Strange Pairings for your characters?

I'm just sort of wondering if there is any else out there who has some strange characters as their main couple for their story. And, out of curiosity, what made you choose to use them?

For myself, this year I'm writing about a blossoming romance between two serial killers. Their love blooms in cute and loving scenes inbetween their murderous lifestyle. I know it's a little out there, but I figured since the main part of the story really is about their relationship, that this was the right genre for them.

Personally, I really just wanted to do something outside the norm. Not that I'm an expert or anything, but I haven't heard of too many stories that involve serial killers as the main characters. Especially in a story that isn't focused on their crimes.

So, anyone else out their with characters who have unorthodox occupations?

I've got a pair of assassins... I kind of wanted somthing out of the norm too. It's nice to hear that I'm not the only one doing something a bit out-there, I have to say...

Zombie hunters here. Yay for odd settings for romances :)

I'm writing an artist who's one of the top swimmers in his state with (at different times) a man who makes living, growing, and breathing dolls from the souls of dead children (for a good cause!) and a rich megalomaniac/schizophrenic eighteen year old company head.

I think this thread now officially contains too much awesome. O.o

My main couple are the modern-day reincarnations of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. My side couples include the reincarnations of Lafayette&Washington and Lewis&Clark.

Yeah.

I have no excuse.

Well, I have Max, who at some point gains the ability to transfer life energy to and from people and is later used by the leader of a criminal gang, Knowles, who wants to make himself a little near-unstoppable army, and Jack, Max's boyfriend, who essentially becomes Knowles's attack dog. You know. Before Knowles goes and injects him with the same substance that was used to give Max his powers, but does it all wrong, turning Jack into a raging psychopath who can turn someone's insides into a protein rich smoothie with his mind.

NICE ONE KNOWLES.

My MFC is a snow fox (yes, an animal) and the MMC is an immortal little boy who never grows up(Kind of like Peter Pan, with the heart of a buddhist monk). Okay, they don't always stay that way, but that's how the story starts...

Now it wasn't how I planned it. My original plot started out much later in the story when they are both human, sort of, but when I started writing, back story takes over and....well...8000 words later, the girl is still a fox. That's how the story goes...

MFC is a genetic experiment grown in a lab that sneaks away from time to time to experience life on the surface. She's spurred on by the lab computer's AI on occasion, though she doesn't often need help to do fun crazy things. (I'm really having fun with the snark-tastic computer)

MMC is a somewhat grumpy (he wasn't given much of a choice as to what profession he would go into as an adult) food grower who experiments with exotic fruit trees in his spare time.

Four pairings in my story, in various stages of relationship (sexual tension, actual sex, just friendship...for now, lost love).

Ellie is a cook who runs a restaurant out of a spaceship and Claude is a Constitutional law scholar and judge. Their relationship starts out as strong friendship and jumps into romance when Ellie offers to help Claude get over his sexual hangups, which are basically that he has an unexplained paranoia that the Founding Fathers are spying on him whenever he tries to consummate a physical relationship.

Moshe is a "programmed" (basically robot) smuggler and Anjelo is an amnesiac with a bitter hatred of programmeds who's landed outside Ellie's restaurant in an unidentified spacecraft. What Anjelo has forgotten is that they have a history (not a sexual one, a violent one), but Moshe hasn't, and fights his developing feelings for Anjelo every step of the way.

Zlota is a cook with multiple mental disorders and John is her doctor (who also just happens to be a straight cross-dresser). John believes he'd be taking advantage of Zlota if he acted on his feelings for her. Coincidentally, she believes the same thing, for different reasons. Their journey is as much about learning to trust each other as it is about falling in love.

Hadia is a scientist who was separated from her beloved wife ten years ago. Throughout the story, she searches for her and works through long-denied feelings that accompanied her loss.

I've got a triangle.

There's Iril, your classic medieval fantasy knight...values honor and chivalry, and wants desperately to do the right thing, but is learning the hard way that things aren't always as simple as honor and chivalry, and sometimes, you have to do the wrong thing to achieve the right end. He struggles with that.

