Who: Jack & Rose What: Jack gets trolled by the dreamfairy when the iconic nude picture arrives at an awkward timing When: Recent Where: Rose's pad Rating/Warnings: Low Status: Complete!
Cal’s existence was bothersome. Really bothersome, actually, and Jack couldn’t shake it off. Probably because he’d also dreamt of him trying to shoot them. He’d gotten Rose to the lifeboats, Cal had met up with them, and they convinced her to get on the boat. By herself. Because there was another one waiting for the both of them, he had assured, and Jack went with the lie.
Rose was halfway down. Halfway down to safety before she jumped back onto the sinking shimp. You jump, I jump, remember?
Bullets were shot. They had no choice but to run, run to the lower decks to escape him. Run into the rushing frozen waters to make sure they didn’t die by his damn gun, at least. It rattled him, coldness going straight to his bone. Every morning he could feel the ice water, like thousands of frozen needles going into him. All the blankets in the goddamn world couldn’t get rid of that feeling.
Today, he’d meet up with Rose. She’d wanted to see his art and, well, he’d happily oblige and bring both sketchbooks. His real one and his gift from the dreams to compare, though the subjects were the same and so were the styles. The old one had an antiqueness to it; in the smell of the pages, the cover of the book.
Jack finished his cigarette, smothering the last bit under shoes that needed desperate replacement and knocked on her door.
Rose had spent a lot of the day cleaning her apartment. She had discovered that she actually kind of enjoyed cleaning, and her place never became too messy, but she wanted to make sure it was extra tidy for guests. Especially when those guests were Jack, who she had a bit of a crush on. She knew his dreams were getting pretty rough at the moment, and while there was likely nothing she could do to help him, she hoped that she could at least bring him a little bit of comfort. She had just finished doing her hair when she heard a knock at the door, and she rushed over to let him in.
"Jack, hi," she said, offering him a smile. "Come in. How are you?" Her apartment wasn't that large, but the walls were adorned with paintings, and books packed the book cases. She had brought as much of her belongings as she was able when she had left home.
Seeing her in the flesh was much better than in the dreams. They weren’t fighting for survival here, no twisted gut feeling from the possibility of not surviving the entire ordeal. “Hey there, stranger. I’m good.” A little cold, maybe. But he politely wiped his shoes on the doormat outside, not wanting to track weird muddy things in.
Rose’s apartment was nice. Cozy, and the paintings of the wall brought it all together. He spun slowly to take it all in, hands pocketed into his pants. Button up shirt, jeans that looked pressed and didn’t have holes (Wendy’s doing, of course), he looked good in less ratchet attire. “Nice place,” he whistled, a brilliant grin. “It’s very you. You had awesome art in your cabin, by the way. On the boat. An original Picasso.”
“A Picasso? Really?” Rose asked. “That’s amazing. He wasn’t very well known at the time; it must have been a good find.” But then, she frowned. “Oh, but I guess if it was on the boat, it’s long gone.” The idea of being on the Titanic when it went down was still something that she was having trouble imagining. She knew that it was going to happen, but it was so surreal.
“Hey, you never know, it might show up around these parts one day,” Jack reassured, brows wiggling as his tongue touched the roof of his mouth. “I’ve gotten some old belongings. Clothes, the boat tickets,” not that he could do much with that, “and this.”
He held the old sketchbook. It looked like it could come apart at any minute, so handling it with care was kinda necessary to keep it all bound together.
Settling onto the couch, he patted the spot next to him. “Come sit, Art History major.”
Rose almost commented on the idea of an original Picasso showing up on her nightstand one day, when Jack presented his sketchbook. “Oh! Is that your sketchbook?” she asked, going to join him on the couch. She knew she should at least offer him something to drink, but for now she was far too curious about seeing some of his sketches. She was one of the things that she had been most interested in seeing. In a slightly more mischievous voice, she added, “the one with the three-legged prostitute?”
Gah, couldn’t she just happen to have casually forgotten about that in the past week or two? Jack may have squirmed in his seat at the memory but there wasn’t a hysterical redface to mock this time around. “She kept that one,” he smirked. “Curious about nude drawings, miss?”
Never fear, he had plenty. He’d show her the old sketchbook first, of course - those he thought were more interesting, they had that vintage vibe. The paper, the subjects sketched on paper from their hairstyles to clothes. Now, he didn’t just have nudity, mind you - little girls in dresses with their curls detailed with shading, the woman with a cigarette and her fuckton jewelry at a bar. “This one’s got the more interesting stuff, I think. And been transported from 1912 to here, so it’s a time traveling artbook, technically.”
Rose would probably never forget the conversation about people's various run ins with prostitutes.
"A time travelling artbook," Rose repeated. "It sounds very romantic, an artbook that won't be separated from its artist." She moved a little closer to Jack, not close enough that she was touching him, but near enough for it to make little difference. "May I?" She asked, holding out a hand for the sketchbook.
Nah, he couldn’t reject a polite request like that. Rose had yanked it from his hands in some kind of righteous fury in the dreams after he was being ‘rude’ (only because he asked the important question of ‘do you love him?’ in regards to Cal, and her reaction spoke volumes), so he was a bit curious about her input in this second round of reality.
“All yours, and try not to judge too much,” he grinned, draping an arm on over the couch some. Not so bold to do it over her shoulders. It was her apartment, he didn’t want to make it…weird.
But right when he handed it over, a page slipped out. An old picture of a woman wearing nothing but a hefty piece of jewelry, shaded in dark and shaped like a heart.
