"Old School." Not Skype, but just plain old. Old fashioned phone sex. "It'll heighten the rest of your senses," he claimed.

"But no daily dose of eye candy?" she wailed, continuing to whinge from there.

He gave her the classic dom look - chin down, out from under his eyebrows. "My love, I'm not asking." She heard his accent quite acutely when he chided her, which always heightened her responses to him to an almost unbearable extent. She wasn't really trying to complain, really, she was trying to . . . protect herself from the full extent of just how much his completely natural, "I'm going to make you cum" voice affected her.

She hadn't shared it with him yet, but she knew that all she needed from him was his words - he never even needed to touch her. But she was shy about admitting such a vulnerability to him, although he'd certainly never given her any reason not to trust him - just the opposite, in fact.

But she knew she wasn't going to be able to get out of it this time. She was going to be forced to concentrate on that rich, amazing voice, and she had a feeling it wasn't going to take her very long at all until she few directly into the sun because of it.

He disconnected Skype and called her.

"I miss you so much, Lily!"

Her legs shifted agitatedly at the raw need in his voice.

"I miss you, too, Thomas!"

And he heard the plaintive note in hers and recognized the truth of her words.

"What are you wearing, my love? Tell me in exquisite detail."

It went rapidly downhill from there, with him moaning murmuring obscene things to her as she described the lacy blue lingerie she was wearing while he moaned and even whimpered at her words. Tom revealed that he was lying on his bed, nude - and she'd seen him that way so many times the image came to her mind immediately of that Greek God body of his stretched out, his feet nearly hanging off the edge of the bed, his huge, rock hard cock in his hand. "I'm live like this every day, Lily," he confessed, his voice rough. "I feel like I'm a teenager; I can't control it. We bring each other off nearly every night and I'm horny almost immediately afterwards again. I'm too old - that's not supposed to be physically possible for me to do any more!"

She blushed at the absolute sincerity in his voice and the very personal compliment.

"I have long, detailed wet dreams about what I'm going to do to you when I finally have you in my arms - in my bed - again. Be prepared - we're going to spend at least a week in bed together when I first get home, maybe more.. And I think about you at very inappropriate times - when I'm in the middle of an interview, my very dirty mind will conjure up visions of you writhing uncontrollably as I touch you because I've bound your hands, me lying between your thighs with my mouth only a few centimeters above your clit, with one of your legs over each of my shoulders, holding you forcibly open for me, reaching up to squeeze a breast in each hand, looking up at you as I bury my mouth in your pussy and watch you as you surrender yourself to me, your head whipping your hair back and forth and your hips arching, pressing yourself against me, offering yourself to me as you cum helplessly on my mouth . . ."

She was almost as entranced by his voice as she was by his gorgeous body- always had been - and because of that, she was very close within minutes. and they'd barely begun, as far as he was concerned.

Lily was already panting, very aroused but he kind of missed the clues as to where she was - just how far along that little speech of his - with no effort from her own fingers at all - had brought her in her journey.

Within a minute or two, she confessed her secret to him despite her extreme embarrassment. "Tom, your voice does it to me every time. I'm very, very close. All you really need to do is just keep talking to me for another minute or so and that's going to hurtle me over the edge." She was telling him something very special about them - about him - as far as she was concerned, revealing something very intimate about herself and her hair trigger response to him because she felt safe to do so with him - something that told her that they were wonderfully close already - the fact that his voice alone was all she needed to get off.

Again, he completely missed the clues. He sounded doubtful, disbelieving - almost scoffing at the idea that she was so close so soon after they had begun. "You have got to be kidding!" and then he did the unthinkable, laughing heartily at her.

He might not have meant it to sound as if he was laughing at her, but that was certainly how it came off to her.

Try as she might, Lily couldn't help but feel hurt at his behavior - she felt as if he'd struck her across the face. Wasn't he the one who was always encouraging her to share everything about herself - even the most embarrassingly revealing things? Did he not know that that was what she'd just done?

