Thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed and followed this fic! It's been fun to write. Here we continue with Sybil and Tom, now from Tom's perspective. Hope you continue to enjoy S/T fluff!
Tom
"When we were at Matthew's flat earlier, why did you run away?"
"Are you always this inquisitive after sex?"
"Do you always avoid difficult questions?"
Tom playfully narrowed his eyes at Sybil. Her already bright smile widened.
"Is this how you get your soldiers to share all their painful secrets, by leveraging your feminine wiles?"
"Only the really tough cases," she said, laughing and making his chest shake. He couldn't help but grin back.
They were on the sofa, where Sybil had dropped her bag on the way to his bedroom, where she'd run back a while later for condoms, with Tom hot on her heels, and where they'd ripped the box open and made quick use of several, not bothering go back to his bed when there was a perfectly good surface right here. Now, a couple of hours later, here they remained, Tom lying on his back, Sybil on top of him, her chin on her hands, which were resting one on top of the other on his chest. With his head on the armrest, he was looking down on her slightly, the better to appreciate how sexy she looked right now and how very lucky he felt—if slightly emotionally overwhelmed.
The girl of your dreams just walked into your life—oh, and by the way, she knows you wrote something once and she kind of loves you for it. But she wants to know why you're such a train wreck. Overwhelmed is right. Slightly? Not so much. Overwhelmingly overwhelmed. That covers it.
"So?" She pressed.
"So what?" He knew he was avoiding. He couldn't help it.
"So are you going to answer my question?"
He sighed. How to even begin.
"You know, Tom," she continued softly, "I've fantasized about this moment for the better part of the last four years, never mind the last 24 hours. If you think a little emotional dysfunction is going to scare me off, let me disavow you of that notion right now, once and for all."
At this she moved her hands to either side of him and pushed herself up so she was the one looking down on him. "I'm not going anywhere," she whispered and, as if to press her point, added, "Trust me."
"I do trust you. It's me that's the problem."
"Well, then let me worry about you."
Who could possibly defend their emotions against that? Who would want to?
Tom lifted his hand to her cheek and contemplated her for a long moment. He did trust her, and he'd do whatever she asked. But he was scared about what he would find, what would happen, when he stepped through what, until last night, had been a very tightly locked vault inside his heart. Because it wasn't shut up so tight just to keep other people out. Mostly, it was to keep himself from having to go back in.
Tom pulled Sybil down for a long kiss—something he knew he'd never grow tired of—then hugged her to his chest.
"Well," he started with a sigh. "When you mentioned the book, two scenarios went through my mind. One, you knew who I was the whole time because of Matthew and had concocted a plan with him to get me to start writing again by pretending you didn't know me and pushing the exact right buttons. Intervention via hot girl who loves James Joyce."
He could feel her cheeks curve into a smile. "You're terribly full of yourself if you think two people would put on such a stage play just to get you to open up."
"In my defense, everything that came out of your mouth last night was the exact right thing to say in order to turn me on."
"You were afraid the night had been too perfect?"
"I got suspicious, yes."
"What was the second thing you thought?"
"That you really didn't know who I was and that everything you had said you really meant and that I was in love with a girl who was not going to be in love with me when she found out that her favorite author was a bit of a fraud and generally speaking a crushing disappointment."
"So you panicked?"
"More or less."
Sybil lifted her head from where it had been on Tom's chest. "Are you panicking now?"
He looked into her eyes and thought for a long moment. "Not as much as before."
She smiled playfully at him. "And how much of that has to do with the fact that we're naked?"
He smirked. "It helps, I'll admit it."
She rested her head against his chest again and laughed, a wonderfully healing thing to hear and to feel against his skin.
He put on a mock serious tone and continued, "It's been so long, I'd forgotten how a good shagging really does help calm the nerves."
She kept on giggling. And he decided that making her laugh was a thing he would do every day forever so could keep getting to hear her, feel her doing it. The laughter subsided after a few minutes, and he felt her get serious again.
"Tom?"
"Yes?"
