Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN THE PREVIEW PICTURE! IT BELONGS TO SweetasTea ON DEVIANTART! I also do not own any of the characters. All I own is the storyline.
Word Count: 3570
AU: 2012/Apocalypse AU
UAs: None really, but if it wasn't clear in the story, this is white-hair-blue-eyes Jack, not brown-hair-brown-eyes Jack
Prompt: Interrupted Declaration of Love
Jack yanked Rapunzel out of the way just in time for another car from the collapsing freeway to careen past them. He tried not to think about how a building had toppled over where he and his friend had been mere seconds ago, or how the ground was cracking like an eggshell all around them. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed dead ahead and his legs pumping as fast as they could go. Run, run, run!
It was funny how fast you could go when outrunning a catastrophic earthquake, despite being absolute shit in gym class. Rapunzel, for her part, was matching his pace exactly, despite how she had told him many times how much she absolutely loathed the yearly Fitnessgram "pacer test." Adrenaline was one hell of a drug, apparently.
It was also funny how he had been taking a trigonometry final when the apocalypse hit. It sort of put things into perspective, especially considering the entire school had been sucked into a chasm and he and a handful of classmates had just barely escaped.
At least his crush of 3 years was in his trig class. It was a scary thought that if the apocalypse had struck just one period later, he would have no idea where she was, or if she was even alive. But as it was, she was running right next to him, and that gave him at least one thing to be happy about.
The rest of the class—and the rest of the surviving students and staff, for that matter—had scattered, but Jack was determined to not let Rapunzel out of his sight. "Whatever you do, do not let go of my hand," he had told her when they first started their exhausting trek across town.
Really, if it hadn't been for all of the falling buildings and cars and billboards sliding every which way, he would've enjoyed holding her hand more.
"Is the escape ship close?" Rapunzel yelled out to him.
"It should be landing downtown, so we've only got a little ways more to go," he yelled back.
"But downtown seems dangerous! Are you sure these escape ships are even real?"
Jack had to admit, he had been thinking the same thing. Downtown did seem even more dangerous than the rest of the city, with towering office buildings that could easily crush any civilians within a 400-foot radius. But from the small snippet of news he caught on the TV a few days ago, that's exactly where the escape ships were going.
Not a week ago he had dismissed the whole apocalypse as a load of crap, and had snickered at the thought of anyone who would fund escape ships for a completely fictional doomsday. But lo and behold, it was very much not fictional, and thank god a handful of rich people had been just crazy enough to spend their extra cash on the project. Still debatable if the escape ships had been a hoax, though.
"I don't know," he admitted to Rapunzel. "But they're the best chance we've got. We can't outrun this earthquake forever!"
As he led her through the crumbling city and past multiple raging fires from explosions, one nagging thought kept prodding at his mind. Despite their best efforts to avoid the damage and reach the ship—if it was even real, that was—they could still be killed at any second by a flying piece of debris or a falling building behind them they happened not to see.
And that meant he should probably tell Rapunzel how he felt about her.
He pulled her onto a street leading to downtown that, at least thus far, seemed surprisingly earthquake-free. Once he had gotten her far enough away from the destruction of the other streets, he stopped in his tracks, jolting the blonde girl to a stop beside him.
"Why are we stopping?" she asked, voice heavy with accusation.
"Rapunzel, listen." He turned and gripped her shoulders tightly, and green eyes met blue. "We…we need to talk."
She looked at him incredulously. "Right now? Can't this wait until we get on the ship?"
He bit his lip anxiously. "Thing is…I don't know if we're ever going to make it to the ship. And if we don't, well…I just want you to know that I—"
Suddenly, the ground caved in beneath his feet, and Rapunzel screamed. He plummeted into the gaping crack, and just barely managed to grab hold of the edge of the chasm with his fingertips. Rapunzel grabbed his hands and hurriedly wrenched him up, tugging him away from the widening fissure.
"And there's the earthquake," he muttered. "Just when I thought we could catch a break!"
Rapunzel was staring at him in horror. "You almost died!"
"Yeah, uh…thanks for saving me. But I like your idea, I think we should wait until the ship to talk."
Rapunzel nodded, and they were off running toward downtown again, avoiding sprouting clefts in the ground and explosions from crashing cars as best they could. By the time they reached downtown, many of the office buildings had already collapsed—by and large a good thing, considering there were less things that could crush them now. There was rubble blocking various roads, but it had already been somewhat trampled and wasn't that hard to pick their way through.
"We're almost there," Jack whispered to Rapunzel. "Lincoln Square. That's where the ship is stopping."
