original fic : last night when we were young
last night when we were young
Jack cracks lame jokes and Lou laughs, head thrown back and eyes squeezed shut and all he wants to do (after survive) is make her smile.
pg. 2936. original fic.
I might be quite possibly the only person in the world who writes an apocalyptic love story on Christmas Eve. Is it because I'm crazy? Well, yes. So I present zombies, the end of the world, a May-December romance and, ultimately, tragic love. And because I like to 'cast' my characters, you have here Andy Samberg as Jack and Diana Agron as Lou. Title comes from Frank Sinatra's song by the same name. Happy holidays to you all.
So now let's reminisce and recollect the sighs and the kisses
The arms that clung
When we were young last night
The end of the world arrives like most things do, silent and without a warning. There are no red skies, no horsemen. It’s zombies, of all things, and suddenly the pot induced survival plans become less funny and more real.
Louisa awakes to the sound of tires squealing in the driveway and screaming from the streets. A glance out her window tells her that somewhere between last nights Gossip Girl and this morning’s cartoons the world went to hell and hope has abandoned them for people who actually deserve it.
(Her elderly neighbour lies dead on the street. The undead wander aimlessly, feeding as they go. Louisa wishes she could crawl back into bed and wake up again; this plague nothing but a twisted nightmare.)
Faced with two options (fight or die), Louisa chooses the alternative (hide and hope for the best). She locks the doors, bolts the windows, pulls the curtains shut and, finally, holes herself in the basement with enough canned food to feed a small army.
Louisa isn’t dumb; not by any means. Cheerleading captain, debate captain, prom committee chair; she knows a thing or two about organisation and after hours watching her ex-boyfriend play Left 4 Dead, she knows a thing or two about avoiding (not killing, she wants to avoid that at all costs) zombies.
(She doesn’t stop to wonder about her friends or about her parents that abandoned her on judgment day. She blocks doors and fills buckets and hopes like hell for a miracle.)
If Louisa knows anything, it’s that you don’t get anywhere by sitting idle. She keeps a baseball bat close and loads her fathers shot gun. Just in case.
Her first week in hiding is easier than she imagined. The water’s not cut until the sixth day and living off canned peaches has resulted in her loosing a few pounds.
It’s a routine. Each morning she does her hair and makeup (perfect lives lead to fairytale dreams; knights in shining armour are merely an accessory with Prada) and spends the day reading or planning (she has escape routes mapped out, back up plans for backup plans and weapons hidden in convenient places). At night she falls asleep to the sound of screaming and crying and gunshots.
(She squeezes her eyes shut and prays for a brighter tomorrow.)
The first time she meets Jack, she almost kills him.
Almost being the key word here.
It’s his own fault, really. Jack is 27 and sells insurance and everything he knows about zombies comes from horror movies that he turned off halfway through. He bursts into her house with a four iron and an antique pistol he doesn’t know how to use.
He breaks a window and bangs on the basement door and for that, she almost shoots his head off.
“Shit! I’m sorry, I thought you were a zombie!” Louisa exclaims, holding the gun between two fingers.
“That’s okay,” Jack laughs nervously, “honest mistake.”
“Yeah,” her eyes narrow and she pauses, “what the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“I, uh, I-” Jack looks around nervously, “I thought it was abandoned?”
Hands of her hips, Louisa narrows her eyes and Jack looks away.
“Look, I’m not going to be threatened by some prom queen,” he mutters, running his fingers through his hair, “in case you haven’t noticed, there’s bigger problems than breaking and entering at stake here.”
“What’s your name?” Louisa demands, eying him cautiously.
“Jack. What’s yours?”
She pauses, gripping her shotgun firmly, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears.
“Lou.”
And so the story of Jack and Lou begins.
Jack was never a prom king. No football star, no high school dreamboat. Jack had glasses and acne and a comic book collection that other nerds were jealous of. Girls like Louisa were the stuff fantasies were made of; blonde curls and sun dresses, light pink lip-gloss and fluttering eyelashes.
