summary: you’re beginning your first study abroad in England, fully ready to focus on your coursework until you meet the resident advisor, Tom.
a/n: my first multi-chap fic, updates will be on mondays! It begins as fluff and won’t really have much angst or smut so it’ll be a light read.
word count: 535
England was gorgeous as far as you could tell. It wasn’t all castles and cities like the TV shows made it out to be. From the train ride to the university, you passed by oceans of green forests with waves of beautiful flowers. Outside your window, the wonders of nature left you only more excited to live here.
A spring-entry student, you were lucky enough to get to study abroad in England for the next six months. All the university’s domestic students had already moved in during the fall so you were the only one trudging luggage around with what little clothing and belongings you were able to bring in two carry-ons.
For being a junior, you couldn’t have looked for like a freshman when you entered the residence hall. A map in your hand like a tourist, a confused look on your face, anyone who wasn’t blind could tell you were struggling to get around.
The only train you’d been able to afford had arrived rights as the sun was coming up. 5:30 in the morning and you were the only one awake in the hall. Everyone else’s doors were closed and none of them labeled, making the job of finding the R.A. who was supposed to help you move in even more difficult.
You were about to resort to peering into people’s rooms when a door shutting behind you drew your attention. A tall dark-haired guy with fair skin was throwing on a red lanyard and quietly attempting to lock his room. He let out a startled noise as he turned to meet your eyes.
“Sorry,” you rush, holding a hand up like he was a spooked horse, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He removes his hand from his heart only to run it through his hair, “You’re okay, really,” he chuckled, “I’m just not used to students up this early.”
“Are you the R.A.? I mean I just assumed and uh… yeah-” you rub the back of your neck as you quiet your nervous ramblings.
No way was this guy a grad student, even a senior was a stretch.
An American Eagle model? Possibly, he might’ve got lost from the store.
But no way could this be the same one signing each of his emails as:
Sincerely,
R.A. Holland
Picking up the end of his lanyard with two fingers, he held the ID photo next to his beaming face, “In the flesh,” he let go of the lanyard as it fell back down to hit his chest and he extended a hand, “nice to meet you.”
“I’m Y/N,” you say as you shake his hand, “nice to meet you too, Holland.
He let out a soft laugh, “You can call me Tom,” his hand not letting go of yours, “I think I’ll leave Holland to the Netherlands.”
The two of you smile at one another, hands still clasped until you both look down to fully realize it.
“Let me show you your room, Y/N,” he says sliding past you.
You watch as he makes his way down the hall, still feeling the sparks left from his fingertips.
Realizing you’re behind, you turn to shout, “Coming!”
Summary: Caught out in a storm, you’re only trying to find your hotel until Prince Charming shows up to help.
Warnings: N/A
Word Count: 861
A/N: This was written for mcuspidey’s writing challenge I was on holiday in Canada for two weeks and wrote nearly 7 fics and one continuing series so be prepared on Mondays and Thursdays!. I am now deceased from the sheer amount of words. Thanks @badhollandfluff for listening to me babble.
Masterlist
Google Maps: your new worst enemy.
You were only trying to get back to your hotel room when all hell broke loose. The sky ripped open and every flood you’d ever seen on TV felt like nothing compared to this downpour.
Sure, Arkansas may have lost a school bus or two with their floods, but the feeling of having every piece of clothing drenched enough to weigh you down felt far worse.
Your hair, plastered to your forehead, wasn’t helping either.
--
The rain was attacking from every direction, but even the overhangs of the buildings couldn’t save you from the impending drops. Your phone was practically dripping, drops so obtrusive your finger barely registered on the screen anymore. All your attempts to navigate your map were useless. Normally it would give you hope to see you only had five minutes left until you got to your hotel, Maps had been promising that for the past twenty minutes.
The thought of even using your phone was out of the question at this point. All you could do was put it back in your pocket and play a guessing game with the assorted street names and construction detours.
All you wanted was a trip by yourself. No parents, no friends, nobody but your carry-on.
London had been your dream since you were a child. Harry Potter was your obsession in grade school and as you grew up everything BBC wormed its way into your heart. Since then the British flag became a focal point in your room’s decoration.
