Far From Home // t.h.

8 - (y/n)

"I'll have the same, no milk or sugar though, thanks, mate."

A part of you felt surprisingly flattered at the idea that Tom asked for your opinion and actually valued it enough to order the same... even if it was something as plain as a cup of Yorkshire tea. Once Tom had set his order with Greggy, and he, in turn, disappeared into the kitchen to make the hot drink, Tom and you looked at each other, unsure of what comes next. You found yourself lightly tapping the side of your cup of tea, just enough to make any sound in case it might annoy anyone around you (for example, Tom).

Tom, meanwhile, cleared his throat, and you saw him glance down at your shirt. A race of intrusive thought was about to start in your head. It was a tight chase between "oh no, don't turn out to be a complete dickhead who's only looking for someone to mess around with" and "he's just looking at the shirt. Nothing wrong with that! It's a cool shirt-" and then you realised what it actually was that you had put on.

You remembered why you had decided to go with an outfit whose jacket was a set piece in the ensemble. So you put it on to hide the fact that there, right on the side, above your chest, was a small yet evident Avengers logo. It was undeniably the infamous A with an arrow across it; it could be nothing else.

Now, realising what Tom was looking at, you could feel your whole body go rigid as your cheeks flushed with heat. You saw the slight smile on his lips. He thought you were a joke. He must have. He thought you were some obsessed fan, and in the next minute, he would say that, oh sorry, he was looking for someone else called y/n, and that this was a horrible misunderstanding, just to run away as quickly as possible. Yeah, you could see it all already, him going back home, or wherever, telling everyone how he almost hired "crazy y/n". Great. Just great.

"y/n?" he repeated your name. There was no "crazy" to be seen or heard anywhere around. Just your name slipping through his lips, and you couldn't help but think how it sounded much nicer, suddenly, coming from him.

"Sorry, what?'' Of course, you had zoned out. Because that is precisely how one makes a great first impression, detach oneself from reality and ignore every single question they ask you. Mhm, that's how you get a job, 100% guaranteed. But Tom didn seem to mind. He smiled a smile that genuinely reached his eyes, "I was just asking if you liked Marvel," Oh god, you thought, here we go. Just play it off cool. Say it's not your shirt if the worst comes to it.

"Mhm," now, according to all the self-help books and Buzzfeed articles, the way to have a successful conversation is to ask questions back and forth, "do you?" but that was not the way to do it. You wanted the couch to open a portal and swallow you into the pit of hell. That, honestly, sounded like lesser torture than what you were putting yourself through right there.

Maybe Tom had mistaken you for some charity case because he kept on smiling.

"Sorry," you apologised, for what felt like the millionth time, "I'm kind of nervous if you couldn't tell already- and I feel like I should explain the shirt-"

"No, no need. I like it. It's subtle," was he actually taking the piss at you?