Waves (A Tom Hiddleston Fan fiction)

Chapter 2

People started to filter down onto the sand, the sun rising higher in the sky. The morning blanket of cloud started to disperse. Families of three or four, an elderly couple walking their dog along the shore. No recognition, as everyone seemed too wrapped up in his or her own groups. And why not. Beth reached into the basket, watching Tom and Owen finishing off their castle. She squirted a small amount of hand cream into her palm, rubbing it in gently. The Summer played havoc with her skin.

The sandcastle was phenomenal, standing tall. Tom and Owen stood back, matched stance. Hands on hips, chests puffed out, pulled to full height. The turrets were perfectly detailed with little shells. They had even managed to craft a couple of little dried seaweed soldiers who hung limp out of tiny windows in the main tower. The elderly man walked past and commented “well done boys!” His wife clung tighter to his arm as they started a conversation between themselves, “Remember when I used to make sandcastles with Craig and Ellie?”

Tom looked down to his little right-hand man, who looked up with the same blazing blue eyes as his Mother. Beth was quick enough to pull her phone out and take a few snaps. She was still deep in contemplation thirty seconds earlier. Disbelief. Self-awareness. Regardless, her boy was the happiest she had seen him and who better to be playing with than one of the icons from his young screen memories.

“You know…” Beth sang out, looking down to review the photo she’d just taken from her phone.

“What do you think??” Tom scooped Owen up onto his shoulders, walking back over to the little oasis of basket, towels and Beth . Both were beaming.

“You know, you two have just made the most amazing sandcastle ever in existence! That’s what I think, and…” she continued. Tom cast a long shadow across her, jumping from foot to foot with Owen howling with joy from his perch.

“I think what you’ve done here today is nothing short of miraculous.” She continued, “…and simply imagine what it would have meant to you to have had the opportunity to sit on a beach and build sandcastles with Christopher Reeve when you were 6.”

He halted. The reality smacking him in the gut.

“Oh thank you. I uh… surely I can’t mean that much to him?” He looked at Owen.

“Okay, so Robert Downey Jnr would be the equivalent to Christopher Reeve to him, considering his love for Iron Man, but imagine if it were Gene Hackman.” They burst into laughter.

“Dreadfully kind of you to say so. Thank you…” he placed one hand on his abdomen, other at his lower back and clicked his heels together into a small bow.

It hadn’t been the easiest of lives. She had worked hard at bringing Owen up alone. He still had contact with his father, but she was solely responsible for the day to day and his father lived interstate. She was there for the nights when Owen would lay in bed unable to sleep as he was missing his Dad.

Tom bobbed down, lifting Owen from his shoulders. Lithe, but very strong. Where Beth would heave and struggle to pick Owen up to her hip as she used to when he was a toddler, Tom was flinging him about like a rag doll yet with great care. And Owen was loving every second of it.

He sorely missed the rough male play in his life. It was something Beth fought to keep with him, but fact of the matter was it was a huge struggle. They’d have tickle fights, but no swinging around and flying over things and tossing about like this. Not to mention this was a man who had portrayed one of the characters Owen had spent ages sitting in front of the TV laughing at, booing at, and imitating. Particularly the wheeze in Avengers after Hulk had ‘smashed’ Loki into the floor. Owen had that mastered, and would crack up laughing, rolling about on the floor.