However, the one thing you managed to neglect in the countless hours of research and planning was the forecast. Somehow the stereotype of London’s odious fog and rain managed to go right over your head in late-nights of stalking travel bloggers and looking up tricks for packing lightly. Meaning that the most you had in terms of rain gear was the long-sleeve shirt you’re wearing, doing nothing to stop the rainfall in the slightest.
So here you stood, entirely drowned and leaning like a lost puppy against the closest building with a canopy.
“Pardon me, miss?”
A guy with hair soaked just as much as yours was speaking loudly over the downpour. His sopping wet curls dripped over his face as his raincoat protected the rest of him.
Putting a hand up to shield your eyes you respond, “Yes?”
“Do you want my jacket? You look awfully soaked.”
He began to take it off before you could even answer. He moved closer to you without looking - or likely thinking - as he leaned in to be protected by the same canopy you stood under. Your eyes darted away embarrassed when you noticed his shirt lifted to glimpse the hint of defined abs.
“No, I’m fine!” you insist.
“Really, it’s no trouble,” he says, offering you the coat in question.
You quickly nab the raincoat and zip it up before he can rescind the offer, “Thank you so so much, I’m not from around here, not used to this weather.”
“Clearly,” he laughs in his English accent.
“Do you know the way to the Hilton?” you smile to yourself in the hopes he can do you another favor, “I tried but my stupid phone won’t work.”
His eyes seemed to grow kinder than before as he began to instruct you on the intricate twists and turns you’d need to take to get there. All the while his shirt and pants getting darker as the rain kept pouring. His hair turned to a mop as he proposed to walk you to the hotel.
He grabbed your hand to run through the red lights, tried to use a leftover newspaper to shield his head to no avail and by the end the two of you couldn’t stop laughing from the mix of adrenaline and rain happening all at once.
It was only as you two made it to the luxuriously dry lobby of the Hilton that the weather had started to let up any.
“Oh, of course,” you huff.”
Tom, as you’d learned from the journey, looked out and smiled, “Perfect timing as always.”
You both looked expectantly at one another.
A thirty-minute detour ar most with his help, but still the excursion felt like months in the making.
Feeling the plastic of the sleeve rub against your skin you remembered you were wearing his coat. He stood in front of you, teeth nearly chattering at how much he really needed any form of extra clothes.
“Trust me, you’ll need it,” he says as you begin to strip off the coat.
“But it’s yours,” you urge, “you live here, you’ll need it more than I do.”
“That depends on how long you’re staying,” he replies, a small spark in his gaze.
“Long enough for you to show me around a little,” you say, consciously moving toward him.
He leaned in, “I would love to.”
Akin to Prince Charming, he raised forward your hand and placed a peck against it, a fairytale in a moment, a story out of a day. Tom Holland has just come into your life just as Google Maps has become one of your new lovers.
Description: Moving into your dorm alone was stressful enough, but when someone knocks your stuff over, you realize, it may have been for the better.
Warnings: It’s 99.9% fluff so I don’t think there are any!
Word Count: 1.4k
A/N: Wrote another college AU for @spxderbarnes ‘s writing challenge! It was so weird to write one continuous scene, and I’ve never written reader insert before but after reading the wonderful @badhollandfluff and @tom-holland-and-textposts I got inspired!!!
Switching between looking at your feet and right ahead of you, nothing sucks more than starting your move-in day at college with a broken elevator. The box is big enough that you can barely see anything below your waist, let alone carry it without the use of some muscle. Using your shoe like a blind man uses a cane, you take your foot and tap what feels like the top of the stairs.
No more than a minute into trying to walk down the hall do you feel something collide into you, the next thing you know, your box of personal possessions is all over the floor. Before you have time to think about what just happened, your mouth spits out, “Look where you’re going next time.”
You hear a rushed, “Oh my God, I am so sorry, lemme help pick that up.”
As you go to reject the offer, you glance up and notice a boy with caramel-colored eyes running his hands through his hair nervously.
“Oh… it’s okay, really, it doesn’t look like you broke anything,” you say, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, “But I could appreciate the help moving in if you don’t mind?”
He smiles back, “Totally! I just need to find my aunt first, the more the merrier.”