"The bit about me not loving you because I'll be disappointed? Do you really think that will happen?"
"Can't say I'm not scared about it, if I'm honest." He shifted them around so they were both on their sides looking straight at one another. "Sybil, the person who wrote that book I'm not sure I can be again. I love that it means something to you, and if there's anyone in the world I'd be willing to let in to that part of my life it's you. But I do need you to at least like who I am now even if I'm not a writer anymore."
"For the record, I more than like who you are now," she replied. Then, taking his hand and putting it over his heart, pressing it there with her own, she went on. "But the guy who wrote the book is still here. I know because that's who was taking me around Dublin. I told you I fell in love with you reading your words, and I mean that. What happened last night was my heart recognized you. There will never be greater proof to me that you're not a fraud than that."
Tom felt his eyes clouding over with tears again, and he felt himself tentatively reach into that vault and pull something out.
"Once, when I was eight, I had this little girlfriend Kathleen Murphy, and one day I found her on the school playground kissing some other boy, and I ran home crying. My Da found me and said, 'Tommy, if you're going to cry over every girl who tells you she loves you, you're going to run of tears before you hit 10, so why don't you save them for the ones who mean it.'"
Sybil smiled widely, grateful for this small gift. He could see in her eyes that she knew it would be the first of many. "Well, I do mean it, but surely, today will be the end of any tears having to do with me, won't it?"
Tom smiled back. "My darling, I will be crying about you every day for the rest of my life."
He pulled her into a long kiss, after which they settled into a comfortable silence, her head nestled once more into the crook of his neck.
Then, she spoke up again. She really was chatty after. He would tease her about it more, if he didn't love the sound of her voice so much.
"So what happens now?"
"Well, the pattern we seem to have established is that we have sex, we talk for a while and then we do it again."
"I mean after today, after this week. You know . . . when I've gone back to London."
"Well what do you want to happen?"
"You like avoiding my questions, don't you?"
He laughed. "Well, I do want this to be something. I suppose I could move to London."
"I could move here."
"What about your work?"
"What about yours?"
"Mine is not nearly so important or interesting."
"Would you really want to leave Ireland?"
"I've never really thought about it to be honest. I guess if you'd asked me before yesterday I would have said no, but that doesn't mean that I couldn't ever." He paused for a moment. Would she really come here? "Have you ever wanted to leave England?"
"Well, I have once already. I went to university in America. That was actually where I read your book the first time."
"How did you even hear about it anyway? You might be the first person I've ever met who's read it who didn't know me before I wrote it."
"My second semester I took a seminar called, 'Revolution in Irish Literature.' Your book wasn't on the curriculum, but I'd loved everything I'd read so much I asked the professor to recommend other books to me, and yours was one of the ones she mentioned. I don't know how she heard of it, but she did seem to be aware that not many people had."
"I suppose I should be grateful to her."
He felt her squeeze him tightly. "I am."
"What made you go all the way over there for school?"
"I wanted to broaden my horizons, I suppose. It was where my Grandmother Martha went to school."
"The grandmother who liked reading?"
"Yes. She's still alive, though a bit frail. She'll be coming for New Year's."
"I suppose I should be grateful to her as well."
"Very much."
They were quiet again for a few minutes, Tom marveling at the way life had gently steered them toward one another. Very grateful, indeed.
"I would move here, you know. I mean, I want to." She lifted herself up again to look into his eyes, as if to assure him that she was serious.
"I'm not saying that I wouldn't like that very much, but we don't have to decide now," he replied.
"But I don't want you to worry about me, about the future."
"I'm not. All that matters is whether or not you love me. The rest is detail."
And he meant it. The hardest part—finding her and opening himself up to the possibility of being in love, truly in love—was done. The detail wouldn't always be easy, but that's really all it was. As overwhelming and scary as it had been to feel a torrent of emotion he had taken for granted could always be kept at bay, now that he was awash in it, he wasn't going to sweat the small stuff. Whatever had to be done to be with her, he would do it.
