, his bond with Stephen is a more solid thing; it's not that Stephen is the backup sex option so much that spending time with Stephen (with or without sex) is what both of them want most, and what they get to do whenever Jon doesn't have another obligation.

Thank you for the thorough feedback! That's the best kind of reward :D

Re: #10, again.

[kribban]

Deeply-messed up, or exactly the right kind of mindset to survive being a concubine. But he would have objected if Jon had let him get hurt.

Well, yes, and that Stephen has to wait for the other people to have a go first. But I can definitely see that they're building a really sweet relationship. <3

Re: #10, again.

[ptahrrific]

That too XD

If there's a night on which Stephen urgently wants Jon, I'm sure he has no problem calling dibs.