He dashes past you and you can hear the faint patter of him running down the steps. Looking back at the ground, you nearly forgot all the items that fell out of your box. Still a little awe-struck from whoever that stranger was, you lean down and begin putting everything back in the box, nearly forgetting that he was the one that ran into you in the first place.
Grabbing the lanyard from off your neck, you open your dorm room before grabbing your belongings and slamming the box on the desk nearest to your mattress.
The adrenaline from meeting the brown-eyed beauty of the hallway wears off and you lay back on your mattress, apathetic to how much your sweat must be staining your shirt and how hard you have to breathe.
“Slacking off already?” The voice echoes from your door.
You raise your head to see an older hippie-esque woman leaning in your doorframe, only she looked younger than most of the parents helping to move their children in.
“Just taking a break, but can I help you?” You raise yourself to your elbows.
“Yes, actually, I was looking for my nephew. He’s about my height, hair too long, brown eyes, probably talking about something tech-y, have you seen him?”
As you go to speak, another familiar voice pops up from the hall, “There you are!”
The woman looks out, responding, “No, there you are, where were you?”
“Trying to find you, obviously.”
The boy from earlier came into view and he too lingered in the doorframe, “Looks like I found her, you still need help moving in?”
Your mouth feels stuck as you stare at him again, but your head nods enthusiastically.
“Great!”
“Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone there mister,” his aunt says, “would you at least introduce me to the person you’re about to help out first?”
“Oh, right.” He says, caught off guard. “Aunt May this is… sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Y/N.” You say.
“Aunt May this is Y/N, Y/N this is my Aunt May, and I’m Peter,” he says, “Peter Parker.”
You stand up and make your way to politely shake hands with them, “Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Aunt May and Peter Parker.” Your handshake with Peter lasts longer than you expected. The two of you make eye contact and awkwardly grin the longer you both realize that neither of you is letting go.
Finally, the two of you hear Aunt May clear her throat, “Let’s go help you unpack, then.”
The three of you make your way down the ever too long staircase and to the large bin holding the rest of your things. Aunt May reaches in the first and grabs a plastic shower caddy, and on your way to grab something, you and Peter knock heads, both going to pick up your book collection. Reaching up to grab your head, you notice him do the same. Just one collision after the next.
He smiles shyly and grabs another box from the bin before walking back towards the stairs. Quickly, you grab the books and dash to try and catch up with him.
The stairs are narrow enough that one person can barely make their way up without feeling claustrophobic, so you hang back, and walk behind him. You didn’t notice before, but he had a small sharpie tucked behind his ear. A small smile makes its way to your lips because it’s somehow making this boy cuter and dorkier than ever before. “Are you gonna be a student or are you helping someone move in, Peter?” You find yourself asking.
“Both actually,” he cuts a glance over to you before looking back at the impending stairs, “my friend Ned’s going here too.”
“Oh, that’s cool.” You close your eyes temporarily.
Cool? That’s cool? You think, everything you say feels so wrong.
“Yeah, we’ve been friends for a long time,” he cuts into your thoughts.
The way he was so quick to respond, so casual when you sounded so awkward, it felt like he always knew the right thing to say.
As all three of you reached the top of the stairs, the cycle of being sweaty and tired started once again. Peter practically drops your box on the ground of your dorm, his aunt is looking at the sparse decorations around the room, and you stand there a moment before slowly making your way inside.
There’s a slight quiet in the room, the pause is only broken up by Aunt May walking by you toward the door muttering, “I’ll see if there’s anything left to bring up.” Leaving you and Peter alone.
The two of you just stand there like Sims waiting for their instructions. He’s scratching the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact and looks to the books in your arms, “Oh, I love the Harry Potter series,” he says.
You peer down, completely forgetting that you were carrying seven books, and place them on your desk.
“My parents used to read them to me when I was younger,” you offer.
His smile dissipates and for the thought of why his aunt was the only one there to help move him in popped into your mind. You look away, once again feeling like you kept making things worse. The silence lingers until you hear a heavier pair of footsteps approach your door. Unexpectedly, it was another boy. He was a tad shorter than Peter and weighed a bit more, but his wide smile felt like it could light up a whole stadium.
“Found you, man,” he says to Peter. The stranger looks to you, gregarious as ever and holds out a hand, “Hey, I’m Ned, Peter’s friend,” he grins out.