Satisfied, at least for the moment, on that score, she settled back into him and asked,
"What about the more immediate future?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like Christmas and New Year's—your birthday."
"I think I've established that I like to ignore my birthday, so if you could promise that you'll abide by that, I—"
"I will make no such promise!"
"Sybil—"
"If you're worried about me throwing a big party for you, I'll at least rid you of those concerns. My parents always have a big to-do on New Year's. It's a bit of family tradition."
"Well, then New Year's with your family and Christmas with mine?"
"That sounds fun, doesn't it?"
"Fun? The Branson clan can be a bit of a handful, but they do tend to be more entertaining than usual during the holidays. But won't yours mind you'll be here?"
"They can manage without me. Besides I had told my mother I was skipping the ball this year. She'll be so happy I'm attending after all, she'll hold her tongue on everything else."
"The ball?"
"Um, yeah. It's white tie, actually."
"White tie? Is it at Buckingham Palace?"
He could feel her start to squirm a bit. "No, just Downton," she said, then giggled, though he sensed a measure of nervousness behind it.
"Downton?"
"Downton Abbey. It's my family's home in Yorkshire."
"You mean like an estate?"
"Sort of." Yes, she was definitely squirming.
"And how long has it been in your family."
"I'm not really sure. I think 150 years or so."
He moved so that they were facing each other again, unable to keep the shock from his brow as he asked his next question.
"Sybil, are you an aristocrat?"
She shrugged, avoiding his eyes. "I would never call myself that."
"What's your father's title?"
"The Earl of Grantham," she said quietly, and he could see actual concern in her face now. "Do you hate that?"
He laughed a full-throated laugh, "I can't believe I've fallen for a member of the British aristocracy." He kept laughing as she punched him in the shoulder. Once he caught his breath again, he raised his finger, as if to ask for quiet. "That sound you hear right now is my father rolling over in his grave."
"Tom," she said, "I do hope you know I really don't care about all of that."
"I don't either, Sybil. I'm only teasing." He squeezed her gently and kissed her on her temple.
Quietly, almost meekly, she asked, "Do you really think your father wouldn't have liked me?"
He looked into the blue depths of her eyes. "Sybil, I am very certain that he would have loved you."
She smiled, and it was as beautiful and as bright as any she had given him. "Well, I am very grateful to him."
"Me too."
And with that they kissed, igniting once again the spark that landed them on the sofa in the first place. He turned them so he was on top of her, and he could feel her hunger grow beneath him. Their kisses, their touches increased in intensity and before long they were fumbling around the floor for the condoms that had scattered everywhere hours ago in their desperate effort to use the first.
"Here's one!" Sybil exclaimed, now sitting astride him, having just lifted her hand from the floor where she'd found it. "But can we move to the bed now? This thing makes so much noise, I'm rather afraid we're going to break it."
"Well, now I'm keen to take that as a challenge."
She rolled her eyes at him, but there was her laugh again. I'll always want to hear it, he thought, I'll always need to hear it.
XXX
Another hour or so later, closer to the end of their precious box's contents, they were on his bed again, sofa intact—for now.
Sybil lay on her stomach, her head turned toward Tom, watching him as he, on his side, head propped on his hand, drew patterns with his fingers on her back.
"Can I ask you something?" he asked.
"Sure," she replied.
He could not repress the smirk on his face. "How many times have you read it?"
"How many times have I read what?" There was nothing innocent, he knew, about her innocent-seeming response.
"Oh, you know what."
"You really are terribly full of yourself, aren't you?"
"I'm only asking a question," he replied, equally faux-innocently. He was making her squirm, and he was loving it.
She scrunched up her face in embarrassment. "Do I really have to say?"
"Can I guess?"
"Eight." She buried her face in her pillow, but it wasn't enough to muffle her laughter.
"Are you embarrassed?"
She lifted her head again, so he could see her full blush. My, she is beautiful.
"Do you know," he said, pulling her over him, "I believe that's the number of condoms in that box."
"What a poetic coincidence! Shall we finish it off, then?"
And they did.