Fake Dating Because The Family Keeps Asking About A Significant Other 

“Honestly, Junmyeon, aren’t you jealous seeing your brother with his wife?” His grandmother questioned.

“You need someone to take care of you, you must be lonely,” his aunt commented.

“When are you going to tie the knot?” His uncle asked after the fifth glass of wine, before making a snide remark about his wife.

“Don’t you want someone to spend the holidays with?” His mother made the comment over the phone as he was asking about details for the Christmas party at her house.

“I don’t understand, son, I couldn’t imagine being your age without your mother by my side, I’d go crazy from loneliness,” his father made the comment the previous Christmas, but it still rang through his mind the rest of the year.

He was only thirty-five, he wasn’t an old man, he had plenty of time to find someone to spend the rest of his life with. It wasn’t a pressing issue for Kim Junmyeon right now, no matter how much his parents and family hounded him about finding someone. He did admit that he felt lonely every now and then, and he did feel a tad bit envious when he saw his couple friends joining him on an outing.

But he was a business man and he had a company to focus on. He wasn’t exactly married to his job, but it did take up a lot of his time, which he didn’t mind at all.

Right now he was on his way back to Seoul for the next three weeks of Christmas break. He had put in his vacation time and he was taking some time for himself.

He was a few thousand feet in the sky when he received a call from his mother.

“Different plans this year, Myeonie, we’re having the party on the twenty-third instead of Christmas day,” his mother stated.

“Oh? Why not Christmas day?”

“Well, sweetie, this might come as a surprise to you, but your brother and his wife are planning on spending the day together with their newborn on Christmas, and then the rest of the family that has a partner is also going to spend time with one another. Your father and I included. I’m sure you’d understand if you had someone to spend the day with, right?”

Junmyeon pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from snarling at the implication, glaring at the back of the seat in front of him, his voice was tight when he replied, “Okay, the twenty-third then, I’ll be there. Want me to bring anything?”

His mother hummed, “Something for dessert will be fine.”

“Alright, I’ll see you then. Love you, Umma.”

“Love you too, baby,” his mother hung up, Junmyeon listened to the dial tone for a moment before he pressed the END button on the screen. He sighed to himself and leaned against the window of the plane to look out at the sky around them.

“You okay?” The voice from beside him came. He’d forgotten about the blonde person that had sat down beside him, it was only a glance that he spared the person when they took the seat. He didn’t even know what they looked like. But when he turned back to the direction of the person, he gulped when he saw what had to be a GQ model. The man was absolutely handsome, in a cold kind of way, but still handsome. The man motioned to Junmyeon’s phone, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation… that was your mother?”

Junmyeon looked down at his phone, sighing, now this man knows what a loser in love he was. Or at least what his mother thought about him being single. “Yeah… it was. She was just grilling me with the usual about not bringing anyone to our Christmas party. My whole family does that every year.”

The man laughed softly, “I feel you there, my mother is always nagging me about settling down too. I don’t date because I’m always away from home… I don’t find it fair to put someone through me not being in the relationship physically fifty-percent of the time.”

“Same with me too, I spend most of my time outside of the Seoul in the US working on company deals. It’s hard to even date if I’m always gone.”

The man’s eyes widened, interested, “Oh? You work in the US? I’m usually in Canada actually, but I go wherever the agency wants me. I’m headed to Seoul for the next few weeks for a project actually.”

Junmyeon felt like it would be a bit intruding if he asked what the projects were about, so instead he nodded slowly to show his acknowledgment, “I’ll be there for the next three weeks, I always take my vacation time at the end of the year and go back home.”

“I try to do that, but I usually take time off around the Chinese New Year and spend it with my mom. It’s a special time of the year for us two.”

They quietly conversed for a few more minutes, learning one another’s names, small details about their jobs, etc, before Junmyeon received a text from his brother asking if he were bringing someone to the Christmas party this time. A question that his brother always asked before the event each year. He didn’t know why, maybe his brother wanted to know who to buy presents for.

His thumb hovered over the SEND key after he typed ‘no’, he bit his lip, knowing the phone call that would follow shortly after that text.

“When is your family’s Christmas party?” The blonde haired man, called Kris, asked, stopping Junmyeon from pressing the button yet.

He looked over at him to see the man looking down at the text on Junmyeon’s phone, “Uh… the twenty-third… it’s usually Christmas day but my mother changed it due to my family’s wishes.”

Kris looked up at him, “And you’re going to be in Seoul the whole time?” Junmyeon nodded; the whole time in his one-bedroom apartment probably. “I know since we just met and it sounds like a silly Hallmark movie… but I am free on the twenty-third… if you need someone to pose as your significant other.”

Well that had Junmyeon’s eyes widening, his mouth gaping in surprise, “Uh…”

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine too—”

“No, wait—” did Junmyeon want to turn down this man’s sudden offer and face his family’s snide remarks about his solo-ness? No. He didn’t. He had to face those every year from the past ten years since he got out of college, no. He did not want to hear them again that year. “I, uh… you wouldn’t mind?”

Kris shook his head, sympathy in his eyes, “I don’t want you to think it’s just pity, but I know how it is to deal with family like that… if I can lend a hand, why shouldn’t I?”

And from what Kris told him, yeah, he assumed that Kris could understand how it was, and even experienced it himself. “Okay.”

“Just give me an address to a café or something in Seoul that you like, and we can discuss it more when we get there, yeah?”

Junmyeon nodded, biting back the grin that he felt wanting to spread across his lips, “Yeah.” He glanced down at his phone, backspacing over the ‘no’ and retyping out, ‘yes.’ He quickly silenced his phone, not wanting his brother to start blowing up his phone yet. He turned back to Kris and the two started devising their plans.

A/N: You did well, Kim Jonghyun.