A couple more turns and a couple more sidestreets and they were on Lincoln way. Jack beamed as he led them around a final pile of rubble. "Ah, here we—"
Yes, here they were. This was definitely Lincoln Square, with the giant sign sticking up out of a patch of grass declaring it. But there was no ship here—just a bunch of panicked people running all over the place and looking frantically around, probably here for the same reason as Jack and Rapunzel.
Shit.
He exchanged a concerned glance with Rapunzel. "Where's the ship?" he called out, hoping he didn't sound completely crazy.
An agitated young man with his cell phone to his ear turned and called out, "It just left! I think there's another ship leaving a couple miles out of town, though. Out on I-47."
"Out of town, great," he muttered. "How are we going to get there in time? Rapunzel, what do you—"
He realized with a sinking feeling that she had slipped away from him. Frantically looking around, he screamed her name over and over.
"Jack, over here!" He turned toward the voice, and realized with a prickle of embarrassment that she was only standing a few feet away, holding up a set of keys. "Someone dropped their keys while they were making a dash for the ship," she told him.
"Great!" He grinned, but it quickly morphed into a concerned expression. "But uh…whose car do they belong to?"
"I know how to find out!" She pressed a button, and the lights of a pink car in the middle of a line of cars parked along the curb flashed.
Jack slapped his hand to his forehead. "Right. Auto-unlock. Forgot about that."
Rapunzel scrambled into the driver's seat, and Jack hurried to the other side of the car to get into the passenger's. As she hurried to start the car, he realized this was as good a chance as any to tell her what he hadn't finished earlier.
"Okay, um…now that we're not running anymore, I've got something to tell you."
"What?" she asked, turning the key in the ignition.
"I—"
"JACK, GET OUT OF THE CAR!" she screeched suddenly.
Jack surged out the front door and pelted down the street just in time for a mammoth building to come crashing down on top of the car where they had just been. He turned to see Rapunzel standing safely a few feet away, and let out a relieved breath.
After he had caught his breath, he let out a long sigh. "Well…there goes our ride."
"Not quite!" He turned to see Rapunzel had opened the door to an unlocked car at the very end of the curb—one of the only ones that hadn't been destroyed by the falling building they had narrowly escaped. She poked her head inside and pulled it out, grinning. "Oh, and look at that! They even left their key in the admission."
"Wow." He smirked. "People were really in a rush to get on that ship, huh?"
Jack slipped into the driver's seat, this time letting Rapunzel take the passenger's. Although he had been happy to let her drive before, the more he thought about it, the more he had doubts. He was sure Rapunzel was an excellent driver, but right now they didn't need an excellent driver—they needed someone who was willing to break every last traffic law to guarantee their escape. And that someone was undoubtedly Jackson Overland Frost.
"Ready for a wild ride?" he asked her, grinning.
She gave him a concerned look as she buckled her seatbelt. "Jack, I'm not sure that's—AAAAHHHHH!"
She shrieked as the car lurched to life and soared right across the grass of Lincoln square, just barely dodging a couple of the trees that were still upright. Once they had gotten onto a still-intact road, she seemed relieved—until the car screeched as he drove onto a sidewalk to skirt a pile of rubble. Her screams continued as they turned into a neighborhood and smashed through several picket fences to avoid the crack-ridden road.
"Do you really have to drive like this?" Rapunzel shouted. They had just plowed through a cluster of well-trimmed bushes whilst avoiding a massive chunk of road that had been shoved up into a crumbled pile of asphalt. "This is really illegal!" she added.
"It's the end of the world, I don't think cops are too preoccupied with giving out tickets!" Jack shouted back.
"Well, good thing I didn't do any of this on my driver's test!" He turned and smiled at her. Leave it to Rapunzel to still try and crack jokes with him during the apocalypse, despite clearly panicking her ass off. Just another thing on the long list of reasons he was pretty sure they were soulmates.
Jack could only hope as he dodged falling buildings, debris, and firestorms and drove across any terrain that looked relatively flat that I-47 hadn't already crumbled to the point of being unusable. It wasn't an elevated freeway, so at least it couldn't collapse like several others had.
"Are we almost there?" Rapunzel asked him anxiously.
"To the freeway, yeah," he replied. After screeching around a couple more corners and dodging a couple of dismantled gas station signs, he saw what was probably the most welcoming sight in the world. Stretched out in front of them was the wide expanse of I-47, a little cracked and beat up, but other than that not too worse for wear. Other cars were zooming down it toward the escape ship, indicating it was still pretty driveable.