She was stunned. There was a long pause - a very telling silence on her end, then, very softly barely choked out through tears, she asked, "Are you . . . laughing . . . ?" Lily pressed the "off' button on her phone mid-sentence, and the last of her question came out when he couldn't possibly hear the anguished, plaintive note in her tone " - at me?"

Suddenly aware that he'd lost her, trying frantically to recall what she had said to him just before that last, cut off question at the end and realizing with a rising sense of dread what he'd said to her and how it must've sounded to her as he did, although he still couldn't help but continue to say, "Lil? Lily? Lily, honey -" to a dead line, long after he knew he'd lost her.

There was no response.

She was gone.

He called her back immediately - no answer. It didn't even go to her answering machine - it just rang and rang and rang.

He began to panic. This was NOT good. Not good at all.

"SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! FUCKIN BLOODY HELL! BOLLOCKS!"

Tom continued frantically trying to get in contact with her but with absolutely no luck - it was as if she'd dropped off the face of the planet - she wouldn't answer her phone, email, texts, nada. He was thousands of miles away from her and under contract to finish this short press junket. He couldn't go to her, so he used Luke as much as possible, only she wouldn't talk to him, either, knowing how close he and Tom were.

He continued - as relentlessly as he could around his schedule - for several days to try to get to her. He sent her big bouquets of roses every day, plus candy, fruit, every "I'm sorry" gift he could think of. Every one of them was refused and sent back.

After five agonizing days of not sleeping or eating, becoming so badly distracted he was barely coherent in the interviews he was doing, he tapped Luke to go see her - again.

Luke stood in the lobby of her building, buzzing her flat.

"Who is it?" She didn't sound like herself at all; there was absolutely no joy in her voice.

She sounded like someone else he'd just talked to.

"Lily, it's Luke." At least she'd answered. She hadn't the other times he'd been there.

Nothing, for a very long time. He was beginning to think he'd failed before he even got started, and he wasn't looking forward to telling that to Tom.

But eventually, almost so softly that he missed it at first, he heard a quiet, broken, "Go away, Luke."

He cleared his throat and consciously entered groveling mode. "Please let me see you. I know he did something unthinkable - I don't know the specifics and I don't want to" - but he knew that Tom had unthinkingly laughed at her while they were being intimate, and that was more than enough for him to be on her side, frankly - "but I haven't done anything to you and if I don't make some progress with you I'm going to lose Tom as a client."

Lily could hear how upset he was, although she doubted it was as bad as all that. "So if you've ever felt anything for me, please, please, please let me come up and talk to you."

He had certainly sent the right person. She loved Luke at least as much as he did - maybe more, although she thought he was probably being overly dramatic - Tom loved Luke and she couldn't imagine him divorcing himself from him in any way - but his mournful tone got to her - as he - they - had to have known it would - and she buzzed him up - however reluctantly.

Her door was unlatched and she was waiting for him, hands on her hips, not very far into the room. Luke came in and closed the door behind him. He noted how wan and weary she looked, as if she'd lost her best friend - and she had - and he would have bet that she hadn't eaten or slept since - like someone else he knew.

Luke had long since decided that the bald truth was the best way to go. "Tom is going crazy not being able to get to you."

"Good." He knew she wanted to sound hard, like some vindictive bitch, but all he heard was the deep hurt behind her tone.

"Well, I'm not kidding when I say that I could lose him as a client - everyone could. He's . . . incapable of focusing." Tom Hiddleston, unfocused? It was positively unheard of. "He can't concentrate. He's unraveling completely."

"Good."

"He's all wrapped around the axle."

"Good."

Luke knew they belonged together and was humbled to be a part of trying to get things ironed out between them, and it was time to pull out the big guns. "I'm not kidding when I say that he's inches away from doing something to blow it on this tour which would negatively affect both of our reputations, and losing a client like Tom would reflect very badly on me. So please, I'm begging you - talk to him - if not for both of your sakes, then strictly for mine." He sighed. She didn't appear moved in the least. "At least talk to him. I swear to you I will owe you for the rest of my life if you'll just do that for me. If it has to be just this once, and you end up breaking it off, then . . . " he couldn't complete the sentence - or the thought.

