Top 20 One-Shot Meet-Cute Fanfics
Ranked by AO3 kudos. Each fic is tagged with meet-cute and falls in the short stories under 10,000 words range.
Slide To Answer
by relenafanel
"What do I do?” Steve appealed into the phone. “I’m freaking out.”There was silence on the other end of the line. It lasted so long that Steve pulled the receiver away from his ear and frowned at it. Pay phones were old. Maybe this one wasn’t working despite the obvious dial tone when he picked u
on my lips (your laughter is the sweetest)
by luway
Jisung cleared his throat, a sudden feeling of embarrassment coming over him. He stared at the paper cup in his hands as he spoke. "So you're really nice and all, and your cocoa is amazing, but the whole lip thing— I can see you staring when I talk and I just wanted to say it's kind of uncom-""Uh so
Save a Horse, Ride a Captain
by galwednesday
Bucky tapped him on the shoulder, swaying back and forth a little as he waited for the man to turn around. “Hello,” he said, and then promptly forgot what else he was going to say, because this guy was fucking beautiful. “Wow. Good face.”Two of the guy’s friends, a man wearing a suit that fit so wel
Side bitch out of your league
by rohkeutta
“I tried to call Sam,” Captain America says, bewildered. He’s sprinting like Usain Bolt and doesn’t sound even a little out of breath. Fucker. “Who’re you?”“Someone who’s watching you live on TV,” Bucky tells him as the tiny patriotic figure on the screen takes the turns like he instructed. Bucky sh
Covered in Bees
by ScarlettStorm
“Cloud Reccesses Apiary,” says a toneless, deep masculine voice, with zero question in it. Wei Ying doesn’t care, because whoever possesses that voice is probably going to come save him from bees like a fucking hero while wearing like, a suit of armor. That’s what you wear to catch bees, right?“I ha
Know You Better
by rotasha
Clark asks Bruce on a date, not knowing he’s a famous billionaire. Bruce says yes, because this is the first time this has ever happened to him.
took no time with the fall
by cherryvanilla
When the Avengers had briefed him on Deadpool, they played up the Kills People for Money and Has No Real Morals angle and left out the Is Pretty Damn Funny and Charming in a Weird, Terrifying Sort of Way part. Or, five times they meet on rooftops plus one time they take it to the streets*(*with apol
A Lot's Gonna Change
by etymologyplayground
"Are you each other's beards?" Wei Ying guesses, mostly joking.Lan Zhan says, "I don't know what that means."Wen Qing says, "Yes." Then, to Lan Zhan, she says, "It's what we're doing."--What's even better than attending the wedding of someone you hate? Being the bartender at the wedding of someone y
we're awesome, totally genius
by napricot
At this point, Sam’s scanning the coffeeshop for an exit strategy from this terrible date; maybe he can trip a customer into spilling coffee on one of them, or pretend like he’s seen a friend, something, anything. His eye lands on the white guy sitting at the table behind Mike, directly in Sam’s lin
a paper friend
by soft_wanning
Lan Wangji finds a paperman far from its body and helps get it home. -Or-Lan Wangji unknowingly meets Wei Wuxian for the first time.
It Took A Year
by 74days
Bucky watches the hot blond guy on his run every day. And he's quite happy to watch from afar. He's not pining. He's NOT.
Monday In A Cafe (All You Did Was Look My Way)
by RayShippouUchiha
Then Gorgeous, as Bucky abruptly names him in his head, slides a bit further down the counter and reaches for his wallet. He pulls out what Bucky’s pretty sure is a crisp hundred and stuffs it into the tip jar Clint decorated to look like a bulls-eye.And then he turns and looks directly at Bucky.St
The List is a Bad List
by 74days
Bucky Barnes needs to find a suitable person to hire since firing Brock Rumlow - the shortlist that his co-owners have given him is... not ideal. He's completely stumped before he meets the hot blond at the gym who seems to end up on the machine next to him...
Punch Spark
by SapphireTwilight
After wrapping up Ochaco's bacherlorette party, Izuku doesn't have much on his mind. His only mission is to get his drunk friend to her room before preparing for his Best Man duties the following day. Maybe text the number he half-heartedly got, despite knowing the man didn't have it.The 'punch spar
until the end of time
by laughing_sock
Sometimes a man will say anything for a first date.His eyes zero in on his plush bottom lip, caught under his teeth as he chews on the proposal, and later Satoru will blame this particular distraction for why he suddenly loses the rest of his brain-to-mouth filter.“You might not believe this,” he sa
six eyes in the dark (midnight screenings)
by strawberry_hongjoong
"You're staring again." "I am not." Yūji looked up from his popcorn with the sort of grin that suggested he knew he was right. "You get this little wrinkle between your eyebrows whenever you're thinking too hard." "That's called being handsome." "Pretty sure it's called frowning." Satoru huffed dram
The Matchmakers
by MM2022
The first time Aziraphale decided to go to a blind date, he was stood up. and “So how was your date? Tell me everything!” “The bloke didn’t show up,” Crowley shrugged, not that Maggie could see it over the phone. or Five times somebody tried and failed to set up Aziraphale and Crowley, and one time
COUPLES POTTERY NIGHT - NO REFUNDS
by firstlovebegins
Jeongguk asks a stranger on the street to do pottery with him
This is my mess, my heart, my life
by SunMonTue
Jake, normally put together, hot as the sun, confident and sexy Jake, is an absolute mess of a human in front of this one guy in his apartment building. Apparently cursed to appear messy and clumsy in front of him. And it's always the same fucking guy much to Jake's growing horror.
Lecture In Love
by Jld71
While waiting for a lecture to begin, Jared notices Jensen, the green-eyed student he’s never seen before.
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About Meet-Cute
Two strangers collide in a charming, embarrassing, or absurd first encounter that all but guarantees a second one. The trope is the romcom opening distilled: wrong coffee orders, shared umbrellas, dogs with better instincts than their owners.
A great meet-cute makes the romance feel fated from the first paragraph, and the format's compactness has made it a favorite for one-shots and prompt fills.
Common scenarios: Grabbing the identical suitcase at baggage claim and exchanging numbers to swap them back, or a florist and a tattoo artist who keep mis-delivering each other's mail.
About This List
This list of 20one-shot Meet-Cute fanfics spans 90,352 total words. Kudos range from 28 on the newest entries to 35,323 on the most established. Nearly all (85%) are complete, so you can start any of them without WIP anxiety. The most common rating is Teen And Up Audiences (12 of 20 fics).
Recurring tags across this list: Meet-Cute · Alternate Universe - Modern Setting · Fluff · Wrong Number AU · Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés.
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