It was Rose.
Rose started to reach for the drawing that had fallen out of the sketchbook, before she had caught sight of it. There was a second of hesitation when she stopped in her tracks, before she picked it up. It was her turn to blush for once. “Is this… is that me?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the page. It was a stupid question, and she knew it, because who else could it be?
Wait, what?
Switching from the lazy lounge on the sofa, Jack sat upright and grabbed the other half of the picture, at first hastily but then loosened his grip to not tear the damn thing. That had definitely not been there before, what the fuck? When did--
“It’s from the dreams,” he explained, more bewildered about it than embarrassed. “I didn’t--it wasn’t here before. It came separate.” Otherwise he would have made a note to, uh, keep it elsewhere until she dreamed the thing being drawn, except there wasn’t a point anymore.
Now to explain exactly how that came to be…
“It’s … certainly well done,” Rose said, allowing him to take it from her. She wasn’t entirely sure how to react to seeing a drawing of her which she most certainly did not pose for, but hearing it was from the dreams made at least a little more sense. “I’m a little curious about how this came about.”
Jack had to laugh. In that ‘kind of amused but also nervous as fuck’ kind of way because, welp, that was just really embarrassing. Thanks, life, for having a naked drawing of the very woman he was seated next to just happen to ‘slip out’ of his sketchbook. The dream fairy was officially trolling him, there was no way around it. Fuck his life.
“You, uhh…” A chuckle this time, as he dragged his hand over his face and left it rest on his chin. “You asked me to draw you like one of my ‘french girls’ - your words, not mine - wearing only…” A tap to the jewel around her neck, the legendary Heart of the Ocean. “That. A gift from your fiance.”
Rose couldn't help but laugh. For one, she'd be lying if she said that she had never considered asking Jack to draw her 'like one of his French girls,' but mostly because getting Jack to draw her wearing only a gift from Cal - especially a gift that was very obviously extremely expensive - was such a clear slap in the face that she didn't know why she hadn't thought of doing something similar here. She wondered if Cal ever saw the drawing. It really would be a shame if he didn't. "What a gaudy looking necklace," she said. "Leave it to Cal to pick out something just because of the price."
Okay, awesome - this wasn’t as awkward as he thought it’d be, his heart could stop beating a hundred beats every second, thanks. “Well, this was your way of saying ‘fuck you,’ if I’m going to be honest,” Jack said, eyes on the portrait as he examined it all - the lines, the shading, it might just yet be his best work. And the subject was lovely, but he’d been a professional throughout it and would remain such as that.
“We--I actually drew this, the night we hit the iceberg. You put it away in this locker in your fancy as shit room. And I guess...it went down with it.” That realization hit with gloom and a fuckton of bricks. This was doomed to sink with the ship; it’d be buried deep down, hitting the bottom.
Rose frowned, and then reached to take Jack's hand, hoping to offer a little comfort at least. She had only just boarded the ship in her dreams, and it still didn't seem exactly real that it went down. All those people who died was heartbreaking, really, but there was something sad, in a completely different way, about the items that would be lost forever as well. All of Jack's art, all of the original paintings she had brought with her... It couldn't be easy for Jack to be living that in his dreams right now, though she was sure that in the dreams at least, the idea of his art being lost was the furthest thing from his mind.
The little things were always shoved in the back burner when a catastrophe hit, didn’t it? They’d been too busy trying to get off the boat alive, they didn’t have time for what could be considered trivial bullshit. But now that he was looking at things in a more outside perspective - had the chance to think, to even analyze all the small things that were lost in this too…
“Sorry,” he apologized, forcing a crooked smile as he squeezed her hand. She felt soft, warm, unlike the harsh frigidness that the dreams made him feel. “Didn’t mean to be a Debbie Downer. Kinda caught me off guard - I really didn’t know this was in here.”
“You have no need to apologize, Jack,” Rose said, offering him a soft smile. With the ship going down, and Jack going with it, it was only to be expected that he’d occasionally feel down about it. She expected when she went through the same, he’d be there to comfort her as well. She smiled a little wider. “You mean to tell me you didn’t just slip this in to startle me?” she teased, though it was obvious she was only kidding.
“Would be a hell of a prank,” he concurred, his own expression of a grin becoming more genuine. “But I’d like to think I’ve got a little more courtesy in me than to surprise you with a nude picture of yourself.” Ah, alright, he could laugh a little more about it now too - Rose had taken it like a trooper, Jack hadn’t been slapped in huffy vengeance. All was well. “And now you see exactly what you have to look forward to, yeah?”
There’d been a couple more details. Particularly the certain nature of their relationship and what it developed to, even behind Cal’s back (though he didn’t feel bad about that, the fucker framed him and then shot at them and wouldn’t leave her the hell alone). Maybe she figured it out already, maybe she was still in the dark. But theirs was the sort of thing to see for herself.
“If I thought you were so discourteous, I’m sure that we wouldn’t be friends,” Rose said. If she had thought it had been intentional, she would have been incredibly creeped out, but as it was, she found it more than a little amusing. It really did seem like the Dreams had a sense of humour, even if the two of them were stuck on a boat that was fated to end up in the bottom of the ocean. “If needing the dream of Cal and Mother ends up with me having such a professional looking portrait made, I will certainly look forward to it.” It didn’t hurt that the artist was so handsome.
Now she reach to take the sketchbook from Jack. “Though now I absolutely must see the rest of your work, Mr. Dawson. I hope they’re all drawn as skillfully as I was.”