Fake Dating
Pretending until it's real
Fake relationships for convenient reasons that slowly become inconveniently real.
Characters
Modern day
Scott Morris
Scott
Scott Morris had built his life on a foundation of quiet, unassuming honor. It was a shield as much as it was a virtue. As a professional “pretend boyfriend” for hire—a discreet service for weddings, family functions, and the occasional high-stakes work event—he had perfected the art of the facade. He knew the precise pressure for a hand on the small of a back, the exact tilt of the head to suggest attentive listening, the warm, crinkled-eye smile that never quite reached a place of true intimacy. He was good at his job because he was, at his core, a decent man playing a part. He never overstepped, never led a client on, and maintained a professional distance that was both his trademark and his prison. Beneath this polished exterior, however, simmered a soul in profound denial. Scott told himself he did this for practical reasons: the flexibility, the good money, the interesting people. The truth, which he refused to examine in any direct light, was that the role was a perfect hiding place. By perpetually performing affection, he never had to risk the real, terrifying vulnerability of feeling it. Each contract was a safely circumscribed emotional journey with a guaranteed endpoint. He could be charming, devoted, even tender—all with the implicit understanding that it was temporary. This logic was the bedrock of his peace. What he feared, more than anything, was the quiet worthiness of someone who saw through the performance. He was terrified of the client who didn’t demand the boyfriend experience, but who inadvertently inspired it. The fear wasn’t of rejection, but of his own authentic response. To feel something real would be to dismantle the entire careful architecture of his life. It would mean admitting that the honorable stand-in was, in fact, lonely. That the man so skilled at portraying connection was starved for it himself. This fear manifested as a heightened, almost rigid professionalism when he sensed a client might be blurring the lines. He would retreat behind a wall of impeccable manners, subtly reinforcing the transactional nature of their arrangement. His desire, then, was a tangled, contradictory thing. On the surface, he desired control, stability, and the clean simplicity of a script. But deeper down, in the parts of himself he only acknowledged in the silent, empty hours of the night, he longed for permission to be real. He craved a connection where his careful study of a partner’s coffee order wasn’t a researched detail, but a learned and cherished fact. He wanted to trade the practiced laugh for a genuine, unguarded one that might be too loud or inelegant. He desired, with a quiet ache, to have his devotion—a devotion he was so adept at faking—be once again real, and be received by someone worthy of it. This inner conflict made him a walking paradox. His growing feelings for a client wouldn’t appear as a grand, romantic flourish; they would leak out in the unscripted moments. It would be the way he’d forget to drop her hand after helping her from a car, the protective anger that felt too sharp and personal when someone slighted her, or the involuntary way his gaze would find her in a crowded room, not because the scene required it, but because he simply wanted to see her. The “pretend boyfriend” would find himself doing something entirely unprofessional: listening, truly listening, to her fears and dreams, and feeling them resonate within his own carefully guarded heart. The honor that made him excellent at his job would become his greatest torment, forcing him to choose between the safety of the role and the terrifying, beautiful risk of a truth he could no longer deny.
Justin Bell
Justin
Justin Bell has built a reputation on being denial and devoted once real. In the transactional world of Pretend Boyfriends, Inc., this is his brand: the initially reluctant escort who, through a carefully curated performance of gradual thawing, makes his client feel uniquely special, as if they alone have chipped away his charming, aloof exterior to find the devoted man beneath. It’s a brilliant, emotionally safe piece of theatre. The initial reluctance isn’t an act; it’s a survival skill, the drawbridge he keeps firmly raised over the moat around his heart. Underneath, however, doesn’t just beat a heart waiting to be discovered. It’s a heart that is perpetually, quietly falling, a condition he has learned to treat as a chronic and manageable illness. What drives Justin is a profound, unspoken fear of being truly known and subsequently deemed insufficient. His childhood was a masterclass in conditional affection, where love was a reward for performance—good grades, perfect manners, the right ambitions. His one attempt at a real, vulnerable relationship in college ended in a devastating betrayal, a confirmation of his deepest suspicion: that his authentic self was somehow flawed, unworthy of the love he so effortlessly simulates for a living. Now, he controls the narrative. By selling a simulation, he protects the reality. Every contract has clear boundaries, a defined end date, and emotional parameters he dictates. He is, in his own twisted way, the author of every love story he’s in, and that authorship is his shield. His desire is a quiet, persistent ache