Who: Jack & Rose, with guest appearance of Cal the Douche and Leon at the end What: Cal doesn't take Rose's rejection very well, and resorts to violence When: This evening Where: Outside a restaurant, out in public Rating/Warnings: Language, gun violence, blood Status: Complete!
Dinner with Cal had been tense. On top of his very annoying habit of ordering Rose's meal for her whether she wanted it or not, he had obviously been annoyed with the run-in that Rose and Wendy had had with Lovejoy, and he wasn't very good at masking it. The concern and almost-warmth he had shown over the phone when she had called to set up the meeting had been replaced with an air of possessiveness and poorly disguised scorn, going on about how he only wanted what was best for her and clearly he knew that more than Rose herself did.
When Rose told him that she wasn’t planning on going home, let alone marrying him, he had somehow managed to become even more obstinate.
“Would you rather be with that begger?” Cal spat, and Rose’s worry that he had seen her with Jack was confirmed. He’d managed to make it through everything so far without so much as mentioning him, and so she had hoped that he wouldn’t.
“Jack has nothing to do with this, Cal. I wasn’t happy, and that’s why I left,” Rose said, trying to keep the anger from her voice. It would do no good to cause a scene, though Cal already seemed to be attracting attention. In expensive restaurants like this, arguments tended to stand out.
“I can give you things that he has never even dreamed of. Would you really give that all up?” Cal demanded.
Rose wasn’t going to dignify him with a response, so she made to stand up, but Cal’s hand shot across the table and grabbed her by the wrist. A little frightened, but mostly angry, Rose jerked her arm from his grasp. She wasn’t going to allow him to continue to bully her. “He can give me so much more than you ever could, Cal,” she said lowly, and then turned to walk out of the restaurant.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” Cal yelled after her, and she quickened her step when she heard him get up to follow her. Luckily, he was politely stopped by a maitre d’ to settle his bill if they were finished eating, and Rose used the distraction to quickly escape the restaurant and to look for Jack.
Jack wasn’t far. He refused to be, if she decided to sit down and talk to the fucknut alone. He’d been a bundle of nerves since she’d gone in, and he coped unhealthily - burning through his pack of vices, one by one, the smell of tobacco his own personal cologne. He thought of going inside but low and fuckin’ behold - Cal chose some fanch-shmancy overpriced place that required a dress code, and the hostess scoffed at his worn attire.
He’d behave then, for now. He didn’t think Cal would start anything in public. It wasn’t smart, ideally he’d be more refined than to lose his temper at a reputable place and glean stares, but then Rose emerged in what seemed to be in a hurry. His body straightened like an arrow and he pulled the cigarette from his mouth, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Hey,” he called, closing the distance and putting his hands on her arms. “What’s wrong?? What happened?”
“We should go,” Rose said, grabbing Jack’s hand. “He didn’t take the conversation very well. And he knows about you, Jack.” Rose wondered just how much of his ire was because of Jack, and exactly what he’d do if he saw the two of them standing out here together. She started walking quickly away from the restaurant. Maybe they’d be able to turn a corner before Cal made it out of the restaurant and lose him.
Well. Good. Jack would love to rub their relationship (??) in his face and be a bit smug about it, but the last time he realized he lost Rose to a human equivalent of a gutter rat, he had lost his marbles. He lost his marbles by openly shooting them on a sinking ship, so much that they had to actually run below deck and hide - immersing themselves in arctic waters again just to stay alive. A wave of deja vu came over him, and he was becoming to realize just how badly this could escalate.
“Yeah,” he sighed heavily, pushing stray bangs from his eyes before letting his hand splay on her lower back to hurry her out. “Car’s around the block. Valet parking here was, uh...kind of ridiculous. Let’s go.”
While Rose didn’t think that Cal was capable of anything like shooting at them, she did know that he had framed Jack in the Dreams. She was a little worried that perhaps he’d start a fight with Jack, and then blame the whole thing on him. Cal could afford the best lawyers, could even bribe some people wanted, and she worried that it would somehow become Rich, Distinguished Caledon Hockley Assaulted by Horrible Poor Person.
