Fake Relationship & Forced Proximity Tags on AO3
Fake dating, marriage of convenience, undercover-as-a-couple, and the eternal 'there was only one bed' — the setups that force feelings into the open.
Few setups deliver romantic tension as reliably as forcing two characters to act like a couple before they're ready to admit they want to be one. Fake Relationship and its cousins — Marriage of Convenience, Undercover as a Couple, the legendary 'only one bed' — manufacture exactly the intimacy and denial that pining readers crave.
These tags are catnip for anyone who loves watching characters fall for each other while insisting they aren't. The pleasure is in the gap between what they say and what they feel, and these tags reliably point you to it.
The 25 tags in this group
Alternate Universe - Actors
Casts the characters as performers — film stars, theater troupe members, soap regulars — often playing love interests on screen while figuring out whether the chemistry is scripted.
Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage
Marries the main pairing by contract, treaty, or family decree before they've chosen each other — royal alliances, business mergers, omegaverse arrangements, or cultural tradition.
Alternate Universe - Prison
Locks characters inside the carceral system as inmates, guards, cellmates, or visitors.
Alternate Universe - Social Media
Tells its story partly or wholly through platforms — fake tweet threads, group chats, streaming channels, fan accounts that don't realize who they're talking to.
Arranged Marriage
A marriage decided by families, politics, or custom rather than the spouses — and in fanfic, almost always the beginning of a love story rather than the obstacle to one.
Engagement
The stretch of a relationship between proposal and wedding, tagged on fics about ring shopping, announcement chaos, and pre-marital cold feet.
Fake Dating
The most common species of pretend relationship: a dating ruse undertaken for reasons that seemed sound at the time — making an ex jealous, surviving a reunion, winning a bet.
Fake Marriage
Raises the pretend-relationship stakes to legal documents: a sham marriage for citizenship, inheritance, cover identities, or convenience.
Fake/Pretend Relationship
The canonical tag for one of fandom's most beloved engines: characters pretend to date — for a mission, a wedding, a visa, a nosy family — and the performance becomes real.
Forced Proximity
The structural trope underneath half of fandom's favorites: circumstances compel two people to share space they would never have chosen — stuck, snowed in, assigned together, handcuffed, quarantined.
Living Together
Covers the state of sharing a home — as a couple, as not-yet-a-couple, or as roommates whose arrangement is doing a lot of unexamined work.
Marriage of Convenience
A marriage entered for practical benefit — property, protection, propriety — by parties who choose it with open eyes.
Matchmaking
Third parties take the romance into their own hands: scheming friends, meddling family, or an entire exasperated team conspiring to get two oblivious people together.
Platonic Bed Sharing
Takes fandom's most famous romance engine — the shared bed — and runs it without the romance.
Post-Reichenbach
Sherlock Holmes fics set after the detective's faked death at the Reichenbach Fall — in BBC Sherlock terms, after 'The Reichenbach Fall.' The tag covers John's grief during the hiatus, Sherlock's years dismantling Moriarty's network, and the fraught reunion.
Rain
Flags fics where rain matters — sheltering in doorways with a stranger, arguments in downpours, the kiss that genre tradition demands happen soaked to the skin.
Secret Identity
Splits a character between public face and hidden truth — masked heroes, undercover royalty, spies in suburbia — and builds the story on maintenance of the wall.
Sharing a Bed
The broader bed-sharing tag, covering every reason two characters end up sleeping side by side: necessity, nightmares, cold, comfort, or quiet mutual preference nobody examines too closely.
Slow Dancing
A scene tag for the swaying-in-close-proximity moment: weddings, galas, undercover balls, or a kitchen at midnight with music from a phone speaker.
Snowed In
Buries the exits in snow and locks two (or more) characters inside a cabin, apartment, or airport until the plot thaws.
Thanksgiving
Gathers the cast around an American Thanksgiving table — biological family with all its landmines, or the found-family Friendsgiving that fandom prefers, where everyone brings a dish and nobody brings judgment.
There Was Only One Bed
Fandom's most famous logistical miracle, canonical in exactly this wording: circumstances strand two not-yet-together characters in a room with a single bed.
Tony Stark Has A Heart
A canonical tag riffing on the arc reactor gift from the first Iron Man film, used for stories that showcase Tony's hidden depths of generosity and care.
Undercover
Sends a character into hostile territory wearing a fabricated self — infiltrating gangs, cults, companies, or courts.
Undercover as a Couple
The procedural fandom's gift to romance: partners must pose as a couple for a mission, and professionalism wages a losing war against chemistry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is 'only one bed' such a popular tag?
It's a compact forced-proximity device: strand two characters with a single bed and the story has to confront the attraction they've been avoiding. It pairs naturally with slow burn and mutual pining.
What's the difference between fake dating and marriage of convenience?
Both are 'pretend to be together' setups, but marriage of convenience raises the stakes — the characters are legally bound, often for money, immigration, or politics, which forces sustained closeness and deeper entanglement.
Related Tag Guides
Fluff & Comfort Tags
Sweet, low-stakes tags for when you want to feel warm instead of wrecked — fluff, schmoop, domesticity, and tooth-rotting cuteness.
Slow Burn & Pining Tags
For readers who want the romance to take its time — slow burn, mutual pining, and the long road from enemies or friends to lovers.
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