Out of the Woods

A Titanic Fanfiction One-shot

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and a story beautifully originated/crafted by James Cameron and I obviously don't own them in any way; it exists purely for entertainment purposes!

AN: Hey, just dropping in at the beginning here to mention that while this story is *mostly* about character development for J and R as they process their grief and interact in the aftermath of the sinking, there is a scene at the end that is a bit mature and does have sexual themes. So if that's not your sort of thing, maybe skip this one. Cheers!

April 25, 1912

Brooklyn, New York

"Jack."

Breathless, she sounded breathless, of this she was certain. The signs were there and he'd notice, she thought, the way she'd signal disappearing into herself as if in some sort of meditative trance; dark blue lines would appear under her eyes in semi-circles, and he knew. He knew she was back in the water. He went back there quite a bit as well, it just looked like less on him, on his face. When he buried his parents at fifteen, it steeled him better, hadn't it.

He'd walked in carrying a brown paper sack that appeared to be from the grocer's just down the block, right arm cradling it like a baby; it was cold for late April and he shrugged out of his coat (a new, stiff thing, foreign on top of the comfortable way he moved his body) before he put the bag down on the small table by the door. She hated radiating this, advertising what was wrong with her. That her main emotion this day was sadness. Again, as most days, overcome by it in a way that she felt all the trauma might stay with her for evermore. She'd spent half an hour trying to take the look away, splashing cold water on her eyes, brushing her hair so much that some of the curls laid flat.

His eyes, so patient and warm, they never left hers as he settled in from the day.

The sun set outside. Pink, then three shades of purple. A thin line of clementine. They were lucky to have a broad window with an uninterrupted view to the bay. She walked toward him. When she thought about all that had transpired in such a short time her heart dissolved into a million little paper butterflies, dancing, jabbing at all the edges of her ribcage. Flutters on the bone.

Ten nights since they'd miraculously thawed, feeling thankful but feeble. Seven nights since the Carpathia slipped into New York Harbor. Rain fell on them in merciless pellets as they followed Molly Brown on a private gangway, all their heads down, to a black motorcar, where she deposited them before heading back on to the ship to assist dozens of others (albeit probably under less clandestine circumstances than theirs). They'd exited right after a hysterical Dorothy Gibson and fifty flashes of camera bulbs. Black car, black rain, black coats. A sea of black coats. Four nights since they stood in a tiny hallway at the courthouse and held hands so tightly as they repeated simple vows after the Justice that Rose's index finger actually appeared purple when she looked down at it afterwards. Three nights since this tiny apartment became, miraculously, something that could be called theirs, such a strange word off the tongue. They, Rose contemplated, this unit; that she was joined to this beautiful man was exhilarating and inherently nerve wracking. Forever, they'd promised. Smiles of humility, the whispers of "I do." Could forever really even exist anymore, after what had happened, after what the world had proven itself to be? Two nights since they had finally laughed again, finally felt like they had God's permission to do so, when Jack stubbed his toe getting into the narrow bed beside her and yelled "shit!" so loudly that the next-door neighbor banged on the wall with her cane. And just one night since he first tried to touch her again, a touch that wasn't in comfort, wasn't a holding of her to try and take away some of the memories, but instead something of this passion that had started everything. The fire that had ignited between them and changed the entire course of her young life. Grazing her sides, the outer parts of her thighs. His lips nipping at her neck. A yearning.

But all of these nights interrupted at precisely three o'clock in the morning with the shrillest, and the most disconcerting, nightmare of drowning one person could ever possibly imagine. The thrashing, the bodies, the debris, her lungs filling with water and in this horrific version of events Jack couldn't get to her. Or sometimes it was that he couldn't fit on the door and he froze to death right beside her, clinging to it, suspended in nothingness.

"I have a surprise. I'm sorry I'm late, I got lost, to be honest," that boyish grin, sometimes it was alarming in its earnestness and she smiled, the best she could, feeling suddenly suffocated by the poplin dress she wore, which had been graciously gifted to her by the relief agency but pulled too much at her chest, up through her shoulders into a too high a neckline.

"I was just about to…" A blush. Which made no sense, she knew, not after everything, but she couldn't control the instinct. Until ten days ago she'd never lived alongside a man in any intimate capacity. Her boarding schools, full of silly girls, run by women. The engagement to Cal had been careful theatrics on its best days, nothing but anger on its worst; at night, in her bed, she'd been alone. In her most private daily moments, alone. But Jack was real, he was warm, he was whole. The intensity of the way they'd adapted to life together, it was astonishing. Skin seemingly always near skin. The way he prepared her food, or poured a cup of tea. The way he put his mouth near her ear to speak sometimes. Towels on a rack, lax next to one another. Every little thing. "I was about to take this off and just put my nightgown on, this isn't comfortable."

He smiled and came to her. His hair was shorter. He'd been to the barber two days ago. It would be easier to find a good job, he said, and she already felt, in that moment, that perhaps their partnership was asking too much of him, demanding he reign in some of the wildness that he cherished. "Well, we'll go shopping tomorrow and buy you something else, whatever you want." She nodded. He fixed problems easily, with confidence, he didn't languish in anything.

"I can't get the…" She motioned with one weak wave to the back of her dress, gulping down the air already stale in her throat because she could barely remember to breathe, if she was being perfectly honest. "The top clasp, it seems to be stuck." She'd known when she put the damn thing on this morning, for it bent in her fingers and she knew instinctively they would arrive at this very moment tonight. Before another glance she turned, reached to raise her hair in one shaking motion, grabbing it by it's broken ends, broken by the ice, and brought the longest strands to rest at the crown of her head.

