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#I'm still typing out ideas for an emmett x reader fic for a quiet place p II
All the time in what's left of the world | 28 Days Later!Jim x Reader (Oneshot)
Words: 1776
Warnings: Mention of death, slight innuendos
A/N: I'm surprised I hadn't written for him sooner, but I needed something to write to take a break from the other series I've been writing.
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When the outbreak of the Rage virus happened, you tried calling your loved ones. Some answered and were rushing to get on the next flight or boat ride off the island. Some never picked up. You were glad that your parents had moved to the States to be with the other family members. When you called, they said that they were fine and that only the UK seemed to be affected. For now. While your parents were safe, those words also meant that the government was going to shut down the whole country into quarantine. There would be no point in trying to get out.
Your friend, Jim, had been in a coma for days after his accident and you had been by his side almost every day if your job had allowed it. When the doctor assured you that you and his parents would be notified as soon as he woke up, you had left to focus on yourself more and catch up with your work. Jim’s parents used to call every day, asking if he woke up. They lived a little ways from the hospital, so they relied on you for updates when they couldn’t go. You always told them the same thing, just that his injuries had been healing properly and that he should be waking up any time now.
Assuming that the hospital would have some kind of quarantine protocol that could keep him safe, you decided to look for each and every friend or distant relative in the area, hoping to find someone when they stopped answering their phones. Travelling had become scarier the more the virus had spread. And if it wasn’t for the infected chasing after you, it was the living wanting to scavenge off of you. Your car was long gone within a week of the outbreak and had to search for a bicycle for the trip.
You couldn’t find anyone. They either left in a hurry or got attacked by the infected on their way out. News of the infection spreading to other countries reached the radio and news channels until they, too, were gone. With your hopes of finding any allies on your side dwindling, you went straight for Jim’s parent’s house. They weren’t answering their phone either, but you hoped that being away from London would have at least meant that the virus took longer to reach them. It was optimistic, but you were also reminded that it had been almost a month since the outbreak and everything happened so fast.
His parents had told you where the spare key was, so you had no problem getting in. Parking your bike at the front, you spotted Jim’s old bikes that his parents had kept over the years. He had been the one to teach you how to ride a bike and you weren’t too surprised when you found out he had taken a job as a bike courier. Jim always liked living simple.
The silence was ringing in your ears as you crept through the house. You were afraid to call out in case there were nearby infected, or worse. You searched each room, memories of when it was lived in coming in flashes until you reached upstairs to their room. A chill was already running up your spine as you spotted their door closed, a rotting smell leaking through the cracks of the door. Opening it slowly, your eyes swept the room until they landed on the bed. Your hand flew to your mouth as you collapsed on the floor, stifling your sobs.
You couldn’t bear to be near the room anymore and not even daring to go in, rushing down the steps. It wasn’t until you almost tripped over the last two steps did you take a deep breath and come to your senses, the whole thing feeling like a twisted nightmare until now. Everything was real, the virus, the killings, the bodies all around the country. There was no way to get out of it. Unless foreign aid came to help stop the virus, you didn’t see a way for this nightmare to end any time soon.
Seeing the sun going down outside, you reluctantly decided to stay the night at the house, gathering supplies around the place before dredging back up the stairs. You paused at the landing, willing yourself in avoiding looking anywhere near that room and made your way straight to Jim’s old room. His mother was always tidy, but after turning on the desk light, you could see the thin layer of dust that had settled within the past month.
You locked the door and dragged a chair under the door knob before flopping tiredly onto the bed. Staring up at the ceiling with Jim’s old posters lining the wall, you could still picture yourself with Jim lounging around in his room attempting homework while talking about everything and nothing. When you used to sleep over, you would share the bed with ease until you both got a little older and a little more uncomfortable with it. There was one late night, though, where he laid next to you on the bed.
He buried his face in your shoulder and whispered, “I don’t want you to go.”
It was the night before you moved away to go to college. You couldn’t say anything.