They had managed to get about halfway to the corner when Cal burst from the restaurant. “Rose!” he called. “Rose, get back here this minute!”
Rose half-turned, gave him a smile and a finger waggle, and then quickened her pace. Running in heels wasn’t ideal, but she could manage it if it came to that.
Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuck. This was familiar. All too familiar, actually - deja vu hit him, and all he could see was the same fucker chase them down the set of grand stairs that let them straight to the lower decks of a sinking ship, right into the arctic waters that gushed in without mercy. He’d shot at them - at that point Jack didn’t think he cared who got hit by one of his bullets - but they’d gotten away.
Didn’t say much, on a sinking ship, but like fuck he’d want to die by getting shot.
Jack scowled and was able to at least flash the goddamn middle finger before he ran with Rose, turned the sharp corner and up the road was the car. It was a piece of shit clunker, he’d gotten it off Craigslist so he wouldn’t be mooching on Wendy for rides, but it was their ticket away from this guy.
“I’m gonna guess he couldn’t take a hint?!”
“I should have known that Cal wouldn’t handle not getting what he wants very well,” Rose said. He’d probably never been told ‘no’ in his life. She should have known better than to expect him to be reasonable about the whole thing.
She made it to the door and was ready to pull the passenger side door open. Her first thought was that a car had backfired somewhere nearby, but almost immediately after she heard the ping of metal hitting Jack’s car, and when she looked she saw Cal heading towards them, brandishing a pistol. “Oh my God,” Rose exclaimed, and for a moment was rooted in place.
A ping of metal, right before the abrupt sound of a gunshot almost made his ears bled - those things were far from subtle (especially in person - movies were full of shit), and it took a moment for Jack to realize what it really was and what it came from. Was he surprised? No, not terribly, but why the hell would Cal even think it’s a good idea to shoot a gun out in the open with witnesses?
Must be nice, to feel all that secured with money.
For fuck’s sake-- “Rose,” he called out. “Rose! Get in the car!”
If she wasn’t moving, then he’d move her. Jack went around the car, shielded her body with his and opened up the vehicle on her end so he could shove her in.
Rose was brought back to reality with Jack’s voice, aware that standing there like a deer in headlights while someone was shooting at them wasn’t the greatest of ideas. It didn’t take much prodding for her to climb into the car, ducking low so that not much of her was visible through the window. It didn’t make any sense to her. Cal was a dirtbag, but she had never expected him to do anything like this.
“Hurry Jack!” she pleaded. “Get in the car!” Was a car a safe place to be in a barrage of bullets? She thought she had read somewhere that a car door wasn’t enough to stop a bullet, but it had to be safer than standing out in the open, and once Jack got the car moving they could get away.
Jack felt something burn into him, a jolt of pain that sent his senses into shock, and then suddenly everything around him felt distant. First were the rounds of bullets firing, which had apparently ceased. Second was the sound of Rose’s voice, which he found a bit odd - she was in front of him, why--?
Wet, hot crimson flourished through the hole in his shirt. Jack finally closed the door, but then he stumbled back and landed on the road and the impact of hitting cement was when everything seem to reset. He felt the hit to the ground, then the searing pain that came from a fucking bullet wound. Witnesses screamed, but Jack’s eyes didn’t leave the sight of Cal.
It was the first time he’d gotten a good look at him throughout all this, and Jack wasn’t so sure if he was awake or dreaming. He seemed like something straight out of those lucid sequences - like he transcended through the veil of worlds, like Rose’s art had.
There was a moment when Rose wasn’t sure what was happening, why Jack wasn’t immediately running around the car to get in and drive away from her clearly psychotic ex-fiancé, why he’d seemed to freeze for a moment. But then he fell back and she noticed the blood and she screamed, hands to her face and tears already pricking her eyes.
Oh god, oh god, oh fuck, were the only thoughts running through Rose’s head for a couple of seconds, but Cal still had that gun, and Jack was on the ground. He was going to get killed if she didn’t do anything, so she jumped out of the car and flung herself over him, shielding his body with her own, hands finding his face. If Cal wanted to kill Jack, he’d have to kill her too. She was sure that wasn’t much of a deterrent, but she would protect him.
