A/N:

Multi-chapter - UNFINISHED, and will not BE finished! Unfortunately, my muse has moved on. So if you don't like unfinished works, don't read this.

Fluffy fluff fluff - honestly, it's pretty G rated, especially for me. Romantic Tom more so than anything else - in other words, pretty damned boring - eventually becoming sort of romantic but dominant Tom - although there's honestly not much of that.

So, this is the first six or so chapters of the very first fanfic I ever started about Tom. If you've read my other stuff, you'll see a lot of recurring themes as I've robbed liberally from it for other stories. Sorry for the repetition, but at least I'm consistent! :)

Be warned - this is paced VERY SLOWLY. If you bore easily or are looking for "research" material, read something else of mine or something from laterovaries on tumblr. They'll get the job done much more quickly.

There's not even so much as a kiss until Chapter 4, so that'll help you decide whether or not you want to read it, along with the fact that this will NEVER BE FINISHED.

WARNING: The OFC has a lot of angst that Tom helps her with, too, in regards to the death of a loved one.

It had been the best and the worst times of her life over the past two years for Lacy St. James. She had lost the love of her life after only a few alarmingly short years together. He was the man that she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with and instead it ended up being the rest ofhis life. She had spent the first six months - after he had died in her arms - alone in their bed, sleeping on his side of it, wearing his clothes and reveling in the familiar but fading scent of him, venturing out of their house only when she absolutely had to.

Her family and friends worried about her and staged an intervention long about the fifth month of her self-imposed isolation, each of them hugging her and holding her and telling her how much they missed having her in their lives and spouting platitudes about how her husband wouldn't have wanted her to do what she was doing - wasting away without him, wasting the time she had left instead of living the rest of her life.

Lacy was far from a receptive ear, despite their altruistic motives, and she had practically thrown all of them bodily out of her house. No one took offense at her reaction - they all loved her and had loved Frank, too, and were doing their best to try to understand what she was going through and help her with it.

It wasn't as if she and Frank hadn't discussed what would happen to her when he was gone and he was quite vehement about the fact that he would not be happy with her if she didn't work her way through her grief over losing him and then begin to live her life again - which, as far as he was concerned, included her finding someone special who would treat her as the priceless treasure she had always been to him.

Her annoying friends' plan bore fruit, though, about a month after they had so rudely sought to jolt her out of her depression. At first they began to see her on Facebook occasionally, and then she'd text every once in a while, and gradually, she eased back into her usual routine, although it was a very long hard road back without her love and her best friend beside her.

And it didn't help that she lived in backwoods New England and that the winter was one of the worst on records - piles and piles of snow and ice and record breaking low temperatures hit all over the area, but most fiercely in the foothills of the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire, where she lived - and that helped to push her out of her warm, cozy nest.

One day while she was freezing her ass off taking her puppy out for the billionth time that day in twenty-eight degrees below zero weather, she looked around at her house and realized she was no longer tethered to it in any way, not that she had felt that way while Frank was alive, but he had been sickly from the time she'd met him and thus they had spent the majority of their time at home, only taking occasional short weekend type jaunts early on in their relationship. But as he got sicker and was in more and more pain, he couldn't be away from home even just that much.

And Lacy had been fine with that. She was, at heart, a homebody, and there was no one else in the world that she would have preferred to be home with than Frank. They were soul mates, and always found myriad ways to enjoy themselves - sexual or other wise - and they talked incessantly, never running out of things to say to each other, either.

But that morning she realized that she was free. She felt horribly guilty about that feeling, but it was the God's honest truth. She was far from rich, but thanks to him she was easily doing well enough to afford to go wherever she wanted for a while without it affecting her bottom line in the least.

So, where should she go? she wondered. Hawaii? Frank wouldn't - and couldn't - fly, so they had never gone there and she wanted to go somewhere where she wouldn't have memories of the two of them. But she wasn't very fond of hot weather, either, and the flight from New England would be extremely long, she imagined. The Bahamas? No, she'd been there on her first honeymoon - her starter marriage when she was much too young to get married and much too young to realize that fact - despite having been told that she shouldn't have married the jerk she ended up with.

She'd always been an Anglophile, and had even spent a short amount of time living in England when she was younger - one of the few benefits of her first marriage.

As soon as she thought about it, she knew that she wanted to live in London. It was a bucket list item she had never expected - never really acknowledged - that she wanted, knowing what it would mean about what had happened to Frank if she was to be able to do it.