Growing up, he had been the more expressive of the two of you until he got older and was told that real men didn’t cry. There were times where he let his anger take hold of him and lash out on you and you’d fight back, but you both hated it. He’d run away with tears streaking down his cheeks while you had to break away and let the anger simmer out until the emotions finally sunk in and overwhelm you as well.
When you both calmed down, you were always able to find him. Eventually, the two of you had a talk and sorted things out. That was the closest that your friendship had been to breaking. Back then, that had been the scariest and nearly heartbreaking thing to have happened to you.
A loud bang had jerked you awake, setting your body into shock as your heart began to race. You grabbed the machete that you found among the old family camping gear and strapped your backpack on you. The noise paused, followed by some shuffling.
“Stop making all that noise!” a woman hissed. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Wait, I just need to grab something from my room before we go,” came a familiar voice.
Another man sighed. “We can just leave him.”
“You’ve got less than ten minutes, then we’re leaving. With or without you,” the woman said.
After the two pairs of footsteps disappeared down the stairs, Jim sighed and tried the door knob again. You approached the door slowly, pulling the chair away before opening the door. Even with his uneven dark hair and unkempt beard, you could recognize your best friend anywhere.
His blue eyes widened when he realized what he was seeing in front of him. He reached a hand out to touch your face, squeezing your cheeks together. You pinched him, making him bite down a yelp as he flinched away. You reached over to squeeze his cheeks, too, ending it with a slap. His smile brightened up his face as he pulled you into a tight hug.
“I thought you were dead,” he muttered into your hair. “My… my mom and dad… they-”
“I know. I saw. I’m so sorry, Jimmy.”
The footsteps returned, the woman stared at the two of you with a neutral expression. “It’s too dark to go to the shops. We’ll have to sleep here for the night.”
Jim nodded. His head had been in a daze until he found out you were still alive. It was all still much to take in, but with you around, he felt more grounded with all things considered.
“You and Mark can take my room. We can sleep downstairs,” Jim offered.
The woman glanced in the room. “We’ll sleep in the same room. It’s safer.” She walked over to you and nodded. “I’m Selena and that idiot downstairs is Mark. It’s a good thing we were there when your boyfriend was being chased down.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” you muttered, but she ignored it, turning around to get Mark.
“You and Selena can take the bed,” Jim said, going in to clear up the space.
“No need,” Selena said, climbing back up the stairs, “We’ll take the floor and you lovebirds can get the bed.”
“Don’t get too carried away, though,” Mark teased.
Jim grimaced, obviously not a fan of Mark’s type of humor. Selena scoffed, setting her things down in one corner of the room. Mark was used to Selena’s serious demeanor and simply chuckled, slapping Jim’s back before pushing past the two of you into the room. You shook your head, your hand raising up to run through his messy hair where it had grown around his stitching.
“Does it look that bad?” Jim asked in amusement.
“I guess it doesn’t matter during a zombie apocalypse if you look good or not,” you teased.
Once everyone was settled down in their own corners, you and Jim adjusted yourselves on the bed. He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and sighed, passing it over to you. In his mother’s handwriting, it said: “Jim - with endless love, we left you sleeping. Now we’re sleeping with you. Don’t wake up.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have woken up to this… this nightmare.” His eyes were shut as he rubbed his temples. “First thing I saw was being alone, naked in the hospital bed. The whole building was empty and everything was just a mess. You weren’t there and I knew that you had always been there because I could hear you.”
“You could?” you whispered back.
Jim hummed and nodded.
“Could you hear my snoring?”
That made him snort. He shook his head at your attempt of lifting the mood before shifting around to lay on his side to face you. He leaned into you, slinging an arm across your stomach, very reminiscent of your last night here in his bedroom. Even after you had reconnected after college, life never made time for the two of you to spend time together like this. Now, with a raging virus spreading around the world, it seemed that any time would be the last time. You hope that would not be the case, that the two of you would find a way to get out of this alive.
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