Girls like Lou however -
(Knee high boots with pleated skirts, shotgun slung across her shoulder, baseball bat and bright red lipstick-)
they were dangerous.
Jack spends two days watching Lou out of the corner of his eye, learning her likes, dislikes; hopes and dreams and wishing she was just that little bit older and he was that little bit more courageous.
Things Lou learns in the three days since Jack broke his way into her life;
1. The world outside was more chaotic, more horrifying, more fucked up than she could ever have imagined. The high school was burnt to the ground; the hospital a battlefield of bloodshed. Power is out, water is out, and in the rare chance that her parents were trying to get in contact with her, the cell towers were out. They were royally screwed.
2. Canned green beans taste more foul than the real thing. And they were quickly running out of food and water.
3. Jack was cute. Scratch that; Jack was a man, who used manly words and did manly things and didn’t quote Family Guy, but took her plans seriously. Whose hair was just that little bit too long and his glasses made him look distinguished rather than dorky. Whose careful and controlled breathing was a comfort during the screams of the night.
Lou is still Louisa; this is a fact. No matter how tough she pretends to be, she is still a dreamer, a hopeless romantic and a seventeen-year-old girl. Zombies or no zombies, Lou (Louisa) finds herself falling for Jack.
Falling hard.
“I like your house,” Jack tells her one morning (they think it’s morning; times of day aren’t always quite as clear) over canned ravioli. She smiles a terse smile, swallowing small mouthfuls and taking sips of water.
“Thanks,” Lou replies, pushing the can away from her and towards him.
“Not hungry?”
“Not really.” Lou shrugs, playing with the zip of her jacket.
“You don’t eat much,” Jack notes curiously. Lou frowns.
“Don’t really feel like, eating, alright?”
“Alright, alright,” Jack holds his hands up in surrender, “I’m sorry. I thought for a moment you were one of those typical girls with the eating disorders. My mistake.”
Lou would have laughed it off, but some habits are harder to break than others and Louisa looks away quickly before Jack can see the tears.
“I was.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, was,” she laughs bitterly, “turns out when the world goes to hell, normal teenage pressure like ‘body image’ aren’t such a big deal and sticking your fingers down your throat just seems pointless.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says sincerely and she almost laughs, because, hello? Zombie plague going on right outside and a Degrassi special is what they’ve turned it into.
“Did your parents know?”
“Please,” Lou scoffs, “if they didn’t care enough to wake me up and take me with them, I doubt they cared that I was puking my guts out after every meal.”
Jack goes quiet and she runs her fingers through her hair.
“I was such a fucking teen cliché, you know? Cheerleading and dance committees and popularity contests and goddamn bulimia. Seventeen years and I have nothing to show for it.”
“That’s not true,” Jack mumbles quietly, “you’re a smart girl. You’re strong, you’re determined. If I hadn’t…if I hadn’t found you, I’d probably be one of them.”
Lou doesn’t smile or laugh, but she looks at him carefully and from the glint in her eyes, he knows she understands.
At night, when Lou’s asleep, he wanders around the house, double checking windows and doors, making sure they’re safe. He finds himself upstairs, in her room and his eyes quickly adjust to the darkness. He notes pom-poms in the corner, clothes thrown haphazardly over chairs. Photos upon photos of smiling faces and a happier blonde haired, blue eyed girl.
Louisa, the nameplate on the door reads. Louisa, with the floral dresses and stuffed unicorns seems a lifetime ago from the gun-toting vixen that sleeps downstairs.
Jack is still Jack, in name and in character and has his morals and as much as he likes Lou (Louisa? the more he learns about the two, the more they blur into one) he’s not about to take advantage of a fragile teenage girl.
(And let’s face it; teenager or not, girls like Louisa don’t go for guys like Jack, with a haircut he’s had since college and World of Warcraft addiction.)
In the day time Jack cracks lame jokes and Lou laughs, head thrown back and eyes squeezed shut and all he wants to do (after survive) is make her smile.