“Jack! Stay with me, Jack,” Rose sobbed. There was a reprieve from the shots, possibly as Cal reloaded his gun, but she refused to take her eyes off of Jack.
When she heard another shot, she screamed again and squeezed her eyes shut, but there wasn’t any pain, and then she heard another voice.
“Get on your knees, hands on your fucking head!” She tore her eyes away from Jack. Cal was staring at his hands where his gun had just been, and a young blond plain clothes detective was pointing his gun at him, while at the same time the cop was talking into the walkie-talkie attached to his shoulder strap, calling for an ambulance. Cal held up his hands and carefully sank to his knees. “You need to stop the bleeding. Put pressure on the wound,” the cop was shouting, and it took her a moment to realize that he was talking to her.
Right. Stop the bleeding. She pulled her shawl off her shoulders and held it over Jack’s wound. “Jack, please.”
“I’m okay,” he wheezed - which didn’t make his case entirely convincing - and did his best to keep his back off the ground. The fuck just - “I’m okay.” His shoulder was on fucking fire, bullet lodged into his bone, blood in its hot stickiness coming through like a waterfall up until Rose covered it up. Jack’s face was pale, glistening with sweat, but he’d live.
Thank fuck for the cop - otherwise he was sure Cal would have wanted to appropriately finish the job now that he had a chance. His hand went to Rose, squeezing her arm painfully tight without even realizing it. “You--you’re okay, right?”
“Just stay still,” Rose said, trying to keep the quiver out of her voice and not entirely succeeding. She managed a small smile through her tears when he told her he was okay though. He looked as though he was in pain, and he was so pale, but he was speaking and awake and if he said he was okay, she had no choice but to trust in him. There was some sort of exchange between Cal and the cop (“Do you know how I am?” “Does it look like I give a fuck?”), but all her attention was on Jack now.
She couldn’t help but give a small laugh, almost a hiccup, when he asked if she was okay. “I’m fine, Jack,” she said, and while she kept a hand on the wound, she couldn’t help but take her other one to caress his cheek. “There’s help coming soon.”
There was a lot of noise, sirens and people chatter, none that he really understood. All attention was honed on Rose, the warmth of her hand, the bright orange ringlets of hair. Hell, Cal had slipped his mind - even if the fucker was still yards away cussing up a storm at the cop - and admittedly it had to do with the pain, radiating and spreading through his shoulder, parts of his chest, down his arm.
Taking a bullet. Officially crossed off his bucket list even if that achievement was never actually written there.
“Help’s good,” he choked a laugh, though he winced through it. “Help’s--help’s awesome.” Fuck, he didn’t have insurance. Maybe the number of some magical healer tucked in the depths of his phone but summoning a magician in the middle of chaos was sort of suspicious, so he’d have to succumb to modern medicine. For now. “P-Please tell me he’s gonna get his ass reamed for this, legally, I’ll take another fucking bullet if it meant that.”
“He will, Jack,” Rose said emphatically. Maybe he could buy his way out of prison, but he had just shot someone in front of witnesses. If he didn’t go away for a long time, then Rose would use every bit of the power the DeWitt Bukater name held to make sure he paid one way or another.
The paramedics came then, and as much as Rose didn’t want to leave Jack’s side, even for a moment, she stepped back and allowed them to tend to him. Stepping back she paled a little at the sight of how much blood there was. For a moment she thought she’d be sick, but the feeling passed quickly enough.
Thank fuck, because Jack sure as hell would press charges. If it meant him staying the hell away from the OC, restraining order in tact - hopefully for the both of them - the bullet wound was well worth it. He was hoisted up on a stretcher, up into the ambulance (some talk about extraction, getting him a sling), but he’d live. “I’m gonna be fine,” he assured her, voice strained, but he was grinning. “Promise.”
Now to notify Wendy and Katou, after he was cleaned up. To avoid that extra stress. It’d be fun, he was sure of it.