The Colour By Numbers AU Primer
⚠️Content Warnings - Please Read Before Proceeding
This AU contains the following content. Please take care of yourself and proceed only if you're comfortable with these themes.
Quick Reference:
- Mpreg
- Drug use and addiction
- Alcohol use
- Pregnancy loss
- Neonatal illness
- Physical and emotional abuse
- Infidelity
- Divorce (in the Bad Timeline)
- Grief
- Strong language
- RPF, obviously
In More Detail:
Mpreg - In this universe, both sexes can carry children. This is a core element of the AU and cannot be separated from the story.
Drug use and addiction - George struggles significantly with addiction throughout the AU, particularly in the mid-1980s. Cody later mirrors this struggle in her twenties. Neither is depicted glamorously.
Alcohol use - Roy lapses into alcohol use during a particularly difficult period. This is treated seriously and causes significant concern for those who love him.
Pregnancy loss - George and Jon lose a baby in 1985 under painful circumstances. This is handled with care but is a significant plot point.
Neonatal illness - Cody and Zahava are born addicted and spend much of their early childhood unwell.
Physical and emotional abuse - Certain moments in George and Jon's relationship become physical. This is not depicted approvingly.
Infidelity - Jon is unfaithful to George on multiple occasions across both timelines. In the Bad Timeline, this leads to divorce.
Grief - There are moments of significant loss throughout the AU, including the aforementioned pregnancy loss and its long-term emotional moment.
Strong language - These are musicians in 1980s Britain. You do the math.
RPF Disclaimer - This is a work of love and fiction, and I am not affiliated with Culture Club or each individual member, nor am I a family member (that I'm aware of lmao). No harm is intended through this purely fictional AU.
Why This AU Exists
The Colour By Numbers AU didn't start with a good plan. Honestly? I created it because I wanted to. That's the most truthful answer I can give you. But like most things born from genuine love, it grew into something much bigger than I ever expected.
At its core, the AU exists because I wanted to give George and Jon a happy ending. Not a reimagined version of who they are -- but them, fully and authentically themselves, just without the heartbreak. Without the breakup. Without the lawsuit that cast such a long and painful shadow over everything.
In real life, 1986/1987 was one of the darkest periods in Culture Club's history. George was deep in addiction, the band had fractured, and the relationship between George and Jon was over. But in the AU, 1986/1987 looks a bit different. In our universe, same-sex marriage exists -- because in this world I built, it always should have -- and 1987 is the year George and Jon get married.
That moment is practically the heart of everything.
An entire universe grows, a family, a life, 40+ years of history reimagined with love.
Welcome to the Colour By Numbers AU. I'm so glad you're here. 💗
The World
The AU is set in the real world -- specifically the real-world of 1980s Britain and beyond -- but with a few small but significant differences. Same-sex marriage has always been legal here. Both sexes are capable of having children. And George and Jon stay together.
That's really it. No magic, no alternate history beyond those details really. Just a world where the people we love got to have what they deserved. Oh, and Mikey and Roy are absolutely a couple. Obviously. 💗
The Timeline
The AU begins with George and Jon meeting in the late 1970s, early 1980s. Then Culture Club begins in 1981 -- four people who became a band, and two of them who became something much more.
By late 1982, George and Jon's relationship brought a life-changing surprise that neither of them could have anticipated -- one that would shape the entire universe that followed.
1986/1987 brought the moment that sits at the heart of the AU -- a wedding. A choice. A commitment made in a world where it was always legal to make it.
But even happy universes have their darkness. In the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, George found himself at a crossroads with his sobriety, eventually running off to India to get clean -- a journey that changed him profoundly.
1995 brought one of the AU's most painful chapters. In the wake of George's autobiography, Take It Like a Man, George and Jon separated -- a real, serious fracture that left everything uncertain.
And then 1996 brought them back to each other.
Because that's what this universe is at its core. A story about two people who kept finding their way back. 💗
How It All Began -- George and Jon's Origin Story
In the AU, George and Jon meet the way I originally thought they had -- I've learned this isn't 100 percent accurate, but I'm very attached to my version, so it stays, LOL. They are introduced at a pub by Kirk Brandon -- George's boyfriend at the time. Kirk doesn't think much of it. He probably should have. The spark is immediate, even if neither of them quite knows what to do with it yet.
Eventually -- months later -- Rusty Egan tells George that Kirk has went back to his wife -- without so much as telling him to his face. Jon overhears and files it away, feeling something shift. He sleeps on it. A couple of days later, he shows up at George's flat with a meat pie, because food helps and he doesn't know what else to bring. He sits with George. Doesn't say much. And somewhere in that quiet, he realizes he's completely in love. It's not the right time to say so, but he knows.
A few weeks later, Jon comes back to check on him. And in a moment neither of them entirely planned, he kisses George. George kisses him back. That night George writes in his diary:
"I can't wait for him to ruin me. I think he already did."
And that's how it starts. 💗
Mikey and Roy's Origin Story
Mikey and Roy meet at a party in Brixton -- ages seventeen and sixteen respectively, strangers who lock eyes across the room and don't stand a chance. Teenage hormones do what teenage hormones do. Afterward, Mikey goes home to London, Roy goes home to Essex.
Nine months later, Keita and Amber are born.
Roy, despite his young age, figures it out anyway --finishing school, and then hairdressing by day, guitar on the side, his mum and dad helping where they can. He provides. He shows up. Five years pass.
Then he reads that a band called In Praise of Lemmings needs a guitarist. He walks into a soundcheck in London. Ans across the room, holding a bass guitar, is Mikey Craig.