They awake one night to the sound of wood breaking and glass smashing and it’s Jack, not Lou, who takes control.
(Weeks of planning and Lou never came to the conclusion that the situation might result in face-to-face contact with one of them. She freezes, eyes wide, hands limp, feet glued to the ground.)
Jack shoves the shotgun and baseball bat in her hands; through the window! Through the fucking window!
Lou snaps into action, jumping on the table and smashing the window open. She scrambles out, scratching her arm on her mother’s rose bushes and thanks whatever god is looking out for her that there are no zombies on her front lawn. Jack appears beside her, (the twigs in his hair are almost comical) grabbing her hand and dragging her down the road.
They run until they’re out of breath; ducking behind a tree, he grasps her shoulders tightly.
“We need a plan, Lou.”
“I know,” she whispers, pausing. Reaching into the pocket of her jacket, she pulls out some keys.
“Plan D. The second hand shop my grandmother owns has metal shutters and bars on the windows. We can hide out there.”
“How far away is it?” Jack mutters.
“If we run…fifteen minutes.”
“Where is it?” Jack asks, but he already knows the answer.
“Main Street.”
“Shit.”
“Let’s just make a break for it,” Lou suggests, “hopefully it won’t be as bad as we expect it to be.”
It is. It’s much worse.
The undead wander up and down Main Street, groaning on unsteady feet. Lou let’s out the breath she didn’t know she was holding and Jack squeezes her hand.
“Which store is it?”
“Third on the right,” Lou whispers, “there’s an alley way down the side and a gate that leads to the bins and the back door.”
“Reinforced, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Lou nods in the dark, “there were a string of break-ins in surrounding shops and Grams turned the place into Fort Knox. If we can get in without anyone noticing, we should be safe.”
(The thing about Jack? He’s not the hero type. He’s the guy that finds out where the bad guys are keeping the girl so the real hero can save the day. Too much running gives him asthma and he has the upper body strength to rival none.
He knows, however, that sometimes people need to step up. He needs to step up.)
“Take this,” he shoves the backpack at Lou, “I’ll distract them and you get yourself in that building. I’ll meet you there.”
“Wait, Jack!” Lou grabs his arm, “You can’t do this, it’s insane. There are at least fifty of them!”
“I have to, Louisa,” Jack mutters softly, “It was one of the plans.”
“It was a shitty plan,” Lou chokes out.
“It’s all we have. Once you see them following me, run. Don’t look back, Louisa. Don’t look back.”
Throwing her arms around his neck, Lou presses her lips to his. His hands find her waist and she forces herself closer to him, kiss growing in intensity.
“Shit,” Jack pushes her away, “you’re seventeen.”
“You’re about to possibly die and you’re worried about my age? Don’t you see? That doesn’t matter anymore.” Lou grabs his hands and places them on her hips. “This matters.”
“Be careful, Lou.” Jack whispers, foreheads pressed together.
“You too.”
He sprints off into the night and it takes all the strength she has not to burst into tears.
The shop is exactly how she remembers. She hasn’t been there for a few months; what with her grandmother on a Caribbean cruise, but she lights some candles and double checks the shutters. Lou runs her hands over vintage ball gowns and antique fabrics and tries not to count the minutes that Jack’s been gone.
(Tries and fails. 32, no, 33 minutes. And counting.)
There’s a loud thump on the roof and Lou holds her breath for what seems like forever. A sharp bang on the door follows and she cocks the shotgun.
“Lou!”
Jack’s voice fills her with relief and she runs to the door, unbolting it and letting him in. He’s exhausted and collapses on an antique chaise.
“You made it!” Lou whispers, grinning in the candlelight, “How’d you lose them?”
“Ran around the block a few times,” Jack puffs, “ducked in a few alleys to throw them off. There’s a fire escape a few stores down - climbed onto the roof and made my way over here. They didn’t follow me.”
