A Groundhog Day AU where A makes it through the loop, works out all their stuff with person B, and finally wakes up the next morning, with a brand-new day, next to person B - whereupon person B says "Oh shit, it's today again." (Bonus if you keep it going through the whole cast one day at a time.)
They were roommates. And they were really bad at being roommates. They can't share space. They nearly ruined their friendship. It's not until they give it up and each get their own place that romance has room to blossom.
There was only one bed. And Character A has only previously shared beds before on awkward trips with family/co-workers/at Grandma's house, or in a time/place where stacking six strangers to a bed at an inn was normal, and thus has trained themselves to not be awkward about it and to keep max space between bed partners even when sound sleep. Character B is not sure what to make of this.
Magical castwide sexswap. Outies become innies, innies become outies. But a significant part of the cast wasn't cis to start with.
Magical castwide genderswitch. Gender identity switches (at random, not binary), body parts don't.
Actual sex magic based on RL ritual sex magic.
Bodyswap where Our Pairing don't swap with each other, they swap with random other friends who are tired of all the UST between them and use the opportunity to Make It Weird.
Somebody gets turned into a houseplant (credit sholio).
Undercover at a straight bar. They're really bad at it.
Character swaps places with AU version of themself, who has swapped with a different AU version of themself, who has swapped with a different AU version of themself, etc down the line. They're all happily dating different people.
Accidentally psychically bonded to someone other than the person you have a massive secret crush on. If telepathically hiding it from the person you're in love with is hard, try hiding it from the person who really, really doesn't ever want to see that stuff in your head. (Bonus if it's mutual and ends up poly V). (Super bonus for "all destined metamours get soulbonds" AU.)
Trapped in a blizzard, huddling for warmth, way too sick and scared and busy surviving to think about sex or romance, get together in the nice warm ski lodge afterward.
Person hits their head and gets knocked out, repercussions actually meticulousy medically accurate.
Aliens Make Them Not Have Sex
Fake relationship, they both fall hard for other people while faking it, have to deal with everyone thinking they're being unfaithful until they can end the fake relationship.
Soulmark AU, but somebody did the worldbuilding work so history/culture has actually plausibly changed as much as it would need to.
Character has secretly been elf/vampire/demon/immortal all along. This changes nothing about canon.
Canon is the mirrorverse AU.
They get drunk and Vegas/Gretna Green married, only they get a call back the next day finding out it's not valid because the records check turned up that they're both already married. To each other. They were already accidentally married years ago and didn't realize (or secretly married to each other and now the secret's going to have to come out).
Were they hockey fic? The only time I've seen it is in hockey fic deailng with RL concussions on the field, and I only ever read hockey fic for the tropes and never kept track of it very well.
I've read a fair amount of sickfic that does various illnesses/injuries realistically, but in non-sports fandoms at least, concussion fic is so vastly outnumbered by "walked into a bar, got unrealistic amnesia". Or "needed to be knocked out for plot reasons, no side effects" (which is. Fine.)
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sholio).
This is fascinating!
Re: This is fascinating!
I've read a fair amount of sickfic that does various illnesses/injuries realistically, but in non-sports fandoms at least, concussion fic is so vastly outnumbered by "walked into a bar, got unrealistic amnesia". Or "needed to be knocked out for plot reasons, no side effects" (which is. Fine.)