They lock eyes. They both know exactly who they're looking at.
Roy gets the gig. 💗
Culture Club in the AU
Culture Club in the AU follows a familiar path. Waking Up With the House on Fire, From Luxury to Heartache -- it all still happens, because George and Jon's relationship has enough turbulence to fuel it. Jon isn't perfect. He hurts George in ways that leave marks.
By 1986/1987 the band calls it quits. Mikey is the only sober one. Everyone else is dealing with something. Even love isn't enough to keep four people functioning when addiction is pulling them in different directions.
But they find their way back to each other. They always do.
The People
Boy George
George in the AU is the George we know and love -- fierce, funny, vulnerable, and gloriously himself. The only difference is that in this universe, he can carry children, which he does. More than once. He struggles, makes mistakes, and prays constantly that he's being the best 'mum' he can be. Spoiler: He is. 💗
Jon Moss
Jon in the AU is still unmistakably himself -- funny, charming, caring, and deeply flawed in the ways we know. What the AU gives him is something he couldn't have in the 1980s: the safety to be open about his relationship with George. It takes time for him to get used to it. He isn't perfect -- he hurts George in ways he carries real regret about -- but he loves fiercely and he's always trying. 💗
Mikey Craig
Mikey in the AU is exactly what he's always been -- the glue, the heart, the serotonin. He's the one checking on everyone, the only sober one when the wheels fall off, and the person who smiles through it all because someone has to. He's also head over heels for Roy -- something that started with that teenage fling neither of them fully recognized at the time. Father to five children and steadiest person in any room. 💗
Roy Hay
Roy in the AU is also exactly what he's always been -- outgoing, occasionally catty, and one of the most loual people in the room. A former hairdresser who happily sorts out Jon and Mikey's hair, but wisely leaves George's entirely alone. Like George, Roy can carry children in this universe. When the band falls apart, Roy struggles -- alcohol becomes a concern that worries Mikey deeply -- but despite everything, he shows up for George and Jon when it matters. 💗
The Family - George and Jon's Children
Celestina Karma
The firstborn, with George and Jon wrapped around her finger from her very first breath, a little girl who grew up too fast and saw too much but never stopped being fiercely loved.
Cody Christina (born Cody Eitan)
The second born, a twin, who came into the world fighting and never really stopped. Her journey to herself has been hard-won, marked by struggle that echoes George's in ways that break your heart a little.
Zahava Shiri
Cody's twin, born into the same struggle, but quieter about it/ She doesn't say much, never has -- but don't mistake her silence for absence. Zahava sees everything.
Clyde Lionel
Rough and tumble as a little one, silly, and completely Jon's. He's found drumming young and never looked back, becoming his father's little shadow in the best possible way.
Julia Louise (Gigi)
Quiet until she isn't. A natural performer with a voice that stopped people in their tracks from childhood, who looked at George and decided that was exactly who she wanted to be.
Leon David
Quiet, shy, and gifted at the piano, with a love for cars and an unshakeable devotion to his twin sister, Nessa. He's gentle right up until someone gives him a reason not to be.
Nessa Rhiannon Fiona
Leon's twin, the most practically minded of the bunch, and the reason George finally knows where all his makeup is. Autistic and proudly so, with a gift for organizing and a lifelong devotion to Pokémon.
Bowie Leigh
The youngest, the most dramatic, named for David Bowie and Leigh Bowery, he is every bit his namesakes. He also looks like George, dresses like George, and as a child saw fit to bite George's enemies on his behalf. The apple didn't fall far from the tree. Not even a little bit.
Natalie Catherine/Aubrey Kai 💔
The baby George and Jon lost in 1985, in the wake of something that should never have happened. George carried this grief alone for decades before finally telling Jon. Some losses leave a mark on a family forever.
The Bad Timeline AU
The Bad Timeline AU branches from the main Colour By Numbers universe at a single catastrophic moment in 2021. While the family is at the hospital after Cody is hospitalized, Jon makes an irreparable mistake. George catches him. In the main AU, they survive it -- barely, and only through therapy and Jon genuinely working on himself. In the Bad Timeline, they don't.
Jon moves out. Gets a flat in Hampstead. Takes his bins out one night and meets his neighbour -- a tall, skinny twink with blond dreadlocks and heterochromia eyes, named Zephyr Orion Vale. It starts as the most unexpected friendship. It becomes something more. 💗
Zephyr Orion Vale
Zephyr Orion Vale is, in a couple of words, a wildcard. Born September 12, 1989, in Leeds -- exactly 32 years and one day after Jon. He's the middle child of five raised by his mother, Cassia Skye, and father Phoenix Moon, whose own parents were among the first practitioners of Wicca under Gerald Gardner. Spirituality isn't something Zephyr came to -- it's something he was born into.
He's a hippie child through and through. His siblings are Indigo Dawn, Juniper Mint, Raven Moon, and Jasper Sage. He's fully Wiccan, fiercely himself, and works as a DeLorean mechanic in Hampstead, which is how he and Jon became neighbours.
Their friendship is immediate and unexpected. Zephyr supports Jon unconditionally, flaws and all, asking nothing in return. Feelings develop on both sides. Neither of them says anything about it.
Until Zephyr gets injured working on his DeLorean. And Jon can't pretend anymore. 💗
This primer was written with love by me, The Chameleon. This AU has been a labour of love for many years and continues to grow. Thank you for being here and checking it out! 💗
Last Updated: May 7, 2026