deedee_sims | Plus One Fake Boyfriends AU

There seemed to be interest for this, so I'm posting it! 😁 I wrote this AU last year... for some reason XD. It has 3 chapters, and they'll be posted in the upcoming weeks.

The story takes place ~3 years later than the original story, but the boys never met before. There are some light spoilers about things that happen to other characters in the "canon" storyline.

Enjoy! 😊

Warnings: Rhett being an idiot, Rhett having inappropriate thoughs, just... Rhett being Rhett, I guess? XD

"I'm an idiot."

"Yeah, you are."

"He just... pissed me off, and I didn't think."

"You know he does that."

I grunt, peeking out from behind my palms at Max. Who looks back at me with slight exasperation. Great.

To be honest, I got myself into this situation. Callum insisted on what a loser I am for attending his fucking wedding alone, and then I told him I'm bringing my boyfriend. The only, and quite significant problem is that I don't have a boyfriend. Or anyone, really.

Talk about being a loser.

"Max." I look at him with the most pleading face I can muster. "You need to help me!"

He looks back at me, slightly affronted. "I have a boyfriend, man."

"I know! But... you must know someone!"

"You know plenty of people, Rhett."

"Yes, but Callum also knows them!" I wave, annoyed. "I need someone who's unknown to him!"

Max lets out a sigh.

"Please!"

He lets out another sigh. I'm not sure if it's a good sign or not. Either way, I continue looking at him pleadingly.

"Okay, I might know someone. I'll ask around."

"Thank you!" I feel the knot slightly easing in my stomach. "I could kiss you now!"

"Please, don't."

"But seriously, I owe you so much!"

Max levels me a look. "Yeah, you do." The fucking bastard. "But that's what friends are for, right?"

***

So that's how I end up at Latte Love two days later, waiting for my fake boyfriend.

He's supposedly one of Max's boyfriend's friends. Or exes. I'm not sure, and it's quite irrelevant to my current situation.

I tried to look him - Oliver - up on social media, but he's the kind of person whose profile picture is a blurry photo of him. From the distance. From the back. Why even bother having a profile picture then?

But either way, it doesn't really matter if he's handsome, I just need him to play the part authentically.

I look at my phone, which informs me that he still has two minutes to arrive. I hear the bell on the door jingle, and I look up.

A guy steps into the cafe, carefully closing the door behind himself, then looking a bit lost. He's wearing jeans and a black band shirt that's a little too loose on his lean body. He locks his eyes with mine, something like a slight surprise passing his face, but he gets over it quickly and starts towards me. Oh shit, that's my guy?

Well, he's... something else. His long red hair is half up, and as he gets closer, I decide he might be the most beautiful man I've ever seen.

Fuck, I'm fucked.

"Hello," he greets me shyly. "Are you Rhett?"

"Y-yeah!" Fuckfuck, I need to snap out of my thoughts where I was already doing things to him. "You must be Oliver!"

"Nice to meet you!" We shake hands, and well, fuck. He has impossibly pretty blue eyes. And nice hands.

Shitshitshit.

We sit down, and I offer to order him a coffee, which he accepts. Then we're all business.

"I believe you already know the gist of this gig?"

"Um, yeah, I'm aware of the situation." He frowns a bit into his coffee, which looks extremely cute on him. "Just so you know, I'm only doing this because Max said it was a matter of life and death."

Uhm, Max can be a little dramatic, that's for sure. "Look, I don't want to force you into anything. I promise I won't drop dead if you don't accept."

He sighs, a little exasperated, which makes me irritated. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yeah, but-" I force myself to stop because I really don't want to turn this situation against myself. "Nevermind." He's just a little reluctant, nothing I haven't dealt with in my wilder years.

In an entirely different concept, though.

Ugh, concentrate, Rhett.

"So?" He raises his eyebrows. "It's just one day, right?"

"Yeah. Just my brother's wedding. I don't see my family frequently, so they won't notice if we stay together, or not, after."