Luke reached into his bag and held out his iPad to show her that he had the Skype app up and was ready to call Tom. "Please can I Skype him?"

He certainly didn't hesitate to go for the jugular at all. She knew that appealing to her feelings for Tom weren't going to get him anywhere, so instead he concentrated on the fact that he would be caught in the crossfire - personally and professionally - if she didn't do as he asked.

Lily was sobbing, her shoulders shaking violently, her usually lovely face buried in her hands and it was killing him. He couldn't even imagine what Tom was going through.

Eventually, Lily nodded slowly and relief flooded through his body to the point where he thought he was going to need to sit down. Before she could change her mind, though, he hit the button to call Tom - who of course was fifty-five hundred or so miles away, waiting for this call.

"Tom?"

"Yeah." Even to Lily, he sounded bedraggled and exhausted, terribly subdued, no trace of his usual boundless positive energy. And she, especially, wasn't much interested in noticing anything about him.

"I'm here, in Lily's flat. She's agreed to talk to you."

No triumphant "Whoop!", no clapping or anything overtly happy at his friend's success. Just a long, not quite relieved sigh. "Oh, fuck me, man, I owe you so big for this - I cannot even tell you how much."

Luke was already a bit moist from talking to Tom before he came over and now there were tears flowing down his cheeks, too, just like there was everyone else's. "All I want is for you two to get back together. That would be more than enough for me."

"Thank you, man. That's all I want in this world, too. Would you hand me over to her, please? Thanks again."

He stuck the tablet out towards her, but her hand didn't come up automatically to take it and Tom noticed that he's just kind of hanging there, in mid-air, with a great view of her scattered pastel colored rag rugs and hardwood floors.

She can't see him, but she can hear Tom cajoling in his most beguiling, "Lily, honey, please take Luke's iPad, if only so I can see you and reassure myself that you're okay. Please, my love."

The sincerity of his feelings shone through in every word, but Lily ruthlessly reminded herself that this man was a consummate actor.

Despite herself, though, her hand came up to take the tablet just as she heard the Star Trek communications hail that signaled that she had mail at her private email address, which was always up on Outlook on her laptop. She brought the iPad up in front of her as Luke discreetly removed himself from the flat entirely and took up an awkward residency outside her apartment, in the hallway, to cross everything he owned - fingers, arms, legs, eyes - that this worked.

He knew they belonged together.

Lily slowly, with severe reluctance, brought the tablet up to her face. And there he was - looking like he was dead and didn't know enough to lie down. This was no bouncing, enthusiastic lover of his life. This is a man who had received a calm, quiet, completely devastating death blow - due to his own stupidity - when she removed herself so completely from his life and he now he was simply existing and enduring until he could win her back.

Because the alternative didn't bear thinking of.

He'd lost weight - weight he didn't have to lose. Those beautiful cheekbones were in even more acute relief than usual, the skin over them showing an unhealthy, unhappy pallor. He looked as if he'd slept in his clothes, and come to think of it, wasn't that the same outfit he'd had on when she'd last spoken to him? And his eyes - there was no luster to them, as blue as they still were - none of the joie de vivre that was such a big part of his personality was present in them any longer. They were swollen and moist and she could see the salty white tracks of tears down his cheeks - where there were already more tears joining the flow.

When he spoke, it was soft and low, humbled and humbling. "Thank you for . . ." she watched him reach up to brush away tears and did the same thing herself. "Well, just thank you. There's more that I want to say to you, but did I hear that you just got an email?"

"Yes," she answered, wondering why he'd even listened for that sound, unaware that he even knew that that was what that sound meant.

"Good - would you mind checking it for me? I think it's something I've just sent you."

