The Journalist (A Tom Hiddleston Fanfiction)

One

“You. Want. A. Story.” Tom rolls his head back to look at the ceiling before snapping it forward again for the delivery of the fourth and final word.

He’d walked in the door a little stiff and you thought that you could cheer him by distracting him with his newfound favorite thing – reinventing segments of Shakespeare with you. It had worked in the past – the pair of you had had a blast modernizing select scenes from Twelfth Night. Your love of it stemmed from the fact that he was so turned on by the process. He certainly loves his Shakespeare, this one. Your thoughts for the evening are no longer on making it to the bedroom, unless it is to somehow barricade yourself in.

What had happened during the day to incite such anger?

And why had a simple playful request triggered it?

He snarls, “You always want a story, want something. Want. Want. WANT.” You’re backing steadily away from him. No sudden movements or he might pounce. He has you on size and muscle mass, no contest. “Let me tell you what I want. I want you out of my house!”

This makes you pause your retreat. What? He’s throwing you out? “What? Tom?”

What had happened today?!

You have your hands held up in front of you, your palms facing him as an ineffective barrier to the words. Your confusion and submissive behavior does nothing to deplete the anger he’s exuding. You’ve never seen him like this, not even when he was supposed to be summoning up such rage for a character.

“Tom, I don’t understand.” Rather than continue to storm closer to you he bypasses you entirely to walk into the bedroom the pair of you have shared for nearly a year now.

He starts banging around in the room. It takes you a second to build up the courage to peek through the doorway to find him going through the dresser drawers, pulling clothing out. He tosses pieces over his shoulder without watching where they fall… onto the floor, onto the bed. They’re all your things. Mostly your things, at any rate. He’s too mad to notice that he’s picked up and tossed one or two of his own belongings.

“Journalist.” He spits the word out. “I knew better. I knew better than to get involved with a journalist.”

He hates your profession now? The very reason you even know each other? He doesn’t pause throwing things when you take a brave breath and step into the room. “Tom? What’s going on?”

“I can’t even look at you right now.” He hisses at you. The piece of clothing he had in his hands comes hurling at you, whapping into your chest. You cling to it so it doesn’t fall to the ground. You have a second to discover the thing in your arms is a shirt before something else comes hurtling at you and you are forced to drop the shirt to catch the next article of clothing.

“I don’t understand.” You let the lacy bit of clothing fall to the floor to join the rest of your wardrobe. He’s making quite a mess of your things, but you can’t worry about that right now. “Tom! Talk to me! Stop… stop whatever this is.” Another something gets thrown at you and you bat it down to join the rest of the items on the floor. You raise your voice to break through his muttering, “Stop throwing things!”

He listens, to your amazement, holding a t-shirt loosely between the fingers of his left hand. You’ve always loved the way his fingers curl into fabric. His costumes, the bedsheets... It takes effort to keep your eyes from drifting to the bed as the thought occurs.

Everything about him always seemed so graceful… though maybe not in this moment. Right now he’s all jerky movements and ragged breaths. “You want to understand? Where is your mobile?”