Flights weren't all the outrageous and she booked an open ended one, got her passport in order, arranged for someone to watch the house and was in the air within the next month. Her friends weren't all that excited about her decision to leave them but at least she wasn't hiding under the covers in bed all the time.

She stayed at a friend's place at first who introduced her to a young actress named Emma Hiddleston who wanted a flatmate to share her place and split expenses. It worked out absolutely perfectly for the both of them because Emma's acting jobs took her all over and Lacy was always be there to take care of the place, lay in groceries, clean the place and water the plants. Lacy lived there. Emma visited occasionally.

She had mentioned that her older brother, Tom, was an actor, but that kind of thing sailed right over Lacy's head until one day she took the time to look him up on IMDB and realized that she knew of him - had seen some of his films - and that he was kind of a big deal since The Avengers in particular. The more she read about him - every single item positively glowing about how polite, articulate, funny and caring he was - the more she began to like him.

Really like him. She hadn't had a crush in years but this developed into one that she was somewhat embarrassed about having. She was really too old for this shit.

As a result, her roommate's brother became a source of stress to her. She'd never been interested in meeting anyone she'd admired from afar as a fan. What could she say to someone like Benedict Cumberbatch or Billy Joel if she ever met them that hadn't been said to them six ways from Sunday already? She didn't like being physically in a crowd, and she didn't like being one of a crowd, either. The mere thought of meeting Tom Hiddleston gave her the willies in the extreme.

No one who knew her well would ever agree with her that she was a shy person, but she was. She could be outspoken and funny when she was in a small group of people she knew - one of her favorite things to do was to make her sister crack up and do a spit take of whatever she was drinking and Lacy'd gotten very, very good at it over the years - always carefully making sure she never sat directly across from her sister. But cracking wise with her friends who'd all known her forever was entirely different from meeting someone who was A) freaking gorgeous, B) very, very smart, C) freaking gorgeous, D) famous, and E), freaking gorgeous.

She had lived with Em for ten or so months and had quite successfully managed to avoid even so much as being introduced to him. She didn't think her roommate suspected the extent of her awkwardness about the situation but she had been known to quite literally go out a back door while Tom was coming in the front one. Luckily, everyone tended to pay attention to him and she found it relatively easy to sneak away without having crossed paths with him, and no one seemed to be particularly unhappy to realize she'd left - if they noticed it at all, which she doubted.

She knew that her idyll was going to end eventually, but she intended to do her damndest to avoid the man for as long as she could.

She had met both Emma's sister Sarah and their mother, Diana and had even spent some time at Diana's house with the girls, having a great time, just like she was that weekend. She was sitting in the living room while the girls and their mother were fussing with some spring repotting of various potted plants. She had begged off helping because she had the world's blackest thumb, telling them that her ex used to have little funerals for all of the houseplants she'd killed.

But as she was reading quietly in the living room, she heard the five words in the English language that she least wanted to hear while she was there - "Oh my God, it's Tom!" - and as they all dashed out the front door to greet him, she went out the back into the expansive garden with her dog as her excuse - and also to have a cigarette at the same time without anyone pestering her not to.

And she needed that cigarette if she was going to be corralled into meeting this man. Hell, she needed a handful of Valium or Xanax or several stiff drinks or all of the above. She didn't have a car with which to make a getaway, so she was doing her best to steel herself for what was inevitably going to happen.

Her luck had run out.

Long moments later, during which she just got progressively more nervous, Sarah came around the side of the house with her too-beautiful-to-be-believed-even-just-in-jeans-and-a-t-shirt brother in tow, she knew she was caught - in several different ways - but there was nothing to be done about it now.

As soon as she saw her, though, Sarah let go of her brother's arm and stormed towards her. "Is that a cigarette I see?" clearly horrified.

Tom stood politely close by but back a ways, too - well within earshot, trying not to look interested, although he had to admit he was intrigued.

In an exaggeratedly innocent tone, Lacy said, "Why, no, Sarah, you are completely mistaken due to your positively hallucinatory excitement at seeing your brother for the first time in months. I'm sure if you drag the poor man back inside for a few minutes then come right back out again, there'll be no trace of a cigarette anywhere to be found, thus proving my hallucination theory quite neatly."

Sarah just stood there with her hand out expectantly, completely unimpressed by Lacy's diatribe.

