Smile, Darling: Tom Holland One-shot

smile, darling: tom holland one-shot

a/n | was quite proud of myself for thinkin’ up this 1. also i’d like to get paid for taking pictures of tom please. screw the college degree. lengthy one shots are starting to become my staple huh

- anyway i’ve been feeling really burnt out lately so i’ll probably be taking a little writing break after this ♡

summary | tom holland is completely over paparazzi, tracking and exploiting his every move. that is, until he runs into one that he just can’t help but smile for.

cw | tom x paparazzi!fem!reader. language, alcohol use, a classic meet-cute, angst, relatively vanilla shower sex, fluff for days. 5.6k words.

pov: tom

The blinding flashes of old-fashioned bulb cameras were never a phenomenon easy to get used to.

He’d cast empty smiles, try to drown out the noise of the crowd of reporters as he whisked by. There was never a way for him to get out of the hubbub fast enough.

When he did take the chance to look around the sea of paparazzi, it was blurry nameless faces; people he didn’t know who were only interested in selling him to the media. As if the internet didn’t already have enough pictures of him being a celebrity, being the center of any and all attention, even occasionally trying to be a normal person. But he never got very far with that—it’s simply unnatural for someone to be the focus of a picture when they’re just trying to buy a cup of tea.

Wearing sweats out for a jog became a fashion statement, hugging an old female friend became a scandal. These people were relentless, squeezing every little bit of life out of him to meet a quota. Turning him into an object, a subject, pretty much everything under the sun except human.

One face he picked out from the usual crowd was different, though—younger, prettier, less chaotic. She was happy to be in the back of the swarm of cameras, oftentimes missing the perfect shot because she was just watching—her camera pointed toward the ground. She tried to see life before her through her own eyes and not the pupil of the lens. He noticed her at the events she attended, but never gave her a thought past the millisecond they made eye contact. That is, until they locked eyes for more than a split second; when she singlehandedly saved his sorry ass.

pov: you

You didn’t like your job.

You had gotten into photography to capture the beautiful stillness of nature, to be able to stare at the subject of your photo for hours on end and still get the perfect shot after basking in the reality of it for long enough. But dreams mostly stay dreams, and when you were offered a job as a photographer for a tabloid, you swallowed your pride and accepted. Dreams are wonderful and all, but they can’t pay your rent.

So you resigned yourself to capture the opposite of what you wanted—chaos, crowds of thousands, movie stars moving a mile a minute. You got enough content to keep your position, but you often found yourself trying to take in the essence of the scene before getting the perfect shot, and by then, the celebrity in question was gone. Your life had become a whirlwind, and all you wanted to do was stand still.

So, the day you were stationed outside of the hotel in Atlanta, told by your boss to keep your feet planted on the nondescript side street until you saw anyone of importance walk by, you were thrown off when the star of the movie came out of the doors to the service entrance with flask in hand and bags under his eyes, completely unaware that you were standing there. He flicked a burnt cigarette butt onto the ground and stepped on it, taking a swig from his canister. When he turned his head and saw you, you had your camera pointed directly at him; and to put it lightly, he freaked the fuck out.

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