She reached down to grab her laptop and fell into her favorite chair to do so. "Yes, I have it."

"There should be three attachments. Open them please, and thank you very much for indulging me in this."

Curious as to what he was up to, she did so and he heard her shocked, startled intake of breath as if he was sitting in front of her. The pictures were of him nude with a truly impressive, rampant hard on. She had to admit that it was impressive even though she'd seen him before, but somehow it was even more stark and real in these pictures than when she'd held him in her hand.

He saw her eyes widen almost painfully.

They'd been together for over a year, and couldn't seem to get enough of each other - in bed and out, but they'd never sent erotic pics of themselves to each other before. "I'm sorry for being so . . . crude and forward in sending you these. We haven't really talked about whether anything like this would be a turn on for either one of us, but I had an ulterior motive, that, believe it or not isn't sexual, despite what the pictures illustrate. But I wanted you to have these because there's no one else in the world who has pictures of me like this." She heard him sigh heavily. "I'm absolutely devastated that I unthinkingly hurt you so badly, Lily, my love, but I took those pictures twenty minutes ago. You'd think my body would have gotten the message that I fucked up, but, if you'll noticed, I'm fully erect in every single picture - this is me, thinking of you. The first one - I'm horrified at my own actions, yet my body still craves you. In the second one, I'm terrified at the idea that I might just lose you, but I'm still hard as a rock. And the same is true for the last one, too, because it's you. I'm sitting here right now, shaking, Lily, and I was trembling when I took all of those pics, and I'm still practically bursting out of my pants - all because of you.

"Just thinking about you nearly makes me cum without having to touch myself, and I'm so sorry that I wasn't paying close enough attention to you to realize what a wonderfully intimate thing you were trying to tell me about how I affect you.

"You are the most important person in the world to me - and I know I will never be able to apologize enough for what I did, but please try to hear that I really wasn't trying to laugh at you - I would never, ever do that to you." He cleared his throat. "I was surprised and amazed by what you said about how far along you were - just from chatting with me. Just from the sound of my voice. I was so touched and secretly so proud, you know, in my head, that you were so responsive to me, but of course nothing that eloquent came out of me - just my stupid 'he he he' like the Internet says, but it was out of nervousness - like laughing at a funeral - it was just - " he sighed, words failing him for one of the few times in his life. "It's so important to me that you trust me with thoughts like that - I can't believe I ruined what should have been such a beautiful, touching moment by being an absolute idiot."

He leaned towards the camera on his own iPad. "I sent you those pics because I have to earn your trust back some how, and so what I decided to do was to give you the ammunition to hurt me in the only way I thought you might see is equally devastating to me - like what I did was to you.

"I'm not saying this right or that it's what I want you to do because it's not, but I wanted to give you the power to . . . crush my ego as surely as my inadvertently laughing at the precious thing you confided to me must've crushed you. My career - my future - is in your hands and, in a way, it has been since we first got together. You can post these anywhere - or you could sell them - you'd make very good money on them, I've been told. There really aren't any pictures out there of me full-frontal naked, much less aroused like this. Sell them to TMZ or wherever or . . . " she watched him swallow hard, barely getting the words out as he continued, "if you'd rather have revenge than money, post them to Tumblr, if that'll make you feel better.

"Because nothing," she heard his already rasping, husky voice catch with emotion, " - not my family, not my friends, not my career - nothing in my life means more to me than you do."

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Lily nonetheless chuckled softly. "You are an idiot, you know? You should never trust anyone with pictures like this - Christ, Tom, you know I have a Tumblr account -!"

Softly, "Yes, I know. Hence the trust element." He put her down so that she was on a nightstand still pointed towards him, but so that she could see that he had literally, gracefully, gotten down on one knee to her, like Henry was to Catherine in The Hollow Crown. "My fate is truly in those two delicate little hands of yours - fuck my career. No amount of success is worth losing you - none at all. Can you forgive me for being such an uncouth clod, babylove? I know it's a tremendous amount to ask, and I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you, I promise . . . "

"You're damned right you will," she growled, and was rewarded by a brief return of life and light to those beautiful eyes.