Lacy took one last, long drag, leaned down and stubbed the offending cigarette out in the lush lawn then handed it to her, butt first, saying, "Nazi," with no malice whatsoever.

As she collected the damning evidence, Sarah replied, "Addict," in the same tone.

Peewee had come over to make friends with the new arrival, who sank down to his knees to pat her, only to get a smack from his sister who hauled him unceremoniously back up.

"Stand up! I want to introduce you - I've always wanted you two to meet."

"Which is exactly what I've spent the past year or so trying to avoid," Lacy mumbled under her breath, only to get a sharp elbow in her ribs for her troubles from her friend.

"Lacy St. James, this is my best of best friends, my marvelous brother, Tom."

Lacy literally forced herself to extend her hand out as Sarah continued.

"Tom, this is my great friend, Lacy St. James."

Lacy hated every bloody minute of it, but she let her cold, nervous, slightly damp hand be engulfed by his much bigger one, gripped it back firmly, pumping a perfectly respectable twice, then letting go.

He, however, didn't.

She was momentarily horrified that she was unable to withdraw her hand - how did she manage to screw up a simple handshake, for crying out loud? - and instead found it turned so that he could brush his lips against the back of it. "It's nice to finally meet you," he said, sounding disgustingly genuine as he looked down at her with those perpetually smiling eyes of his. "I've heard a lot of wonderful things about you from the ladies in my family, and they're not easily impressed."

"It's very nice to meet you, too, Mr. Hiddleston," Lacy said quietly, a hot blush making her feel even more anxious and earning a look from Sarah.

"Oh, please. Call me Tom."

"Tom. Then you must call me Lacy."

"Now can I pat the dog?" he asked his sister in a typical sibling whine she recognized from her own family, although she was usually the one employing it. He was already sitting on the lawn with the puppy, completely disregarding the immaculate condition of his jeans in favor of playing with her. "She's a doll. What breed is she?"

"She's a Boston Terrier - French Bulldog cross. They're called Frenchtons."

"I saw the Frenchie in her, but I wondered what gave her the long legs."

"Bostons are tall and almost always black and white," Lacy offered, biting back more. She could talk about her dog for days but she wasn't about to let herself get all gabby around him as she might if he were . . . well, almost anyone else. She'd known instinctively that she'd feel uneasy and uncharacteristically inadequate being near him and she'd been absolutely right, unfortunately.

Besides, what was she going to say to him that didn't make her sound like some gushing brainless fangirl?

If he had never arrived, she might well have stayed overnight, indeed, she had been here often enough that she had clothes stashed here in one of the guest rooms that she just left there, although she and Sarah hadn't discussed it specifically in regards to this visit. She knew, though, that, because of his presence, she was going to be excusing herself and going back to London as soon as she could do so without seeming impolite.

"Maybe we should go inside and see if we can help Mum?" Sarah asked.

"You two go on ahead. I'll be in in a minute -" she was already fishing around in her purse for her cigarettes and lighter.

"No, you won't," Sarah warned, looping her arm through Lacy's and forcing her along with Tom - whose arm she had commandeered on her other side - back towards the house.

"Has anyone ever told you that you can be a bully?" Lacy asked no one in particular.

Tom raised his hand high in the air. "Yes."

Lacy laughed, unable to stifle the question. "Poor abused younger brother?"

"Definitely."

Sarah reached out and smacked him for his impudence.

When they got inside, Tom seemed to have disappeared, so it was just the girls - Sarah, her Mom and Lacy - in the kitchen for a while, so Lacy was relaxed and her usual gregarious self. But Tom appeared not long into dinner preparations, so she volunteered to set the table although it ended up not necessarily being the best way to avoid him since the man seemed to constantly be in the way of what she needed to get at and was always having to excuse himself or causing her to have to do so. He did make himself useful, reaching above her head for the stuff on the top shelves, but the fact that he was being nice to her didn't make her feel any more at ease with him. By the end of the exercise, she knew that her cheeks were blazing red again for no real reason at all, just her anxiousness around him.

Nevertheless, she knew she needed something to keep her occupied. "What else can I do, Diana?"

"I think Sarah and I have it well in hand if you and Tom want to relax in the living room for a moment, but it's not going to be long."

Oh, joy.

