Please don't say you love me (Tom Hiddleston Fanfic)

Too good

"If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?"
Tom was laying on his side his fingertips tracing circles over my back as I lay beside him on my stomach with my arms folded and my head resting on his pillow.
"Good question," I smiled, "I've always had a thing for Switzerland. The mountains, the scenery, it always seemed so Zen and beautiful. What about you?"
He grinned, "Switzerland sounds pretty fantastic. Would it be too cheesy to say anywhere that you were?"
My cheeks burned as I buried my head into his pillow, "stop it!"
He planted a kiss on my shoulder, his body flush against mine as he laughed easily.
"Seriously though," I smiled, "where would you live?"
He pondered it a moment, blue eyes seeming to get lost in a world of memories before he finally said simply, "Australia."
Cocking an eyebrow at him I had to ask, "why?"
"Because it seems to be a whole other world out there. Time moves slower, people seem more relaxed, less intense."
I couldn't help but smile, "it's definitely a different place."

"Do you miss it?"
I closed my eyes, revelling in the feeling of his fingertips against my skin, "I miss my parents."
"Tell me about them."
What was I meant to say, my parents were beautiful, kind, supportive. They were everything I needed in parents and more.
"They're wonderful."
He smiled, nodding as I recounted tales of my childhood and the level of authoritative parents that my sister and I contended with. I showed him photos of my nephews and told him about the day my sister moved to the UK and I up and left for LA.
"What about your parents? You said your Mum had been through a lot," I sat up a little and looked him in the eye, "what sort of stuff?"
I could almost see the wall going up behind his eyes.
"She just... had to deal with a lot of..."
"Tom," I whispered, dragging my teeth along my lip as he stopped mid-sentence, "why won't you talk about it?"
"What do you mean?"

I rolled onto my side, forcing his hand to drop away from me, "you don't say much about your Mum. You'll talk about your sisters but when it comes to her it's like she's off limits."
The silence that followed was beyond anything I'd heard before.
"She's not off limits," he said quietly.
"Then tell me."
His perfect blue eyes closed for a moment.
"She had cancer, she fought it and she won. She's a nurse, she looked after my father when he fell ill, did everything for him, from bathing him to feeding him and everything in between."
I sat silently beside him, not daring to even breathe as he spoke.
"She worked two jobs, ran a home, raised three children, all while tending to a man who was wheelchair bound and unable to even breathe on his own in the end."
He swiped at a stray tear that leaked from his eye, "my mother is a saint and a hard worker and she deserves every single ounce of rest and relaxation and love this world has to offer."
"She sounds beautiful," I whispered after a long pause.

He smiled at me, a soft, gentle and yet completely heart stopping smile.
"I'd love for you to meet her someday."
I beamed, "I'd like to meet her."
He pulled me against him, kissing me gently as he moved, "she's going to love you, I know it."
I rested my head on his chest, listening to the steady rhythmic beating of his heart. Before long his breathing evened out and I didn't notice when the sun slowly started casting light through the trailer or even when Tom rolled over to turn his alarm off. Nothing seemed to matter in that moment.

That was until my phone started buzzing relentlessly on the table.
"Someone is very persistent," Tom mumbled sleepily.
Then his phone started.
I sat up giving him a confused look before walking across to the other side of the trailer and grabbing my phone.
"Jesus," I held up the device to show him the calls and texts, "yours is going off too. What the hell did we miss?"
I threw his phone to him on the bed, clicked the first of five voicemail messages on my own phone and held it up to my ear.
Shauna's frantic and far too annoyed voice made the blood drain from my face.
"Oh, shit."

I turned to look at Tom, hand covering his mouth and his face ashen as he stared at his phone.
"What?"
"No, you don't..."
But before he could say anything more, I was sitting beside him looking at the screen. The image wasn't the best quality, but it didn't need to be, it was clear that it was Tom and I standing at the front of his trailer in the middle of a rather intimate kiss.
"Oh my God," my stomach dropped, "how..."
His finger scrolled down and I was sure I could vomit. There was a series of photos, the last of which was one of the trailer we were currently in and there in full blown make-out mode was Tom and I silhouetted against the glow of the trailer lights.

If I hadn't wanted to be physically ill at the sight of it I would actually have been impressed by how tasteful and rather arty the photo was. You couldn't see anything other than our silhouettes but what we were doing was as clear as anything.
"I..." Tom was looking across at me, his eyes wide as he searched my face for some sort of response.
"I have to go," I winced as the words left my mouth.
"Don't," his hand wrapped gently around my wrist, "please."
My head was reeling, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Shauna's name flashed up on my phone once more. Shit. I let my eyelids close for a brief second before sucking in a deep breath and answering the phone with my most cheerful "hey!"

She was in all out PR mode already, "what in the actual hell Ava? Do you have any idea how hard I'm trying to shut this story down? There's been speculation about you two going around for weeks, every single bloody morning you're out running with him and I'm here telling the newspapers that it's just a fitness thing. Damned if I can swing that now. Unless we're using sex as a form of fitness now!"
The part of my brain that wanted to say it burned as many calories as a slow jog did in half the time was overwhelming strong. Thankfully I knew better than to poke the bear.
"I'm sorry Shauna," I rubbed my fingertips across my forehead, sitting down on the bed beside Tom.
"Oh my God," I could practically hear her accusation on the other end of the line, "you're still there aren't you?"
"What?!" I looked around for hidden cameras or something, "no."
"You are!"
There was silence on the end of the phone.

"Is this real Av's?"
I looked down to where Tom was tracing his fingertips along the line of my forearm, his face scrunched up as he typed out a message.
I sucked in a deep breath and bit my lip, whispering, "yes."
She squeaked. Actually squeaked, like some kind of tiny marsupial.
"I was too busy fighting fires around the place that I forgot to ask if this was actually what it was. Oh my God, Ava, this is..."
"New."
She paused, excitement waning slightly, "and you guys were sneaking around because?"
I sighed, bringing Tom's hand up to my lips and kissing his palm gently. His eyes were soft, gentle and if I hadn't have known better I would've said loving.
"Because we didn't want to share this with the whole world just yet."
His gaze never left me as I stood from the bed and started gathering my clothes.
"Why not? Ava, Tom is like, stupid hot. And he's about the only person in the entire world that would be able to keep up with your inane Shakespeare ramblings," she laughed.
I stopped what I was doing, t-shirt hanging in my hand as I stared back at Tom.
"I know," I felt the air leave my lungs in a painful gasp as he stood, shrugging a thin t-shirt over his bare chest.
"So?"

I bit my lip, Tom's reasoning was that he didn't want to have to share me with the world, but as I stood there watching him move about the trailer, listening to his calm tones as he spoke on the phone I realised something. I didn't want the world to know because I was terrified of the reality that would get thrown in my face at every possible moment. I was no one compared to him. He was above me in every single sense of that word and I had no right to be taking up so much of his time and attention.
"Hello? Ava?"
I shook myself and grabbed the rest of my clothes. I didn't bother changing out of Tom's t-shirt that I had thrown on, I simply shimmied into my underwear and made for the door.
"So, I don't want the world telling me what I already know Shauna."
"And what's that?"
I stopped and looked back to where Tom was stood, phone to his ear staring at me quietly, "that he's too good for me."