Fantasy and Putts - t.h. series [18+]

Meta-Fore of Love - part two *

words » 9.4k

warnings » light angst due to distance ; introducing: David ; smut: masturbation via video chat, y/n is in a store's changing room, nobody bothers them though

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That odd taste of lonely bile stays in your mouth the whole of next day. It's there when Tom kisses you good morning and when he kisses you for breakfast. It's there in every kiss he drops on your mouth, short or persistent, until the very last one as you see him off with his brothers at the door to your flat building.

It's ridiculous because it's only a twelve day vacation, but you recognize how spoiled you've been in the past few weeks. Tom has been home every hour of every day, keeping you company or texting you random little things when he's out of the flat, even showing you stupid memes you almost never find funny but that leave him enthusiastic every single time.

Now that he's in a completely different time zone, probably having the time of his life, you try not to sulk too hard on the couch. You try watching all of your comfort shows and re-reading all of your favorite books and engaging in all sorts of activities that used to cheer you up, but it's like you're not in the mood for anything. The only option is to keep getting busy to avoid any more of this ridiculous pining that makes you check your texts first thing in the morning and the Hollands' socials right after in case they've shared anything new.

After two days of dragging your feet across the floor, you take an invigorating shower and decide to focus your energy on something else.

In the past couple of months, your videos haven't been producing as much income as you had hoped. You've been trying to reinvent your style and with every new video, there's always more followers, but the engagement isn't increasing the way you had imagined it would. There are certain spikes in interaction within the few days after you and Tom interact on social media, but you started retracting from that since you want to make it on your own.

It's totally normal that by being linked to someone like him, with such a huge following, means that his fans are somehow attracted to your socials, the same way they tend to flock around everybody else Tom has been associated with, but at the same time it would be unfair to 'use' him that way. And besides, you want to make it on your own. You did fine before he came into your life, and you'll do just as fine from now on.

The problem is that you cannot dedicate any more hours of your day to this channel to create more content and generate more views or you'll go insane from lack of person-to-person interaction, so you started job hunting a while back.

You stopped doing it on the daily when Tom was home, so now that he isn't, it's the perfect opportunity to restart looking for at least a part-time job. It will still be helpful to your expenses, however low the wage may be. You've been depending on Tom and Harrison's kindness about rent for too damn long. And now that there's even talking about moving to a bigger house with more people, you don't want to depend on any more of them. Just the thought of that makes you sick to the stomach. You're in town to be independent after all, so this is what you have to do.

In the meantime, lunch time includes the mandatory group video call with Tom and the rest of the boys. It's already evening where they are and the brothers share whatever they can about their day and the adventures they went through. Day after day, it's incredible how tanned they look from spending several hours in the sun, but it's particularly good to see their relaxed smiles and overall happiness with their vacation. It makes you a little jealous, but they look so carefree and good that it washes away whenever they call.

In the morning of the fourth day of their vacation, since yesterday you spent practically the whole day going from building to building in your job hunt efforts, you're sitting with your feet up on a pillow on the coffee table when you get an alert from Instagram. Apparently Tom has posted something new, but the app has been glitching so bad for months that you roll your eyes at it. This kind of notification has fooled you enough times that you're expecting it to say the post doesn't exist. Nevertheless, it looks like, a few minutes ago, Tom did post a video of himself swinging at a golf course. The caption doesn't surprise you.