get lonely with me || tom holland

four: the one with the difficult scene

Iris is pretty sure she's never been this nervous. She was nervous for her chemistry test — before and after she found out she'd be running her lines with Tom. She was nervous for her first day of filming — because she's working with Tom and she could feel his eyes on her when they're on set. But if you ask her, she'd tell you that it's because she's working with Kim Davison.

Not Tom Holland.

Who she'll have to kiss today.

The scene they'll be acting out is the one where Sabrina and Leon realise that they actually have a lot in common — apart from them not liking each other — and they realise that they're drawn to each other, both literally and metaphorically. It's one of Iris' favourite scenes from the book because it's such a soft, tender moment between those two. A complete opposite of how they usually act around each other. There's tension there, but there's also understanding.

It's The Moment for Sabrina and Leon. And Iris has a feeling everyone wants it to be perfect.

This time, she'll openly admit that she's nervous because of Tom.

She's kissed actors on screen before — several times. But she wasn't as nervous as she is right now as she sits in her trailer, trying but failing to keep her knees from bumping up and down, up and down, up and do—

"Everything alright, sweetheart?" Her makeup artist, Julie, asks her, snapping her out of her thoughts.

"Sorry," Iris apologises as she stops bumping her knees, cheeks heating up with embarrassment.

Julie smiles at her as she goes back to applying concealer under her eyes. "What's wrong? Are you nervous?"

"Mhmm," Iris answers. She doesn't trust her voice all that much today, afraid that it'll betray her.

Her hand itches to reach for her phone and ring her mum, but she's not sure if her mum will be much help when it comes to this. She'll probably just ask her why she's so nervous about it when she's kissed people on screen before and Iris really doesn't want to go there. Her mum is convinced that she still has a crush on Tom and if she rings her and tells her how nervous she is for the kissing scene, it'll just confirm her mum's suspicion.

"About today's scene?" Julie asks.

"Yeah, it's just... It needs to be perfect."

"And it'll be," Julie reassures her. "You and Tom will do the scene justice."

The mention of Tom's name makes Iris' heart beat faster. She can't help but wonder if he's nervous too. She bets he's not. Just like her, he's kissed actresses on screen before. But unlike her, he's probably not nervous about today's scene. Sure he seemed nervous on the first day of filming but that's normal. Everyone gets first day jitters, she learns, even the Tom Holland.

The production team had an intimate coordinator come in a couple of days ago to help them with the scene and to choreograph Sabrina and Leon's first onscreen kiss. It was nerve wracking but the coordinator was so friendly, so bubbly that she made Iris forget about how nervous she was about kissing Tom. They started by asking the people involved about the context — why is the kissing scene there, if they think it's necessary for the story as well as for the characters — and once they'd gotten that out of the way, they started working on the choreography.

Iris couldn't tell back then if Tom was nervous. He's an actor, after all, so he's good at masking his emotions. And he's a professional. Iris likes to think that she is too but when the coordinator, Heather, told Iris to press one hand on Tom's — Leon's — chest and the other on his cheek, her hands shook. She quickly apologised but Heather brushed it off and Tom, well, she's pretty sure he was laughing at her. But then he also messed up his lines and it was Iris' turn to laugh at him.