“Oh my god,” Lou sighs, embracing him tightly, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
Lou feels like cheering. Feels like Louisa, for the first time in a long time. Louisa gets what she wants; always gets what she wants and Lou places her hand on Jack’s leg, moving it slowly, confidently, upwards. Jack swallows loudly and stands quickly.
“So, you want to give me the tour?”
Lou sighs and points out entries and exits and they start planning again.
Her grandmother’s owned the store since the sixties; once a well-known performer, Lou’s grandfather convinced her to hang up her stage name and settle down. A prominent businessman, he bought her the shop; collections of vintage couture and antique jewels increasing as society steadily fell.
Lou loves her grandmother’s shop. Loves the whimsy and timeless elegance. Tiny fingers tracing worn photographs, winning the approval of her glamorous grandmother with her stories from a life on the stage.
Louisa’s favourite piece was a black ball gown of her grandmother’s; small bodice cinching at the waist, layers of tulle covered with black satin and a magnificent train. Never allowed to try it on, she spent hours over the years staring at it, imagine what shoes, what jewels she’d pair it with. How she’d do her hair. What music would be playing in the background. Who she would wear it for.
Holding it in her arms, she smooths over the material and inhales it slowly. (It doesn’t smell like death and decay.)
“Your grandmother has some cool stuff,” Jack calls out, holding up a suit, “can I try it on?”
“Yeah,” Lou smiles, hugging the dress to her body, “yeah we can.”
Lou ducks into the small bathroom, wiping off her lipstick and taking off her clothes. She pins her hair into a twist at the top of her head, smiling softly to herself. Putting the dress on slowly, she runs her hands down the material.
“Lou?”
“Coming!” She calls quietly. Opening the door she smiles shyly at Jack, mouth agape.
“This was my favourite.”
“You look…you look…Louisa…” he breathes and she blushes lightly.
“Wait…”
Lou walks carefully over to an old record player in the corner. Winding it up quickly, she places the needle on the record.
“Dance with me, Jack?”
Jack nods mutely and his arms find her waist and she wraps hers around his neck. They sway slowly for a while, content.
(Lou listens to his heart beat; slow and steady - then erratic. She smiles because, despite the chaos and nightmares outside, this feels right.)
“Jack?”
“Yeah, Lou?”
“I don’t…” she swallows nervously and he’s nervous because she’s never nervous. “I don’t want to…”
“Lou…” he sighs because he knows what’s coming.
“I don’t want to die a virgin.”
“Lou, we can’t-”
“No, Jack. Listen.” Lou pulls away quickly, “let’s forget I’m seventeen, okay. Let’s forget I’m in high school. Because right now, none of that matters. We both know we can’t stay here forever; we have no idea when help will arrive, let alone if it’s even on the way. I want you Jack. I want this.”
Taking a deep breath, Louisa places her hands in his.
“Don’t you?”
“God yes.”
Her lips find his in the candlelight and his hands grasp the satin around her waist. Small hands fist in his hair and he kisses his way along her collar bone; whispering her name as he goes.
Louisa.
(Each kiss, each caress and the walls begin to crumble. He holds her hand to his chest and they fall asleep to the crackling of the player.
The world outside is silent. It’s the calm before the storm.)
It all goes to hell on a Sunday; banging on the back door, rattling on the shutters. The only plan left is plan ‘Z’; arm yourself and hope for the best.
Louisa does the only thing she can think of; throws the dress in a cupboard, flings the shotgun around her shoulder and grabs her bat.
“So this is what it’s come to,” Jack states, fiddling nervously with the pistol.
“Looks like it,” she says softly, “there’s nothing else left to do.”
“Louisa.”
“Jack.”
He grabs her roughly and she wraps her arms around him tightly. There’s no declarations of love, no goodbye’s, no sentiments of longing. He breathes her in and she cries silently.
“If you run out of bullets, start swinging.”
“You too.”
Hands grasped, she unbolts the shutter. She meets his eye and he nods.
(This is it.)
It ends, as most things do, with a bang.