"Does that mean . . ." he could barely bring himself to say it in case he was just getting his hopes up to be dashed. "Does this mean you forgive me?" He asked it as if he was murmuring a prayer to save his own life, and in a way, he was.

"Yes, I'm sorry, Tom, I over-reacted -"

"Stop right there," he said, rising to sit on the bed again, sounding as if he was rapidly returning to his usual self. "You did nothing wrong. I'd be just as devastated if you had taken a look at those pictures I just sent you of me and laughed. I'll never be able to say I'm sorry to you enough . . . "

Lily was openly weeping now, her head in her hands, and it was breaking his heart that he'd succeeded, managed to get her to forgive him, somehow, and yet he couldn't put his arms around her and comfort her.

"Honey, I bet Luke has been the true gentleman that he is and is somewhere close, but outside the apartment so we could speak privately together. Would you find him and bring him in here for me, please?"

She was crying so hard when she went to get him that Luke wasn't at all sure in which direction things had gone until she handed Tom to him.

"Luke, mate, we did it. Lily has truly humbled me by graciously accepting all of my groveling, but she's upset - and so am I -"

"So am I!" Luke threw his two cents in, and the both of them could see that he, too, was visibly moved by what had happened between the couple - between his best friend and his girl.

"Well, I have an unusual request for you, and I hope you can see your way to doing it for me, because I'm so fucking far away, as you know, and - " He cut himself off before he made things worse for all of them dwelling on their separation. "Could you see your way to hugging Lily for me, as my proxy, kind of like I would? You know how I hug and you've seen me hug her. And would you put me down somewhere that I can see her face when you do it?"

If he was surprised by Tom's request, Luke didn't let on. Instead he did exactly as Tom asked, propping him up where he could see the two of them but Lily would be facing him while she was hugged. He went to stand in front of Lily, consciously adjusting his stance to Tom's dominant, wide but bent legged one, drawing her slowly close to him to cradle her against him, one arm around the bottom of her rib cage, squeezing just perfectly, the other more around her shoulders, rubbing his right hand up and down, kind of over her right shoulder blade as he hugged her tight.

Tom was glad to see that his weird idea seemed to be working. Lily looked much more serene than she had although he knew she was still crying. "Thanks, buddy. Give her a kiss on the forehead for me and let her go."

Luke did exactly as he asked, pressing his lips to Lily's forehead slowly and deliberately, as he'd seen Tom do a million times when the three of them were together.

"I can't thank you enough, man."

Luke gave him a grin. "I can't call it a hardship - she's easy to hug."

Tom nodded. "Lily?"

"Yes, Tom?"

He finally allowed himself to feel a bit of ease of the tension he'd been living with for the past five days. "I adore you, honey. As much as I'd like to show you just how much for the rest of the afternoon and throughout the evening, I'm going to be late for an appointment. I'll call you and we'll rendezvous tonight."

"I'll be here."

"Luke?"

His screen was suddenly full of the two of them - the two people besides his immediate family whom he loved the most on this planet. "Yes?"

"Thanks again, man, for all you do - above and beyond this time. Well above and beyond."

"Well, I couldn't let my two favorite people be miserable without each other, could I?"

"Talk to you two later. All my love, Lilybug," he said, winking audaciously at her.

Lily blushed furiously at his use of that nickname in front of Luke. "I love you, too, my darling."

And then he was gone, taking the majority of the energy out f the room with him.

Luke stood there for a long moment then said thoughtfully, "Thank you for deciding to let me in in the first place."

She was wiping her hands over her eyes and face, but still crying, he could see, and it tugged at his heart strings. He had loved Tom for years now, and he felt much the same about Lily too, so much so that the sight of her upset had him feeling the need to hug and comfort her on his own behalf.