"Phew!" Rapunzel let out a relieved laugh. "I can't believe how lucky we are. I mean, it would've been so easy for there to be an earthquake—"
"Don't jinx it, Zellie," he cut her off.
"Uh…Zellie?" she questioned, giggling.
Jack's cheeks grew pink. Did he seriously just accidentally give her a nickname?
"So…what was it you wanted to tell me earlier?" she asked. "You know, before we nearly got crushed like bugs."
Oh no. This just kept getting worse.
Perhaps earlier it had seemed natural to give an emergency love confession, but now, with them driving down a relatively danger-free road on their way to safety, it seemed too dramatic. Especially considering they might actually survive after all.
"I…just wanted to say thank you for saving my life," he settled for. "I know I kind of brushed it off earlier, but you know…"
"We were running for our lives," Rapunzel finished.
"Yeah, exactly. Anyway….that was really, really brave of you. I seriously owe you one for that."
"Oh, don't mention it." He glanced over to see Rapunzel studying her lap, playing with the strings on her shorts. "I'm sure you would have done the same for me."
"Of course!" he told her emphatically. And he didn't doubt for a single second that he would risk his own life to pull Rapunzel out of a chasm, or push her out of the way of a falling building, or shield her from a flying fireball…anything for her, really.
He wondered if she would do all that for him as well, but he doubted it. Perhaps saving his life had been nothing more than a spur-of-the-moment thing. Or worse, done out of the fear of being alone.
They drove in silence for a few minutes. As Jack was focusing on skirting an especially large crevice, he heard Rapunzel groan beside him.
"No phone service," she said. "None of my texts are sending."
Of course. Of course the radio towers had to collapse, too. Of course there was no cell phone service when literally everyone was desperate to get in touch with their loved ones.
"Great," he muttered. "That's just fucking great."
"Maybe they'll fix it?" Rapunzel mused.
"Maybe." Jack wasn't convinced anyone would bother, but he wasn't about to crush Rapunzel's hope.
It was then that he heard a shrill whistling coming from outside the window, followed by an enormous crash that made the entire road tremble. Jack glanced in the rear-view mirror and sucked in his breath. What could only be described as an enormous ball of fire had smashed into the road right behind them, shattering the pavement and leaving a long trail of smoke in its wake.
Fuck. Not the volcano too.
Okay, perhaps for most of his life kids in the other 49 states had been jealous of him, but right now living in Hawaii sucked.
"Jack? What is that?" Rapunzel asked fearfully as 2 more explosions sounded on either side of them
"Uh, Rapunzel? I think you might wanna take back what you said earlier. About us being lucky."
A fireball crashed down in the middle of the road, and Rapunzel screamed as they swerved around it. Another pelted down in front of them, and another, and another, until Jack was tracing an irregular squiggly line down the road and wondering if the back of the car had caught on fire. Jack's heart was hammering out of his chest, and he realized he had started screaming as well.
Shit. We're gonna die. It's really happening this time. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.
As he dodged another fireball, he bit his lip, realizing what that meant. He took a deep breath. Shitty timing, to be sure, but it was now or never.
"Rapunzel!" he shouted. "Listen to me, if we don't make it out of this thing alive, I need you to know…"
"What?" she shrieked. "What is it?"
"I'm in love with you!"
Her screaming ceased, replaced by a stunned silence. Jack's insides burned. Oh god. I fucked up. I fucked up. Even when he spotted the hovering escape ship in the distance, he found himself wishing one of the fireballs would land on their car and put him out of his misery.
Neither of them said anything as he pulled over to the shoulder of the road and parked behind the long line of cars, all there for the escape ship. They jumped out of the car and raced toward the crowd of people shoving their way into the aircraft.
She still said nothing as they got in line, although he could see her shaking violently. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, trying to comfort her but also trying to keep her close to him in the massive crowd. She stiffened under his touch, but didn't try to push him away.
Jack studied the ground as they shuffled their way in. He wasn't going to try and make Rapunzel talk. He knew he had just dropped a bombshell on her, and she needed some time to process it.
He was tempted to be mad at himself for saying it, but forced himself to push the feeling away. It was a miracle they had survived the falling fireballs, and any slightly less lucky shmuck would've been burned to a crisp. It was a perfectly reasonable time for a love confession.
But the aftermath of it…that was going to be the hard part.
They both stepped into the escape ship to find themselves in a crowded hallway. Without warning, Rapunzel jerked away from him and shoved herself into an enormous throng of people. "W—wait!" Jack called out, but she didn't even turn around as she disappeared from sight.