Fin.
Jack cracks lame jokes and Lou laughs, head thrown back and eyes squeezed shut and all he wants to do (after survive) is make her smile.
pg. 2936. original fic.
I might be quite possibly the only person in the world who writes an apocalyptic love story on Christmas Eve. Is it because I'm crazy? Well, yes. So I present zombies, the end of the world, a May-December romance and, ultimately, tragic love. And because I like to 'cast' my characters, you have here Andy Samberg as Jack and Diana Agron as Lou. Title comes from Frank Sinatra's song by the same name. Happy holidays to you all.
So now let's reminisce and recollect the sighs and the kisses
The arms that clung
When we were young last night
The end of the world arrives like most things do, silent and without a warning. There are no red skies, no horsemen. It’s zombies, of all things, and suddenly the pot induced survival plans become less funny and more real.
Louisa awakes to the sound of tires squealing in the driveway and screaming from the streets. A glance out her window tells her that somewhere between last nights Gossip Girl and this morning’s cartoons the world went to hell and hope has abandoned them for people who actually deserve it.
(Her elderly neighbour lies dead on the street. The undead wander aimlessly, feeding as they go. Louisa wishes she could crawl back into bed and wake up again; this plague nothing but a twisted nightmare.)
Faced with two options (fight or die), Louisa chooses the alternative (hide and hope for the best). She locks the doors, bolts the windows, pulls the curtains shut and, finally, holes herself in the basement with enough canned food to feed a small army.
Louisa isn’t dumb; not by any means. Cheerleading captain, debate captain, prom committee chair; she knows a thing or two about organisation and after hours watching her ex-boyfriend play Left 4 Dead, she knows a thing or two about avoiding (not killing, she wants to avoid that at all costs) zombies.
(She doesn’t stop to wonder about her friends or about her parents that abandoned her on judgment day. She blocks doors and fills buckets and hopes like hell for a miracle.)
If Louisa knows anything, it’s that you don’t get anywhere by sitting idle. She keeps a baseball bat close and loads her fathers shot gun. Just in case.
Her first week in hiding is easier than she imagined. The water’s not cut until the sixth day and living off canned peaches has resulted in her loosing a few pounds.
It’s a routine. Each morning she does her hair and makeup (perfect lives lead to fairytale dreams; knights in shining armour are merely an accessory with Prada) and spends the day reading or planning (she has escape routes mapped out, back up plans for backup plans and weapons hidden in convenient places). At night she falls asleep to the sound of screaming and crying and gunshots.
(She squeezes her eyes shut and prays for a brighter tomorrow.)
The first time she meets Jack, she almost kills him.
Almost being the key word here.
It’s his own fault, really. Jack is 27 and sells insurance and everything he knows about zombies comes from horror movies that he turned off halfway through. He bursts into her house with a four iron and an antique pistol he doesn’t know how to use.
He breaks a window and bangs on the basement door and for that, she almost shoots his head off.
“Shit! I’m sorry, I thought you were a zombie!” Louisa exclaims, holding the gun between two fingers.
“That’s okay,” Jack laughs nervously, “honest mistake.”
“Yeah,” her eyes narrow and she pauses, “what the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“I, uh, I-” Jack looks around nervously, “I thought it was abandoned?”
Hands of her hips, Louisa narrows her eyes and Jack looks away.
“Look, I’m not going to be threatened by some prom queen,” he mutters, running his fingers through his hair, “in case you haven’t noticed, there’s bigger problems than breaking and entering at stake here.”
“What’s your name?” Louisa demands, eying him cautiously.
“Jack. What’s yours?”
She pauses, gripping her shotgun firmly, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears.
“Lou.”
And so the story of Jack and Lou begins.
Jack was never a prom king. No football star, no high school dreamboat. Jack had glasses and acne and a comic book collection that other nerds were jealous of. Girls like Louisa were the stuff fantasies were made of; blonde curls and sun dresses, light pink lip-gloss and fluttering eyelashes.