Lacy had to keep herself from rolling her eyes, lest anyone in the room see her and misinterpret her action. She wasn't rolling them at the family, she was rolling them at herself. How the hell was she going to conduct a conversation with this man when her mouth was bone dry already, her mind completely scattered simply by his presence? She was sure she was going to sound like a complete idiot, no matter what they ended up talking about. At this point she didn't think she could recite her A, B, C's, and she was supposed to carry on a conversation with a man who was as well educated and well read as he was?

That was where Peewee came in, bless her heart. Lacy had never been so happy to have owned that dog. She provided entertainment on a grand scale, pressing Tom into service throwing her toys for her to fetch right back and push into his hand so that he'd throw it again. He seemed enchanted with her, thankfully.

Lacy knew she was sitting there like a bump on a log, but even with the dog helping, she had no idea what to say to him.

"She's really a darling, isn't she," he said, casting a tentative look at her after a few long moments of silence.

"Thank you." Her reply was soft and muted, with none of the peeks at the bubbly, funny personality that he'd seen when she was so obviously more comfortable and heard about from his mom and both of his sisters.

He'd listened to her joining in the give and take of the conversation his sister and their mother always had when they were cooking together and it had intrigued him immensely. He wondered why she considered him such a damper. Whenever Sarah had mentioned her, she'd never said anything about shyness or quietness, in fact it was just the opposite - she was apparently quite likely to say the first thing that came out of her mouth, with hilarious results - despite the fact that Lacy was obviously both of those things, at least around him.

The meal was a relatively simple shepherd's pie recipe with extra mashed potatoes for Tom who loved them and fresh green beans with a slivered almonds and garlic, rolls and a nice wine to go with it. The three of them held up the lion's share of the conversation; it was obvious just how close they were and how much they loved each other. It made her miss her husband and her sister almost to the point of tears, but she knew that if she cried at their dinner table it would have made her downright suicidal so she ruthlessly forced herself not to think about things like that.

Lacy could feel Sarah's quizzical gaze on her throughout, knowing the other woman was wondering if there was something wrong, but she studiously avoided making eye contact with her or anyone else at the table and concentrated on the food, remembering to compliment her hostess lavishly about it - it was one of the few things she actually said during dinner, although they all did their best to try to draw her out.

When Diana suggested it, everyone but Tom adjourned to the living room, leaving him to do the washing up.

"He always gets stuck with that because he's never around to set the table," she explained as they all got up.

He was done in what Lacy considered to be record time and when he appeared and eyed a seat on the couch with Sarah that uncomfortable, unfamiliar nervous feeling crept back into her consciousness after she'd just spent the past few minutes laughing and joking with the others.

Diana asked Tom to get people drinks if they want them before he sat down. His eyes went to Lacy first as the guest. "Something from the bar, Lacy?"

Hearing him say her name had her blushing furiously again - still - yet, which just made her that much more tongue tied when she answered, "Nothing for me, thank you."

Sarah out and out gaped at her in disbelief and there was no way Lacy could let that pass.

"What, am I an alcoholic now, too?" she asked, joking.

"No, but I've never seen you turn down free booze!"

And Diana chimed in with, "I seem to remember a certain weekend when I wasn't here that my supply of gin ran dangerously low . . . "

Playing the innocent again, Lacy looked around the room deliberately, "Well, I'm quite sure I don't have any idea what you mean." Diana looked so dubious as to her innocence that Lacy had to giggle.

Tom was still looking at her, disconcertingly, but she shook her head "no".

"Soda? Milk? Coffee? Water?" he offered instead.

"No thank you. I'm fine." She coughed a few times, dryly.

Diana got Tom talking about his experiences filming in Hollywood, and Lacy coughed a few more times, excusing herself quietly each time.

Tom had stopped talking and was staring at her, which is exactly what she didn't want.

She looked around her again, as if there had to be something more interesting somewhere behind her that he was looking at.

"Are you ok?" He sounded truly concerned.

Lacy smiled a bit too brightly. "I'm fine, thanks. Just go on about your daily business."

He hesitated, still eying at her with a worried look on his face.

Lacy sighed slightly, feeling compelled to explain, "It's the smoking. Sometimes my lungs object. I didn't mean to interrupt you - "

He was sitting on the far end of the couch and she was in the occasional chair at the other end of it and she watched with widening eyes as he sat forward, resting his forearms on his widespread thighs, so that he could give her what she didn't want to interpret as a stern look, but that was definitely what it was. "Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that you have lung problems and yet you still smoke?"