The handshake moves your whole body with how powerful it was, but the smile on his face was infectious as it travels to you, “I’m Y/N, Peter’s…” you look to him unsure of how to answer.
“New friend,” Peter supplies. He looks to his watch and stands up rapidly, looking to Ned. “Wait, wasn’t I supposed to introduce you to Professor Warren?”
“That’s why I was trying to find you, but it’s not a big deal.”
Grabbing the Sharpie from behind he ear, he points to the left and says, “You can go to her lecture hall, I’ll be right there.”
He looks a little panicked as Ned leaves and turns to you, “Sorry to leave you on such short notice.”
He crouched down in front of one of your boxes and quickly scribbles something with the Sharpie in his hand. Standing up, he walks to your door and faces you, “It was really nice to meet you, Y/N, I hope I can see you around.”
“You too, Peter.”
You both grin before he gives a faint wave and pats your doorframe before exiting.
The endless aura of happiness that’s he’s left in the room makes you want to giggle or dance or laugh until your sides hurt. You can’t stop smiling, and as you turn to the box he wrote on, you can make out the words PETER PARKER and a phone number written beneath it.
As you bend down to run your fingers across the digits, you look back to the door, thinking only about the boy you can’t wait to call.
Description: To shake things up, you decide to build a gingerbread house with Peter, only to have things become an utter mess.
Warnings: None
Word Count: 627
A/N: The 3rd fic in my Holiday Fic challenge, this came really easy for some reason? I’ve been watching a lot of GBBO lately, lol. If you guys wanna follow along with these fics they’re tagged as #holiday fic challenge on my blog and I will compose a masterlist at the end of the month for them!
“You know that eating the doors isn’t helping to make the house, right?”
Here you were, sitting criss-cross on the carpet catching your boyfriend, Peter Parker, red-handed as he shoves the last of the cookie into his mouth. He looks at you shyly, mouth puffed out like a chipmunk and crumbs sticking to the side of his lips.
You can’t help but smile and the supposed genius who was eating the pieces needed for the rest of the gingerbread house.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping away the evidence left behind on his mouth.
Your head ducks down as you try to contain a laugh. The slight anger from him going through the cookies and decorations is overpowered by just how adorable he is.
Mostly, your dates consisted of a nice dinner, a movie, the usual chick flick-esque moments that most couples go on. But it was December, nearing Christmas, and the looming white clouds mixed with the decorations all around made you want to try something new.
Peter really did have a sweet tooth. His metabolism must have been at a mile a minute because he was always eating, and once those pumpkin spice and candy cane flavors rolled in? He was unstoppable.
You watch as his hands go to pick up an icing bag as you start to go for the candy decorations. You nibble on a sprinkle or two or twenty and you begin to create a pattern on the roof of the gingerbread house. You wait for Peter to lay down an icing design before placing each candy in soldier-like rows.
Both of you continue on like this, working side by side, he ices, you decorate.
“We’re getting good at this,” he comments.
“Yeah,” you look at him, “yeah we are.”
The sweet moment came and went as Peter reached a hand into the icing bag only to smear it on your nose. You’re staring at him as his grin grows into a full on laughing fit.
“Oh, you did not just do that.”
“Oh, Y/N, but I did.”
Before you know it, you’re taking the container of glittering sprinkles and start pouring them on him. He goes to shield his hair and face, but you simply start pouring them down his hoodie.
Now you’re both laughing as he faintly pleads, “Stop! I just took a shower!”
“They’re sprinkles, Peter. They won’t kill you.”
He reaches back for the icing and is met with a shrill, “No!”
It’s an all-out food war at this point. Candy is embedded in the carpet, there’s enough green icing on you, the Grinch is starting to look like a distant relative, and whenever Peter moves, his hoodie sounds like maraca with the sheer volume of sprinkles in it.
Peter leans over you as you lay back on the floor, defeated. He bends closer to you, mouth starting to match up with yours, and soon you two are kissing. The embrace is definitely a cool down from the high of the food fight you both share. You kiss him back and can taste the gingerbread, the minty flavored icing, and everything in between.
You open your eyes as he draws back, and you tilt your head up so your noses can touch. Slowly, he falls down next to you, and you both stay like that for a while, feeling the decorations that fell on the ground poking your back, you couldn’t care less.