Girls like Lou however -
(Knee high boots with pleated skirts, shotgun slung across her shoulder, baseball bat and bright red lipstick-)
they were dangerous.
Jack spends two days watching Lou out of the corner of his eye, learning her likes, dislikes; hopes and dreams and wishing she was just that little bit older and he was that little bit more courageous.
Things Lou learns in the three days since Jack broke his way into her life;
1. The world outside was more chaotic, more horrifying, more fucked up than she could ever have imagined. The high school was burnt to the ground; the hospital a battlefield of bloodshed. Power is out, water is out, and in the rare chance that her parents were trying to get in contact with her, the cell towers were out. They were royally screwed.
2. Canned green beans taste more foul than the real thing. And they were quickly running out of food and water.
3. Jack was cute. Scratch that; Jack was a man, who used manly words and did manly things and didn’t quote Family Guy, but took her plans seriously. Whose hair was just that little bit too long and his glasses made him look distinguished rather than dorky. Whose careful and controlled breathing was a comfort during the screams of the night.
Lou is still Louisa; this is a fact. No matter how tough she pretends to be, she is still a dreamer, a hopeless romantic and a seventeen-year-old girl. Zombies or no zombies, Lou (Louisa) finds herself falling for Jack.
Falling hard.
“I like your house,” Jack tells her one morning (they think it’s morning; times of day aren’t always quite as clear) over canned ravioli. She smiles a terse smile, swallowing small mouthfuls and taking sips of water.
“Thanks,” Lou replies, pushing the can away from her and towards him.
“Not hungry?”
“Not really.” Lou shrugs, playing with the zip of her jacket.
“You don’t eat much,” Jack notes curiously. Lou frowns.
“Don’t really feel like, eating, alright?”
“Alright, alright,” Jack holds his hands up in surrender, “I’m sorry. I thought for a moment you were one of those typical girls with the eating disorders. My mistake.”
Lou would have laughed it off, but some habits are harder to break than others and Louisa looks away quickly before Jack can see the tears.
“I was.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, was,” she laughs bitterly, “turns out when the world goes to hell, normal teenage pressure like ‘body image’ aren’t such a big deal and sticking your fingers down your throat just seems pointless.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says sincerely and she almost laughs, because, hello? Zombie plague going on right outside and a Degrassi special is what they’ve turned it into.
“Did your parents know?”
“Please,” Lou scoffs, “if they didn’t care enough to wake me up and take me with them, I doubt they cared that I was puking my guts out after every meal.”
Jack goes quiet and she runs her fingers through her hair.
“I was such a fucking teen cliché, you know? Cheerleading and dance committees and popularity contests and goddamn bulimia. Seventeen years and I have nothing to show for it.”
“That’s not true,” Jack mumbles quietly, “you’re a smart girl. You’re strong, you’re determined. If I hadn’t…if I hadn’t found you, I’d probably be one of them.”
Lou doesn’t smile or laugh, but she looks at him carefully and from the glint in her eyes, he knows she understands.
At night, when Lou’s asleep, he wanders around the house, double checking windows and doors, making sure they’re safe. He finds himself upstairs, in her room and his eyes quickly adjust to the darkness. He notes pom-poms in the corner, clothes thrown haphazardly over chairs. Photos upon photos of smiling faces and a happier blonde haired, blue eyed girl.
Louisa, the nameplate on the door reads. Louisa, with the floral dresses and stuffed unicorns seems a lifetime ago from the gun-toting vixen that sleeps downstairs.
Jack is still Jack, in name and in character and has his morals and as much as he likes Lou (Louisa? the more he learns about the two, the more they blur into one) he’s not about to take advantage of a fragile teenage girl.
(And let’s face it; teenager or not, girls like Louisa don’t go for guys like Jack, with a haircut he’s had since college and World of Warcraft addiction.)
In the day time Jack cracks lame jokes and Lou laughs, head thrown back and eyes squeezed shut and all he wants to do (after survive) is make her smile.