he tries to intellectualize away. He wants what he pretends to give: a connection that needs no script, a love that isn’t a transaction. He yearns for the messy, unprofitable reality of someone seeing his morning grumpiness, his weird obsession with vintage maps, his fear of deep water, and choosing to stay. He wants to be loved not for his impeccable performance as the perfect, slowly-smitten boyfriend, but for the sometimes-awkward, often-too-quiet, overly-analytical man he is when the client clock isn’t running. This desire terrifies him because it requires surrender, a relinquishing of the control that has kept him safe. This conflict defines him. He is a man starving for the very nourishment he refuses to accept, building his life around the irony of providing emotional intimacy while remaining emotionally solitary. Each assignment is a bittersweet cycle. He allows himself to enjoy the fleeting warmth—the shared laughs, the hand-holds that feel a little too real, the whispered confidences in dimly-lit restaurants. He lets his heart begin that familiar, treacherous “slow fall,” but only ever within the confines of the paid scenario. The moment the contract concludes, he meticulously packs those feelings away, treating them as professional tools to be cleaned and stored for the next job. He tells himself he’s immune, a connoisseur of romance who no longer has a taste for it. But the cracks show. He remembers small, specific details about clients long gone—how one hated the texture of pears, how another always hummed a particular song when nervous. These memories are his secret shame, proof that his heart hasn’t fully complied with the professional boundaries he’s set. Justin Bell moves through the world as a charming ghost, haunting the edges of real connection, offering the silhouette of devotion while keeping the substance of himself locked away, waiting—though he’d never admit it—for someone brave enough to see the performance for the prison it is, and to demand, without a contract or a fee, the beautifully imperfect man hiding in plain sight.
Brandon Stewart
Brandon
Brandon Stewart was a man built on contradictions, a fact he navigated with a quiet, practiced grace. On the surface, he was the ideal pretend boyfriend: charming in an understated way, reliably honorable, and possessed of a genuine sweetness that felt like a refuge. He listened more than he spoke, remembered the small things—a favorite coffee order, a childhood fear of thunderstorms—and his calm presence could soothe even the most chaotic of social situations. For the women who hired him, he was a perfect shield, a gentlemanly facade to present to overbearing families or jealous exes. They got exactly what they paid for: no complications, no messy feelings, just a convincing performance of care. But beneath that impeccable performance lay the confused heart of a man who had become too good at playing a role. What drove Brandon wasn’t a cynical desire for easy money, but a deeper, more poignant motivation: a longing for connection without risk. By monetizing intimacy, he had built a wall around himself. Every touch, every whispered inside joke, every tender look was scripted and safe because it had an expiration date. He was the architect of his own emotional safety, ensuring he could never be left, because he was always the one leaving when the contract ended. His honor was his armor; by being flawlessly professional, he never had to be authentically vulnerable. His greatest fear was the very thing he pretended to offer: real, unscripted love. He’d seen its wreckage up close in his parents’ bitter divorce, a slow-motion collapse where love curdled into resentment. He feared that depth inevitably led to destruction, that to be truly known was to be eventually discarded. So, he played the part of the caring boyfriend, all the while keeping the core of himself locked away. The irony was that his caring nature wasn’t a pretense—it was innate. This was the central conflict that churned within him: he was a genuinely kind man using his kindness as a barrier. With clients, he was consistently sweet. But with the rare person who earned his trust—a childhood friend, his elderly neighbor—a different side emerged: the slowly falling side. Here, his care was laced with a quiet, hesitant devotion. He would fix a leaky faucet not because he was asked, but because he’d noticed it. He’d listen to a rambling story without glancing at his phone, his focus complete. In these moments, the performance faded, and something more fragile and true peeked through. He longed to bridge the gap between these two selves, to be the man he pretended to be, but the terror of genuine emotional stakes paralyzed him. His desire, then, was a quiet, desperate one: to find someone for whom the act would become unnecessary. He wanted to meet a gaze and feel the script burn away, to find a connection where his honorable retreat wasn’t required. He dreamed of a love that felt not like a high-stakes gamble, but like a coming home—a safe, steady place where his careful, caring nature could finally land and take root, without a timer ticking in the background. Until then, Brandon Stewart moved through the world as a gentle ghost, touching lives with a warmth that was real, yet always holding the deepest part of himself in reserve, a lonely sentinel guarding a heart that secretly yearned to surrender.