The thought of any form of clean up escapes you and you’re left in Peter’s arms, eyes open to see the dilapidated gingerbread house lying on the table.
We are getting good at this, you think as you smell the sweetness of winter just before resting your head in the crook of his arm to unwind.
Description: Sick at home, you feel bad that you had to cancel your date night with Peter, but after a quick phone call with him, things change for the better.
Warnings: Reader has a cold.
Word Count: 696
A/N: The 2nd fic in my Holiday Fic challenge (I’ll be writing 25 fics in December) is once again dedicated to the lovely @badhollandfluff because she is also sick :^( If you guys wanna follow along with these fics they’re tagged as #holiday fic challenge on my blog and I will compose a masterlist at the end of the month for them!
As you lay on your bed, surrounded by old tissues and cough drop wrappers, you can't remember when you felt better. You're a mouthbreather at this point, didn't know the last time your nose wasn't clogged or the last time your eyes didn't burn.
God, you thought, I still have work to do.
Homework waits for no one, and even though your binder was only a few feet away, that seemed like a marathon on its own with the shape you're in.
The buzzing of your phone on the bedside table has you grabbing blindly for it. As the screen comes into sight, you can make out the Peter across it. Pressing the Answer button, you put the phone to your ear and let out a stuffed, "Hello?"
"You're still sick?"
"I'm pretty sure NyQuil doesn't work ASAP."
"Still kinda sucks..."
"Yeah," you reply quietly.
You and Peter have only been going out for a little while now. You felt bad you had to cancel your date night for today, but considering even opening the curtains in your bed practically blinded you, you figured it wouldn't be the best idea. Still, he was sweet enough at this point, but you weren't sure yet if you two had made it to the 'taking care of one another' step in the relationship.
He startles you out of your thoughts, "Have you eaten anything yet, Y/N?"
"Some lifesavers I found in my pocket," you reply.
"Really?" He asked, shocked.
"No, Peter, I may be sick, but I'm not desperate."
"So nothing to eat then?"
You begin to play with the loose thread on your sweater, "No, not really."
He sighs on the other end of the line, "Give me ten minutes."
And then, nothing. You wonder, Did he seriously just hang up on me?
It was all so fast, you had no idea what to expect. Was he going to call you back because he was busy? Why ten minutes?
You chuck your phone to the other side of the bed and let out a deep breath. As great as a guy Peter has been to date, he sure was vague when he talked. He even knew the Tony Stark and yet he wouldn't tell you how they met.
Odd one, he is.
Closing your eyes, the phone call left you drained of what energy you had and you pull your sheets above your shoulders, ready to nap. The brutal winter left the sound of the cold winds outside lull you to sleep.
-
You wake up to a loud pounding, and you can't tell if it's the door or a new headache you seem to be sporting. Once you sit up in bed, you still hear the pounding and the slight sound of your name at the door.
Working your way to sitting up, you groggily wipe your eyes before letting out a faint, "I'm coming, I'm coming."
As you open the door, there he is. The lanky boy you were just on the phone with is standing at your door. Peter's panting slightly and looks both relieved and weary when he sees you.
"I brought these," he says. He's holding a grocery bag in one hand and some DVDs in the other.
"Peter, wha-"
"I know you've been sick, but I wanted to know if you still wanted to do that date night?"
Looking between his face and his hands, you're in awe, did this guy just really sprint over to your house to make you feel better? "But I'm still sick."
"I mean obviously. We just talked about it," he replies, "I got us separate meals, and I don't think an hour or two would kill either of us."
Before you can even argue, you're seeing how much he really does want to be over, how much he cares, and maybe even how much he was worried. He's still standing outside, jumping from foot to foot in an attempt to stay warm.
You nod your head, "I'd love to still have the date night."
His smile lights up his face as he steps past you to enter. It was then you knew, you had a keeper.
Description: In over his head, Peter reflects on how much he has to give up to be the good guy
Warnings: Self-loathing?
Word Count: 953
A/N: Based on the prompt “In Between” by Beartooth for @dtftomholland‘s writing challenge! Also sorry I kinda ditched the Holiday fic challenge? I’ve been busy with school (but I do want to be self-sadistic and try and finish the challenge anyway lol).