Jack sat hunched by the window curving around the back of the ship, watching as the smoking, broken city grew farther and farther away. The surrounding land around had been completely set ablaze by the volcanic fireballs. It was a horrible sight, but somehow Jack couldn't tear his eyes away.
He wondered how many of his friends were dead. If his family was dead. If he would ever see them again, even if they weren't. All he had left was Rapunzel, and now she was—
The observation deck door suddenly creaked open, and Jack turned to see the blonde standing in the doorframe, offering him a weak smile.
She walked over and sat down beside him on the floor, hugging her knees to his chest. She followed his gaze, watching with him as their ruined home slipped farther and farther away.
"I love you too," she said after a short hesitation.
"Wait, WHAT?" Jack turned and stared at her in utter shock. Okay, this was fake. It had to be. There was no way the girl he'd been in love with since forever felt the same way, especially considering she had nearly had a panic attack when he told her earlier. This was all some kind of warped daydream that included the end of the world, for some reason. And in a second the bell was going to ring, signaling the end of his trigonometry test, and he was going to have wasted the rest of the period fantasizing about surviving the apocalypse with his crush.
"I love you too," she repeated. It felt more real this time, although definitely not any less strange.
Through the wild turmoil of emotions that followed, Jack managed to give her a feeble grin. "Well, why didn't you tell me earlier? You would've saved me a lot of grief!"
Rapunzel fiddled with a piece of hair. "I…kind of froze up. Like I was just so shocked when you said it because I've loved you for, like, 5 years and I had kind of come to terms by now with the fact that you didn't feel the same way."
"5 years?" He let out an exasperated sigh. "Rapunzel! You should've said something!"
"I was trying, you big dumbo!" she retorted. "Didn't you ever notice how anytime you needed any sort of favor, I would jump in to help out before anyone else could? Or how I would go out of my way to compliment you all the time? Or how I would give you really long hugs? Or how I baked you an entire batch of cookies for your birthday that one year?"
"Oh." He blinked. "I thought you were just being nice."
She rolled her eyes, letting out a groan. "Boys."
"We're dumb, I know." His expression grew serious. "But…where did you go just now?"
She looked away, fidgeting uncomfortably. "I was just freaked out. I needed some time to process that this whole thing was actually real. That you actually love me, and it wasn't another one of my elaborate apocalypse daydreams where I save you and then you confess your undying love to me."
He eyed her curiously. "Wait, do you actually have those?"
She blushed. "Yeah…sometimes. The world will be falling to pieces and I'll save you in the nick of time and then you tell me you love me. It's kind of insane that all that really happened."
There was a short silence as they gazed thoughtfully out the window, which was now passing over another city being ravaged by earthquakes. Jack thought it was almost disturbing how all this destruction was beginning to feel normal.
But, he decided, he wasn't going to focus on it. He wasn't even going to think about it. Not until later.
He turned and smirked at Rapunzel. "So…Zellie…what happens next in your little fantasies? You know, after you've saved me and we've confessed our love?"
She gave him a smirk of her own, and leaned in until her face was only inches away from his. "This," she murmured. "This happens next."
She pressed her mouth to his and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply. Jack pulled her even closer, his entire being feeling giddy as he experienced everything about her that he had only ever dared to dream about. Her soft hair under his hand, her whole body pressed against him, her lips locked firmly with his.
His heart was racing again, but this time from pure joy instead of fear. As they kissed thousands of feet above the dying world, Jack decided that adrenaline was one hell of a drug. And this was the best kind of it.
W00t w00t, apocalypse AU! Pretty closely based off of the movie 2012, in case you couldn't tell. I never actually saw the movie, BUT the concept of civilization crumbling due to natural disasters and people just barely escaping the destruction is great story fuel! And good daydream fuel, for that matter. I'll admit, this story was, in large part, kind of a wish fulfillment because, like Rapunzel, I used to constantly fantasize about the 2012 apocalypse hitting and me and my crush escaping the collapsing city together ^^; And then I would save his life at least once, maybe multiple times, and end up dramatically confessing my love to him XD But hey, if I can't live the 2012 apocalypse wooing-your-crush experience, I can at least give it to my OTP! I know this apocalypse might seem a little over-the-top, but to be fair, the movie itself was pretty over-the-top, so I don't really feel guilty about it. Happy end of the world!
TOMORROW: Rapunzel is convinced that in a school of 4,000, the cute theater boy she just met will just get lost in the crowd. But one chance encounter leads to another…and another. And another. And another. Something strange is going on.