Tugging at the sleeves of your oversized sweater, you watch silently as Tom gets dressed. It was almost routine by now; either one of you would text, you would meet up at your place, and Tom would leave back to his shared flat with Harrison. The whole ordeal had started quite innocently, really. The two of you had met through Harrison and had quickly become friends. Luckily, you weren't close enough for your unspoken agreement to make it awkward. That's what you had told yourself, anyway. The more time you spent with him, the more the difficulty of suppressing your feelings increased.
Harrison doesn't approve of your agreement and despite that being abundantly clear, neither of you even attempt to do anything about it. What happened happened, and it was too late to change. Even though sometimes, you desperately wished you could. Rumors about Tom and Zendaya would occasionally be plastered on every social media platform, and although you had absolutely no right, you always felt the underlying jealousy creep forward. Every time he would get dressed after getting his relief, and you had to ignore the urge to tell him to stay.
"Alright, darlin', I'm heading out," Tom announces, and you have to blink to retain moisture in your eyes from staring at the floor for too long.
"Will I ever be enough for you?" you question and as soon as you do, you wish you could take the words back. Tom cocks an eyebrow, clearly not understanding what you meant. So you elaborate, "Will I ever be enough for you? Enough for you to stay? Enough for you to stop pretending I don't exist around your friends? Will I ever be enough to be anything other than a meaningless fuck?"
"Darling-"
"No," you interject, attempting to ignore the growing blurriness in your eyes. "Don't- You don't get to call me that. We're friends with benefits, Tom. If we could even call ourselves friends. I need you to stop calling me that because it makes it harder for me to ignore my feelings for you."
The courage to ask had come from somewhere else, but at the moment you were too upset to feel the relief. You're overwhelmed; your heart accelerating enough for you to think that if it hadn't been for your rib cage, it would burst out of your chest. Tom's silence is deafening and despite the weight finally lifted from your shoulders, you wish you hadn't mentioned anything at all. Your mind was running a hundred miles a minute, coming up with every worst-case scenario possible. Harrison always did say you had a big imagination and right now it appeared to be more of a curse than a blessing.
Your eyes move from the one stain on your rug that you had been focusing on and you look at the young man standing in front of you. He's fully dressed now, black denim jacket in had. He's ready to leave - you can tell. His dark orbs are wide and you know your confession had come as a shock to him. You watch silently as his mouth opens and closes multiple times, but no words come out. You wait desperately, wanting- no, needing him to say something. You rub your lips together out of nervousness and a bitter, salty taste enters your mouth. The tears continue to roll down your cheeks, but it doesn't even seem to phase Tom.
The pain in your chest not only continues, but it also intensifies. You hadn't known Tom for too long and it felt ridiculous to hurt this much over a man that had never been yours in the first place. When he first called you 'darling' you were taken aback, but as the use of the endearing nickname continued, your love for it did as well. Eventually, it was almost impossible to ignore the butterflies every time your name was replaced by his new term. When the two of you were alone or with Harrison, he would always be such a gentleman; opening doors for you, bringing you drinks, offering you his jacket if you were cold. Small, usually meaningless gestures, that you apparently had been reading into.
"Y/N," he begins and your name sound almost foreign from his lips. "I don't have- We agreed on no feelings. No relationship. Look, I-I gotta go. I have to be on set in an hour. I, uh, I'll see you around, yeah?"