They awake one night to the sound of wood breaking and glass smashing and it’s Jack, not Lou, who takes control.
(Weeks of planning and Lou never came to the conclusion that the situation might result in face-to-face contact with one of them. She freezes, eyes wide, hands limp, feet glued to the ground.)
Jack shoves the shotgun and baseball bat in her hands; through the window! Through the fucking window!
Lou snaps into action, jumping on the table and smashing the window open. She scrambles out, scratching her arm on her mother’s rose bushes and thanks whatever god is looking out for her that there are no zombies on her front lawn. Jack appears beside her, (the twigs in his hair are almost comical) grabbing her hand and dragging her down the road.
They run until they’re out of breath; ducking behind a tree, he grasps her shoulders tightly.
“We need a plan, Lou.”
“I know,” she whispers, pausing. Reaching into the pocket of her jacket, she pulls out some keys.
“Plan D. The second hand shop my grandmother owns has metal shutters and bars on the windows. We can hide out there.”
“How far away is it?” Jack mutters.
“If we run…fifteen minutes.”
“Where is it?” Jack asks, but he already knows the answer.
“Main Street.”
“Shit.”
“Let’s just make a break for it,” Lou suggests, “hopefully it won’t be as bad as we expect it to be.”
It is. It’s much worse.
The undead wander up and down Main Street, groaning on unsteady feet. Lou let’s out the breath she didn’t know she was holding and Jack squeezes her hand.
“Which store is it?”
“Third on the right,” Lou whispers, “there’s an alley way down the side and a gate that leads to the bins and the back door.”
“Reinforced, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Lou nods in the dark, “there were a string of break-ins in surrounding shops and Grams turned the place into Fort Knox. If we can get in without anyone noticing, we should be safe.”
(The thing about Jack? He’s not the hero type. He’s the guy that finds out where the bad guys are keeping the girl so the real hero can save the day. Too much running gives him asthma and he has the upper body strength to rival none.
He knows, however, that sometimes people need to step up. He needs to step up.)
“Take this,” he shoves the backpack at Lou, “I’ll distract them and you get yourself in that building. I’ll meet you there.”
“Wait, Jack!” Lou grabs his arm, “You can’t do this, it’s insane. There are at least fifty of them!”
“I have to, Louisa,” Jack mutters softly, “It was one of the plans.”
“It was a shitty plan,” Lou chokes out.
“It’s all we have. Once you see them following me, run. Don’t look back, Louisa. Don’t look back.”
Throwing her arms around his neck, Lou presses her lips to his. His hands find her waist and she forces herself closer to him, kiss growing in intensity.
“Shit,” Jack pushes her away, “you’re seventeen.”
“You’re about to possibly die and you’re worried about my age? Don’t you see? That doesn’t matter anymore.” Lou grabs his hands and places them on her hips. “This matters.”
“Be careful, Lou.” Jack whispers, foreheads pressed together.
“You too.”
He sprints off into the night and it takes all the strength she has not to burst into tears.
The shop is exactly how she remembers. She hasn’t been there for a few months; what with her grandmother on a Caribbean cruise, but she lights some candles and double checks the shutters. Lou runs her hands over vintage ball gowns and antique fabrics and tries not to count the minutes that Jack’s been gone.
(Tries and fails. 32, no, 33 minutes. And counting.)
There’s a loud thump on the roof and Lou holds her breath for what seems like forever. A sharp bang on the door follows and she cocks the shotgun.
“Lou!”
Jack’s voice fills her with relief and she runs to the door, unbolting it and letting him in. He’s exhausted and collapses on an antique chaise.
“You made it!” Lou whispers, grinning in the candlelight, “How’d you lose them?”
“Ran around the block a few times,” Jack puffs, “ducked in a few alleys to throw them off. There’s a fire escape a few stores down - climbed onto the roof and made my way over here. They didn’t follow me.”
