Far From Home // t.h.

26 - y/n

Tom opened the door to the car, intending to give you the seat, but to his surprise, you had already made your way over to the other side of the vehicle. You would have accepted his offer if you had only been aware of it occurring. By the time you realised he had been waiting for you to go ahead, you had, in fact, already been looking for your seatbelt.

"Oh, sorry, I just thought this would be quicker."

"Yeah, you're right, sorry," Tom shook his head, disregarding his failure at gallantry. You smiled quickly and looked out the window as the engine started. Soon you were on your way to the set. A fluttery feeling bubbled up in your stomach, filled with excitement, some of it a disguise for anxiety.

"So..." as the car made it out of the driveway, Tom spoke up, "you've worked on other sets before? How's that been?"

"Well... I doubt my filming experiences are anything to compare to yours," you said humbly but earnestly. "Though I have had a few years in the business, but never more than bringing coffee or scripts."

"Years?" that little word seemed to have caught Tom's attention, which didn't surprise you. He had gotten your name from Zendaya, who had met you working the first independent job that you had taken up yourself.

"I've been around movie sets since I was young. My father is a writer, nothing you'd have heard of, though. He hasn't quite... made it yet." After a few moments of Tom insisting you tell him which movies your father had collaborated on, you gave him a few titles of his "most successful" pieces.

"Wait, is your father [name]!?" With no discredit to your father or his work, but you were honestly surprised at the fact that Tom recognised him. Turned out that one of the smaller movies he had made, one of his first ones too, had been a film Tom had watched on many occasions.

"I will admit, I did not expect that," you smiled, "but yes, so whenever he managed to sell a script, I obviously would visit him at work, but those sets were broomcloset compared to this scale. I mean... Marvel... that's..." you whistle impressively, as best as your whistling abilities allowed.

"I can see that, yes. But would it be possible–" Tom laughed awkwardly, "I would actually love to meet your father."

You bit the inside of your mouth as a joke popped into your head and had a strong urge to come out. A bit early to meet the parents, isn't it? But that could never be possibly appropriate to say to your boss. So, instead, you just nodded. Then, the conversation fell silent, and as the human instinct developed, you both longed for your phone screens. You didn't have many notifications that showed up, so were done rather quickly with checking them all. Most were Facebook pop-ups anyway, and you couldn't even remember the last time you had checked that app, so all of those were swiped off immediately.

"Ah fuck," Tom mumbled. You glanced his way, seeing him do that nervous brushing-hand-through-hair thing he seemed to be doing more often.

"What happened?" you were curious. Not to say you had been prying, but you could see from the image on his screen that he was looking through his Instagram timeline, not much else. What could Instagram possibly have done to derive a reaction from Tom, such as "Ah fuck"? Well, a lot, actually.

But Tom didn't share. Instead, he turned his phone off and put it away in his backpack. He still smiled at you when he said, "Nothing". That one word made you spiral into an avalanche of thoughts, because, of course, there had to be something. If it really had been nothing, he would have told you. Then again, you barely knew each other, and boundaries should uphold, so if he did not wish to share anything with you, that was well in his right, you thought.

But you were curious, and Instagram was a public domain, after all, so you searched up Tom's Instagram, assuming that enough information would be shared in his tagged pictures, and indeed, there was plenty to deduce from.

"Oh. Fuck." You recognised the pictures immediately, for you had been there. You were there. You also immediately knew who had taken the slightly blurry photograph. It was taken from behind a window, a shot of Tom sitting in a pub booth, talking to someone (you) and then shaking the hand of someone (you). It was strange seeing it from this perspective. You had been so frantically nervous that you hadn't even noticed the large smile on his face while talking to you.

Your face wasn't visible, which you appreciated, but you didn't actually think it had been intentionally done by your candid photographer, who couldn't have been over 15 years old. By the time you saw this, the pictures had been posted probably hundreds of times, and that was just the ones that had actually tagged Tom on Instagram. You didn't want to think about what Twitter had to say. Against your own mental health, you scrolled through the pictures. It was somewhat repetitive to look at. Sometimes, the posters opted for a different layout, but mostly it was just the blurry pictures. One post caught your eye because of this because it had stuck a text over the images. The font choice was horrible, but you recognised it as one of the choices out of those photo-editor apps. It read almost like a news article:

Spotted. Tom Holland in London.

On Tuesday —th, Tom Holland was sighted by fans in a local pub chatting with a woman, yet to be identified.

That slightly terrified you. It made you sound like a suspect in some kind of criminal case.

Fans who took the pictures said that the two of them had been very friendly with each other, talking and laughing over shared cups of tea. They shook hands as a farewell, and the woman then left. Tom remained at the pub to speak to the fans. Does anyone know who this mystery lady is???

For your own benefit, you decided against reading the comments, but you did notice that in the caption of the post, the poster had said that no hate will be tolerated against "the woman" and that their profile is merely an up-to-date keeper of Tom's public activities and that his private life should be kept confidential and respected. Now, you weren't sure how public this meeting between the two of you was. Yes, it was in a public place, but the conversation was entirely private, and neither of you had agreed to have your pictures taken.

"I'm really sorry," Tom said. He had been looking over your shoulder at your phone screen, biting your lip. "It's all my fault. We should have gone somewhere else– now these pictures... fuck." he groaned, letting his head fall back and the headrest.

"It's fine," you told him. You didn't want him to feel bad minutes before arriving at work, but also because you really weren't that bothered. You weren't that visible in the pictures and certainly not recognisable. You could live with it, and, like most things on the internet, it would pass.

You clicked out of Tom's tagged pictures to notice that he had posted a story. The red circle around his profile pictures looked intriguing, so you quickly clicked it to see what your boss had just posted.

Not very surprising, it was his latest mirror selfie. In all his shirtless glory, he was in his messy room, with the towel on top of his head. There was so much to take in in the foreground of the picture that you doubted anyone would notice what else was visible there, but you knew better than be that naive.

"Oh god, Tom." you sighed.

"What?"

"You can see me in the picture." you took another good look at the selfie, and, indeed, behind Tom's reflection, there was yours. Slightly blurred and small, but it was there.

"No? No... No!" Tom inspected the picture on his own phone. "I can delete it."

"It will have little effect, probably." He had only posted it 10 minutes ago, but it was probably screenshotted about a thousand times. Besides, deleting it will make him look guilty for hiding something. It wouldn't look like a big deal if he kept the picture up. Hopefully.