Musings of a Yankee Countess

zip-goes-a-million:

July 2018 Rock the pen-pals AU!

Tom Branson had recently moved to England from his home country of Ireland, trying to make a living as a historian. It was harder than he had expected. The opportunities in England were supposed to be better than those in Ireland, but he soon realised that he had left everyone and everything he had ever loved behind in Ireland. In England he knew nobody and wasn’t really sure how to go about remedying the situation. On a whim, he signed up to a pen-pal website, hoping that talking to a stranger might be able to keep him company enough to stop him from going completely insane. He was linked with a woman by the name of Sybil Crawley, a woman originally from England, who was in her final year of study at an American university. She and Tom instantly hit it off and before long the two of them were checking their emails every five minutes, hoping the other had replied. The time difference across the Atlantic Ocean made it harder to stay in contact, but they each made sure they set aside time in their schedules to compose emails and read the replies. Sybil gave Tom hints on the best places to go in his new city as he was living in the city where Sybil grew up, and they both confessed that they were looking forward to the day when Sybil finished her degree so that they could finally meet in person. When that day came, when Sybil got off the plane, Tom was there to greet her. What they had thought would be an awkward meeting felt so natural. They had learned so much about one another through being pen-pals and it felt as though they had known each other for years. Maybe, just maybe, joining that pen-pal website would turn out to be the best decision Tom had ever made.