“Oh my god,” Lou sighs, embracing him tightly, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
Lou feels like cheering. Feels like Louisa, for the first time in a long time. Louisa gets what she wants; always gets what she wants and Lou places her hand on Jack’s leg, moving it slowly, confidently, upwards. Jack swallows loudly and stands quickly.
“So, you want to give me the tour?”
Lou sighs and points out entries and exits and they start planning again.
Her grandmother’s owned the store since the sixties; once a well-known performer, Lou’s grandfather convinced her to hang up her stage name and settle down. A prominent businessman, he bought her the shop; collections of vintage couture and antique jewels increasing as society steadily fell.
Lou loves her grandmother’s shop. Loves the whimsy and timeless elegance. Tiny fingers tracing worn photographs, winning the approval of her glamorous grandmother with her stories from a life on the stage.
Louisa’s favourite piece was a black ball gown of her grandmother’s; small bodice cinching at the waist, layers of tulle covered with black satin and a magnificent train. Never allowed to try it on, she spent hours over the years staring at it, imagine what shoes, what jewels she’d pair it with. How she’d do her hair. What music would be playing in the background. Who she would wear it for.
Holding it in her arms, she smooths over the material and inhales it slowly. (It doesn’t smell like death and decay.)
“Your grandmother has some cool stuff,” Jack calls out, holding up a suit, “can I try it on?”
“Yeah,” Lou smiles, hugging the dress to her body, “yeah we can.”
Lou ducks into the small bathroom, wiping off her lipstick and taking off her clothes. She pins her hair into a twist at the top of her head, smiling softly to herself. Putting the dress on slowly, she runs her hands down the material.
“Lou?”
“Coming!” She calls quietly. Opening the door she smiles shyly at Jack, mouth agape.
“This was my favourite.”
“You look…you look…Louisa…” he breathes and she blushes lightly.
“Wait…”
Lou walks carefully over to an old record player in the corner. Winding it up quickly, she places the needle on the record.
“Dance with me, Jack?”
Jack nods mutely and his arms find her waist and she wraps hers around his neck. They sway slowly for a while, content.
(Lou listens to his heart beat; slow and steady - then erratic. She smiles because, despite the chaos and nightmares outside, this feels right.)
“Jack?”
“Yeah, Lou?”
“I don’t…” she swallows nervously and he’s nervous because she’s never nervous. “I don’t want to…”
“Lou…” he sighs because he knows what’s coming.
“I don’t want to die a virgin.”
“Lou, we can’t-”
“No, Jack. Listen.” Lou pulls away quickly, “let’s forget I’m seventeen, okay. Let’s forget I’m in high school. Because right now, none of that matters. We both know we can’t stay here forever; we have no idea when help will arrive, let alone if it’s even on the way. I want you Jack. I want this.”
Taking a deep breath, Louisa places her hands in his.
“Don’t you?”
“God yes.”
Her lips find his in the candlelight and his hands grasp the satin around her waist. Small hands fist in his hair and he kisses his way along her collar bone; whispering her name as he goes.
Louisa.
(Each kiss, each caress and the walls begin to crumble. He holds her hand to his chest and they fall asleep to the crackling of the player.
The world outside is silent. It’s the calm before the storm.)
It all goes to hell on a Sunday; banging on the back door, rattling on the shutters. The only plan left is plan ‘Z’; arm yourself and hope for the best.
Louisa does the only thing she can think of; throws the dress in a cupboard, flings the shotgun around her shoulder and grabs her bat.
“So this is what it’s come to,” Jack states, fiddling nervously with the pistol.
“Looks like it,” she says softly, “there’s nothing else left to do.”
“Louisa.”
“Jack.”
He grabs her roughly and she wraps her arms around him tightly. There’s no declarations of love, no goodbye’s, no sentiments of longing. He breathes her in and she cries silently.
“If you run out of bullets, start swinging.”
“You too.”
Hands grasped, she unbolts the shutter. She meets his eye and he nods.
(This is it.)
It ends, as most things do, with a bang.
Fin.