"Okay."

"Just so you know, my family is... not very easy."

He does the cute frowning thing again. "Are they like... homophobic?"

"Ah no! More like Rhett-phobic" I laugh uncomfortably. When I'm only met with a confused look, I elaborate. "My brother is a businessman. My father is a businessman. He wanted me to become a businessman. And I didn't. So anything I do is basically..." I finish with an awkward shrug.

"I see."

"What's your job?" I ask him, trying to steer the conversation to something else than my failures.

"Um, I'm at uni. Masters."

"Oh cool, they'll like you at least! I mean my parents. Callum - he's my brother - will probably try to talk you into breaking up with me."

"What?"

"Don't mind him. Just don't break up with me right then."

He only levels me with a strange look, so I continue talking instead.

"I think we should talk about the actual business of pretending. Look, I'm going to respect your boundaries. If we could hold hands sometimes that would be cool, but I'm not going to spring a kiss on you." Without your consent, I don't add, because I really don't want to scare him away.

Watcher knows, he flushes a bit at that, looking down at his coffee. "I'm fine with holding hands. How did we meet?"

"Huh?"

"I think we should say that it was through friends. I mean, I know Max. And it's not far from the truth."

"Oh, cool!"

"And it's a new thing, so that's why you haven't introduced me to them yet. You asked me out. We went to the movies. I didn't like it that much, but I liked you."

I feel like I'm gaping like a goldfish here, because he's all business now, and it's kinda sexy. And also he must've spent a considerable amount of time thinking up this backstory, which is... wow.

"You can call me baby if you want."

And that is the final blow of all things, and he delivers it kinda flatly, still staring at his coffee. I bless my complexion for not blushing easily because my brain just kicked into overdrive over calling him baby in all kinds of other situations.

Get a grip on yourself, Rhett.

"You can call me anything, I'm fine with whatever. Surprise me."

He hums, but I don't know if I should be concerned that he spent more time staring at his drink than looking at me. I'm not sure if we can pull this off if he's so uncomfortable around me.

"Are you sure, you're fine with this?" I need to ask.

He finally looks up, gifting me the first smile since we met, and it kinda makes me breathless.

"Yes. I'm all yours on Saturday."

***

"Thank you for watching, see you next time! Bye!"

I end the recording with a sigh. I blundered more than usual, being uselessly too nervous about the wedding tomorrow, and I'll have to cut out all the shitty parts. Whatever. I'll only have time to edit this on Sunday anyway. It can stay in its shitty state until then.

I fiddle with the channel a bit more, uploading the video I edited yesterday, silently praying for it to not get demonized. I mean demonetized. I also answer a couple of comments and stuff, but I have to give up shortly, because I'm still fucking nervous about tomorrow, and it just makes me frustrated, and argh.

I occupy myself with selecting clothes, a simple dark suit and a ridiculous floral shirt. I don't care if it's inappropriate, it'll look great. For a brief moment I ponder messaging Oliver to match our clothes, but I don't want to impose on him more than necessary. He's already doing me a huge favor that I don't know how I'm going to pay back. Maybe I should actually pay him. Ugh. More problems for tomorrow.

When I finally get into bed, I can't sleep of course. I think about Callum being the perfect, beloved heir, who's about to marry a perfectly normal girl, coming from a perfectly normal family. About the scrutiny, I'm going to get because I'm not perfect in any sense, and when Callum was twenty-five he was already a manager, and all I'm doing is making weird piano covers and talking about music theory and memes on Simtube. And I know it shouldn't bother me because I love doing it and I only see my family on national holidays (and on weddings, apparently), but somehow it always brings these uncomfortable thoughts to the forefront of my mind.

I pull up the blanket over my head. At least I'll have someone to pretend to like me there this time.

---

Thank you for reading! 😊
I actually had a separate idea for the simtuber au, but I ended up merging the two XD