So he did just that. When Tom was there, he had truly felt as if he was the other man's surrogate, as if he wasn't quite himself while he held her. But this was him, pulling her into a big hug and rocking the both of them until he thought she had perhaps stopped weeping. When he drew back, her cheeks were still very damp and he held them in his palms. "You know that if I wasn't gay I'd give that man a run for his money over you, Lily."

She blushed bright red. "Luke! You can't say things like that to me!"

"Why not - it's the God's honest truth."

She stood on tip toes to hug him again, giving him a very tight squeeze then letting go. "You are a dear, dear man. Thank you so much for your help in getting us back in touch."

"You are very welcome." He led her to the door, taking his iPad back, and saying after he bent to kiss her cheek, "Tom is a very, very lucky man, and he knows it. Don't ever doubt that."

She received several texts throughout the rest of the afternoon, each one a voice message from Tom. He knew she found his voice sexy and he intended to use that to his advantage. Some were wonderfully sloppy messages of his love, but others were instructions about what he wanted to do when they got together that night. He'd already said that he wanted them to get together at eleven, when they usually did each night when he was away. But then he kept sending her voice messages through text and as the afternoon became evening, and they became progressively raunchier.

Precisely at eleven, a Skype call popped up, and it was, of course, him.

"Good evening, my sweet."

She felt somehow almost shy with him. "Hello, my Thomas."

He smiled and the sun shone at night, and everything was suddenly, completely right with her world. She heard him clear his throat and he took a big sip of whiskey in front of her, "Relaxes the voice," he said when he saw her questioning look. "My voice needs to be relaxed this evening, because it's the star of the show," she couldn't believe how soft and deep and dark it sounded, "because I do believe we have unfinished business between us, hmmm, baby?"

Her legs clench automatically - as did the rest of her - where they were stretched out in front of her on her bed,

"Now, darling," he began in a slightly scolding tone, He looked out at her from beneath a drawn brow, chin lowered nearly to his chest. "Where do I belong when we Skype like this?"

Lily propped him up - only somewhat reluctantly - between her spread legs. "But if you're going to bring me off with just your voice, why do you want to be there?"

"Because I want to see you, and I want you to know that I'm seeing you. All of you - every bit that belongs to me, most especially the most princessy bits of you," he gestured towards the juncture of her thighs, which he was right in front of and licked his lips, then frowned. "Are those panties I see?"

Dear God, that admonishing note in his voice . . . she wouldn't be surprised if he could see the dampening stain on the crotch of her panties as it was being created!

She nodded her head.

"I thought I told you not to wear any tonight, Lily Elizabeth?" his purring growl asked.

"I forgot!" She felt stupid, but in the excitement of the day she truly had.

"Well, I will deal with your misbehavior when I get home."

It wasn't really a question, but she felt compelled to say something. "Yes, Sir."

A/N: 18+

Not my usual fare. Much, much less smutty

Much less sex, much more angst than usual, fluffy romance, and romancy fluff

This is something I wrote a while ago when I needed feels and just fleshed out - it's . . . eh. Not my best effort.

His expression softened considerably at her quiet acceptance of her fate. "Lose them quickly, angel."

She did as he commanded, every bit of her shaking as she did so.

"Are your speakers in here? Did you put them where I told you to?"

Lily nodded. "There's one on either nightstand - you're in stereo."

"Very good."

She watched him lean forward, into the camera on his own iPad, as if he was going to stick his tongue out and make a bold swipe down a slit that she had no doubt - especially now that it was completely bared to his eager eyes - that he could see was already weeping for him. "I want you to lie back and close your eyes - " he paused until he could see that she'd done exactly that " - and concentrate on my voice and think about what I'm saying to you and how I'm saying it."

She was already practically cumming just from that. Then he growled low so that it vibrated through her head and out to every erogenous zone she owned, "So, let's pick up where we left off, my darling, and you have my permission to cum whenever you want to - and as many times as you can. I'm not going to stop talking until I think you're completely sated."