do you ever learn a new fact and it fucks you over really badly even though it has no effect on your life but it still feels like your whole life was a lie anyways hey did you know barcode scanners scan the white spaces in between and not actually the black bars
u know i’ve expressed my love for fake married/fake dating many, many times but like. is anything better. is anything better on this earth. does any trope or genre truly care for us quite like this one. let us reflect on a few of the gifts that fake married/dating consistently gives us:
character a asks “hey, will you pretend to be my date for a week for [convoluted excuse that could easily be solved without a fake relationship]?” character b, fully convinced of the futility of their DEEP AND UNREQUITED LOVE, figures this’ll be a chance to spend time with them and possibly put their feelings to rest. character b is always wrong & it is always amazing.
having to SHARE A LIVING SPACE FOR ARBITRARY FIC REASONS. having to see eachother in their pajamas first thing in the morning, messy haired, drowsy eyed and soft faced. going from “you can have the bathroom first” to brushing their teeth beside eachother and feeling like this closeness has always existed (at the same time, painfully aware that it won’t always).
related to the last one — “”practicing”” their casual touching so that it’s easier when they’re in public. feeling SWOOPS OF ARDOR AND AGONY when they feel the brush of a hand on their neck, or an arm loop around their waist. don’t you love how fake marrieds/dates are always method actors who must FULLY INHABIT their roles. i love it. i live for it.
bed sharing. :^) we all pretend we’re bigger than this but we are not.
“kiss me while everyone’s looking.”
the character who wasn’t aware they were in love (maybe always had been) until the fake relationship is in full swing, realizing they have to sort their feelings out before their time together is up. sometimes they succeed and angst is minimal. most of the time they don’t, really.
telling eachother “i love you” in public and meaning it, heart aching over it, but bELIEVING THE OTHER 2 BE ACTING. my soul is still 15, this garbage still gets me. u don’t get pining better than this.
the days leading up to the end of the arrangement where one of them, still confused and muddy about their Feelings and unsure how to break things off, stiffens to the casual, reflexive touching and puts their walls back up. the other one accepts and respects this as the end of their agreement and squashes back down all the hope they ever had, stuffs it next to the heartbreak they’re ignoring deep in their chest.
when they realize they’re actually fully and enthusiastically mutual about the way they feel and it’s, like, two parts euphoria and one part agony because they just cannOT BELIEVE, the happiness tears them in two. maybe there are weepy or laughing kisses. i don’t know but i’m usually invested like 2000%. i love fake dating/marrieds.
I have no concept of the pain scale, like…I just realized that last week I said I was in especially awful hip pain and when my pt asked to rate it I said “3”. And then this week I said I felt a lot better than last week and when she asked me to rate it I said “3”. I really don’t know what the numbers are supposed to be. I know it’s supposed to be out of ten but like. I think I rate the pain by what time of the day it is. Like “i will rate the pain I’m in at a 5 at the end of the day, so compared to what my pain level will be later, what I’m feeling right now is a 3.” I also think i rate in overall pain rather than specific pain? Like, systemically I’m at a five. Some parts will be worse or better but i just rate it all at five because that’s the average
I do believe that you can be kind, and soft, and gentle, and still refuse to be subjugated or be complicit in subjugation. Think of a king; a king can be kind, and gentle, and have softness, without surrendering an inch. One can be pleasant without seeking to please. But it’s very difficult to distinguish between softness one has been made to perform and softness that exists for its own sake. Ultimately I think it must come down to the refusal to perform – the rejection of performance entirely. If I must act – and in order to exist in the world one must become an actor, of sorts – I will play only my own character.