Then there's his BFF, Varren, who is half-human, half-elf. Half breeds of any kind face a lot of prejudice in my world. Now elves are inherently magical, and humans are not (though they can gain magic other ways). Most half elves can do magic, but Varren is one of the rare exceptions to that rule: a half elf whose human blood prevents him from being able to use magic. And, having grown up among elves who can ALL use magic, he was always treated like he was utterly useless.

Then the woman they both wound up falling for is Morissa. She actually died in the prologue and was resurrected by a goddess of death to be her agent among the living. Her job is to seek out souls of the dead trapped in the mortal world and help them move on, as well as to stop anyone living from messing with the dead in any way...anything from leaving bodies unburied to robbing graves to necromancy. Though, given the source of her power, she herself sort of qualifies as a necromancer, but she always gets the permission of the dead person before using any magic on them.

Like I said, Iril and Varren were best friends, and they met Morissa on the road. At first they didn't trust her at all, but as the story went on, even after they were flat-out cruel to her, she helped Iril rescue Varren from jail, they eventually learned her story, and decided to help her in her mission. Varren started to admire her because of her courage. She faced so much adversity, including from him, and she still did things like rescue someone who'd been nasty to her takes a very remarkable person. Iril started to fall for her when she saved Varren as well. Sticking her neck out for a total stranger just because it was the right thing to do was something he admired. And it was cemented when she was talking to him about his previously-mentioned struggles, and she gave him understanding and comfort. She has feelings for them both, but isn't really letting herself fall for either one because she had a husband when she was alive, but he betrayed her. And after she died, most people avoid her like the plague because she's creepy. So these two are the first men who have taken the time to get to know who she is beneath the creepy aura of death, and she's afraid to trust it after what happened with her husband.

I once wrote a love story about two bicycles.

In my story, since it gets a lot of influence from fairy tales there is a beauty and beast-esque pairing. It's based on a Norwegian fairy tale and the pairing is a girl (akin to Goldilocks with deductive reasoning skills) and a white bear(who is a prince under a spell)

The main pairing that basically created the plot is between Silas and Aphy. And I'm having trouble with them because they hate each other so darn much.

Silas is the son of a nobleman, and Aphy is the priestess in charge of conducting his marriage to another woman. The thing is, though, Silas was born with the purpose of destroying a god and turning the cosmos over to the god that created him. And guess what? Aphy is the other god's servant, born to do the exact same as Silas, only reversed.
They both exist to destroy the other, yet end up with a baby boy and a promise never to hurt each other. And unconditional, unending love.

No idea how I'm going to turn that hateful relationship into love.

Does a Goddess and an Alien count?

This is like...my bread and butter :D

I have: human/zombie catgirl, human/huge dragon-bird creature, salamander man/wolf girl, human/shapeshifting cat monster/magical cyborg and human/deer person. In my other story (which is less developed) there's Sidhe/formorian-human cross and a sort of foe-yay esque sidhe/war goddess.

I've got a troll and a human hooking up. I'm not too sure how it happened. I was coming up with names, came up with the name "Chady", decided this would be a good name for a troll female. Then all of a sudden I had a love story completely planned between her and one of the human males.

Wow. Compared to some of the pairings here... I feel normal. Maybe it will look cooler when I write them out.
Well, in my one four-part romance thing, this is my pairing lineup:

A bookish girl with self-esteem problems/A pyrotechnics genius worshiped as a minor god/saint by the population of several cities

A semi-psychic Queen Bee type of girl/three guys (she, um, gets around) one being the head of a red-light-district empire who changes his appearance every day or so, another being an attractive animal whisperer and the third being a gorgeous former slave with anger problems

A shy, stuttering girl who wants to be brave but tends to fold when somebody yells at her/a guy who's fighting a one-man-battle against a police state as an inflammatory speaker.

A determined feminist who wants to be asexual/the captain of a military/black ops unit who not only fights humans and aliens, but deals with sneaky intelligence work and assassinations.

Okay, it looks... weirder when it's written out.