Tom's censorious look and tone had a surprising effect on Lacy as her nipples peaked and her panties dampened instantaneously.

Sarah piped up not very quietly as she rose to get her own purse, "Yes, not only that, but it lowers her immunities terribly and she already has a reduced lung capacity because of it. When she gets a chest cold, it lands her in the Emergency Department every time."

"Wow. You need to take better care of yourself," he chided.

"I know, Tom! Finally, someone who agrees with me!" Sarah yelled from down the hall.

Diana had to put her two pence in. "I agree with you both! I've told her myself that she should quit smoking."

Feeling just a bit ganged up on with the three of them looking at her accusingly, Lacy protested, "I've cut down a lot! I have!"

That didn't seem to placate any of them in the least - Tom least of all, surprisingly.

And then Sarah, who was on her way back to the living room, had to chime in helpfully with, "Not so far as I can tell."

"Nobody asked you!" Sarah had arrived back in the living room and walked over to her friend with her hand out expectantly for the second time in less than an hour and Lacy sighed. "Do you know how much money I go through replacing the cigarettes you take off me every time you see me? I could have bought a friggin' yacht by now . . . "

But she dutifully dug into her purse and handed over her pink floral case with its pink lighter, which Sarah tucked into her own purse. "Hey, wait, I want the case and the lighter back - "

"No you don't."

Lacy did roll her eyes at that, and she didn't give a damn who saw her this time, either.

"Do I need to conduct a raid on your flat and confiscate contraband? Again?"

"No?" Lacy answered hopefully, batting her eyelashes at Sarah. "How much can I pay you not to, dearest darling honey?" she asked with very faux sweetness through tightly clenched teeth.

"I won't make you use the whole ninety-eight pence in your account on me, dearest," Sarah replied back in the same sickly sweet manner.

Heaving a big dramatic sigh, Lacy said, "All right, all right, I'll quit. I'll buy the stupid gum and the annoying patches. Lots and lots of patches. I'll make Sherlock look like an amateur with his three patches. You'll come over one day and I'll be covered in gum and chewing on the patches," they all chuckled, which was what she had been going for, "but at least I won't be smoking." Then she stuck her tongue out rudely at the woman who had become one of her best friends, who, of course, promptly stuck hers out back at Lacy.

"How old are you two?" Tom asked no one in particular, although there was a smile on his face as he said it. "Eight? Five?"

"Somewhere in there."

The conversation hit a lull, and Lacy glanced at the clock and rose. "I think I'll be heading back now, ladies - and gentleman," she amended hurriedly. "If you'll drive me into town, Sarah, I can catch the four-forty-five back."

The women weren't willing to let her go, having assumed she would be staying for the weekend. But Lacy was adamant about needing to get back, referencing a deadline that she knew Sarah would probably see through but no one else would.

Then all hell broke loose, as far as she was concerned, when Tom decided to do the gracious, gentlemanly thing and offered to drive her back in his car since he had things to do in town, too.

Damn his disgustingly polite, beautiful hide! There wasn't an easy way out of this was there? Maybe there was.

"But the dog - you wouldn't want her shedding all over your gorgeous car . . . " she began, addressing Tom but deliberately looking at the dog instead.

She could see him smile out of the corner of her eye. "It needs to be cleaned out anyway, which I was going to do this week, so I don't much care."

Son of a bitch.

There really wasn't any graceful way out at all, because she certainly didn't want to insult any of them, which meant she was well and truly caught. One look at Sarah showed her sporting a smug expression, as if she'd planned this all the time, and Lacy wasn't at all sure that she'd put it past her to have done exactly that.

Within minutes the dog was made comfortable in what there was of the back seat of the small sports car, her purse was stored back there, too, for easy access, then she found herself hugging Sarah and then Diana and thanking them both profusely, promising - as they made Tom do, too - to return for a full weekend in the very near future. Lacy thanked God for small favors in that at least she was being spared - for now - the awkward business of whether or not she was going to have to hug him, but instead found him standing at her door, ready to assist her into the car.

Trying to be as graceful as she could - which she knew wasn't very - she did hold onto his hand a bit, extremely grateful that she was in jeans and not the tiny skirt she'd debated wearing as she wedged herself into the small but luxurious space.

"This is a gorgeous car!" she heard herself gush when he got behind the wheel. If she was going to fangirl in front of him she was just as happy to do it over the car instead of him.

"Thank you. I like it."