Christmas party fake dating AU
Damen has only just broken up with Jokaste after he found out she cheated on him with Kastor, so he really isn’t looking forward to going to his family’s Christmas party on his own while Kastor is bringing Jokaste with him.
After complaining a lot about it to his friends, Auguste’s little brother Laurent offers to be his pretend-date.
With Laurent there, the party goes really well. Egeria immediately falls in love Laurent, while Theomedes starts off being very doubtful about him (which is partly to blame on how similar Laurent looks to Jokaste), but over the evening Laurent manages to win his respect.
Laurent’s wit helps to keep Damen distracted from Kastor and Jokaste and Damen is forced to admit to himself that Laurent’s looks are helpful too.
The lingering touches and the kiss to Damen’s cheek might have something to do with it as well.
When they’re upstairs in Damen’s bedroom, Laurent jokes that maybe they should have sex for the sake of verisimilitude.
Afterwards, they go their own way for an entire year, although they do still end up seeing each other around, because Damen and Auguste are still friends. Those times when they do see each other, they pretend like nothing ever happened between them. (They think about it a lot, however.)
Damen never ends up telling his mom that he wasn’t actually dating Laurent, nor does he make up a story about how they broke up. When Egeria asks Damen how Laurent is doing, Damen always makes something up because he doesn’t want to disappoint her that he’s not actually dating Laurent at all.
When December comes around again, Egeria is still convinced that Damen and Laurent are dating, so she tells Damen to bring Laurent over for Christmas again. Damen (who is very much not planning on asking Laurent again) tells her that he’s not sure Laurent will be able to make it this year, but that Damen will ask him.
A few days later, Egeria very conveniently walks into Laurent (or maybe she finds his phone number somewhere and calls him) and decides to take matters into her own hands by directly inviting Laurent to the Christmas party herself. Laurent tries to dodge around it, because he has no idea whether Damen would even want him there, but Egeria is very insistent and he never really had a chance of saying no to her.
So Damen takes Laurent with him to his family again, and they pretend to be in love with each other again. (But really, they don’t have to pretend at all.)
When they’re ready for bed, Laurent asks Damen if he wants to have sex again. Damen knows it’s a bad idea, because until now, they’ve never even acknowledged to each other they had sex last year, but Damen also can’t possibly resist Laurent when he’s offering.
The next day, Damen drives Laurent back home again. However, he can’t bear the idea of spending another year pretending like nothing ever happened between them, so when Laurent is ready to close the door, Damen stops him and asks if he would like to go out with him.