At this point, the lines blurred so much between his secret superhero life and the personal one he’s clung on to so dearly that Peter Parker wasn’t able to tell which traits were his or Spider-Man’s.
He was working himself to the bone. Taking up night patrol and afternoon patrol on top of the low-level crimes he tried to stop at any given moment. It left him dead tired every part of the day, but he shouldn’t care about it. All apart of the job, right?
The circles under his eyes were starting to become more noticeable as the days melted into weeks. The purple of fatigue was painted beneath his eyelashes, blending into the surrounding skin that got filthier by the day.
If walking around New York in flip-flops left your feet black and disgusting, Peter could only imagine the grime that was building all over his body.
But the superhero life chose him, not the other way around.
Just like how he didn’t choose to be poor, awkward around the cutest girls, or being the worst driver in existence.
The only thing he had control over was that he chose to use his powers for the greater good. He could escape all the bad shit eating away at him by distracting himself with a local cat burglar or helping an old lady cross the street.
The only way he felt he could get away was by putting on his suit, firing that first web, and not looking back until the sun rose over the skyline.
Aunt May knew at this point. Ever since she saw him in the suit, she radiates vibes of worry whenever she was around him. Peter didn’t care, though. He was too tired to care. He found himself so out of it after all his shifts that more often than not, May had to wake him up for school while he was fully clad in the Spider-Suit.
All the lack of sleep wasn’t adding up to anything productive.
Peter was starting to be a foot or two off when he shot his webs. A chase through the city left him practically flat on his back, yet he kept throwing himself into every little crime that passed under his nose.
He found himself losing more than just sleep throughout the whole process. Pieces of him seemed to chip away with every new workload he tried to tackle. His grades were falling, his messages went unread, and even the polite personality of his became a more muted one. He spent more time saving people than using up his words. Even May seemed to look at him like a stranger was in their apartment than a nephew.
The homework that was slowly piling up in the corner taunted him. He wished he could just graduate already, be an Avenger full time. But according to Mr. Stark that was a ‘horrible’ and ‘likely to end in something very bad and illegal’ plan.
But since when was anything superhero related technically legal?
Because Peter was, like, 99% certain the damage Iron Man, Thor, and just about everyone else caused counted as a lot of property damage.
So he looked the other way and went out on endless shifts to pass the time instead.
Except there were times when he would come back home and just didn’t see the point in going back out again. Peter would come home bloody and bruised just to take one bad guy off the streets.
While he would wait for his speed-healing to kick in, ice packs covering every square inch of his body, little spirals of thought would take over his mind.
He’d think about why he was all but torturing himself to stop the crime wave whose tide never seemed to get any lower. If he stopped, would anybody notice? Or was he nothing more than a random act of kindness? Something people appreciate but never said they needed.
Peter saw how the Avengers have changed since he was a kid. They were so tired and run down, losing nearly everything that matters to them just for one more big threat to come and the whole cycle repeating. Was that going to be him in ten or twenty years? If he set down the suit now, would it be too late to live a normal life?
Those thoughts poisoned his mind. He tried to sweep them under the rug, but they still pecked away at him when he thought too much. After all he had done and sacrificed, Peter didn’t want to think about the possibility that it was all for nothing.
Being Spider-Man was what he was now, it was all he was starting to know at this point. So with each ‘thank you’, every little kid that came up to him in pure awe, and every grateful nod he’d get from people he’d swing by, Peter kept it in the back of his mind. Sacrificing himself for every small problem wasn’t eroded away by the gratitude, but he was beginning to learn what being a superhero was about.
He hated all he could lose by going out each day, but what superhero doesn’t sacrifice a part of themselves for the greater good?
At the end of the day, he was Spider-Man, he chose to use his powers to help people.
Peter reminded himself of that when he’d bandage his injuries, as he struggled to catch his breath in a fight, and on the dark days when his thoughts got the best of him. So every night when he got home at some godawful hour, the smallest thought graces him before he falls into the pits of sleep.
summary: It was the suit and cufflinks that reeled her in. He was just some guy she met at a pub, but after a night of fun, Laine gets dragged into Tom Holland's life hook, line, and sinker.