The red of those torn strands had become Jack's favorite color in the whole world, the autumnal hue of it and the way it shone almost metallic in certain light. He reached to help her hold it up and his palm grazed the part of her neck just where the hairline ended in tiny tendrils. He noticed goosebumps pop up in a line where his hand had been, in fact, and he bent just slightly to plant one warm kiss there before he began the process of prying open the clasp. The cream of her skin. His wife. She was a million things he never knew he would associate with the word. That he'd ever utter the word, for himself, before her it wasn't even anywhere in the cards, was it.

His fingers hovered. He found it so hard to control himself, even as they stalled in the pain of what they'd witnessed. Damn it, he was just another fucking red-blooded man, wasn't he, he thought, his hands shaking as he freed her from the confines of the fabric. The dress slipped and he aided it further down her shoulders. The way she trusted him with her body, it was a solemn, holy thing the way he saw it. He'd been with women before Rose but never, ever had he felt connected to another body the way he did to hers, some ethereal pull and she seemed to melt and meld directly on to him. On Carpathia they'd barely unhooked from one another, composing a makeshift bed like one would a symphony, a pile of blankets in a corner of the library; they fell asleep each night huddled for warmth staring up at all the books. So many books and no will to read a single one. They'd make it to New York, all these books, he recalled thinking, but the hundreds and hundreds of people who sunk to the bottom of that frigid ocean? Nevermore. Then he'd kiss her temple and try to measure her fever just by touch, even though he was burning up as well and would have no real gauge. He hated fever. It took his mother, it took his father.

They'd both run fevers, in fact, the entire rest of the voyage, sucking down soup when it was brought around but other than that the only energy in their bodies reserved for communicating in delicate whispers and rubbing limbs for warmth. When Molly found them she must have assumed she was seeing ghosts.

Had two people ever become one so completely in such a short amount of time? Molly had even asked it, observing them, something like hope in her eyes. He couldn't imagine so. Two into one, first in passion, then in this indescribable pain.

"There you go." His voice caught in this throat.

She turned to him and the haunted look was still there, at least the shadow of it. She'd told him so much. The night he asked her to marry him she'd told him every darkest secret there could be. Everything with Cal, every moment that had led to accepting that ring from him. Everything that had transpired after she took the ring from him. The times he'd tried to bring her to his bed, how she'd almost relented. Her fears. All her insecurities. Her daydreams as a child. Her compulsions, her obsessions, and he did the same, he shared all the same. They had their own language already. But something about this place in her mind she escaped to in silence, it had the potential to interrupt them, he knew. If she slipped too much inside herself, he feared, he might not get her back.

"What's the surprise, then, Jack? I'm better now, I feel freed, tell me." She managed a smile and his heart skipped a beat as she dropped the dress to the floor in one motion. Underneath she wore just a thin chemise over her bloomers, transparent almost, and he watched in reverence as she briefly left his gaze to duck into the tiny bedroom for her nightgown, which she slipped over her head so gracefully she looked like some sort of fairy; it was the plainest of cotton, taupe, wide on her frame but when it touched her skin? Her skin. She looked like Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott, white cloth, that red hair, gorgeous and minorly pained, almost sepia-toned as he watched her circle back to him into the small kitchen. He opened the bag he'd brought home and pulled out first several ripe apples, which she smiled at, and then the bottle of Chardonnay, which was chilled and had begun to sweat, begging to be opened. Her eyes raised in an absolute microcosm of mischief and he knew instinctively that the Rose he'd raced through the boiler rooms with, who he'd grabbed and kissed that night with all of his might even though, God, he had no real right to, she was still in there. The Rose who'd drained pint glasses of stout below decks, she was in there. For ten days all he could think was that she'd saved herself from the suffocating neck-grip of her former life, for something like five glorious hours, only to be placed in a new kind of prison of this grief. It was inescapable, if you had a conscience. When he thought about Fabri, about Tommy, about tiny Cora, the bile welled up in his throat and often it was so retched that he had to go into the washroom and run cool water into his mouth.

"I thought it was pretty damn tragic that we somehow managed to get married without a sip of anything, huh?" She nodded, smiled bigger, her teeth showing. "Shall we?" Another nod. Her cheeks were the color of pale strawberries, she looked disheveled but beautifully so. He reached into the narrow cabinet above the sink for two small green glasses.

His limbs were leaner, even, than before. They'd both lost weight. An appetite for food, appetite for drink, it had all wilted away but in the last couple of days Jack seemed to have energy again; he gently coaxed her, bit by bit, in the same direction. This morning she'd pretended to be asleep just to watch him rise, watch his bare torso stretch in tandem with his shoulders, watch him sip water from the glass beside the bed, watch the muscles of this man who was her husband. Thought about the parts of him below their blanket's edges. Goosebumps, everywhere. This morning she'd seen it in him, the animation, his vitality returning and if she didn't know better she might think they were back on the ship and he was leaning over a rail instead of the side of a bed. The portrait of him, the moments she fell in love.

"We haven't really done anything the traditional way, have we?" Her voice was just an octave above a whisper. Back in the moment she sat on the sole stool at the counter. It was rickety, creaked beneath her, and its groans just illustrated how silent the room was. He lit up at her words, however, and agreed wholeheartedly with her declaration as he expertly popped out the cork, taking his time to pour the two glasses. The gold liquid, it represented so many things, didn't it, she thought; this would be their first toast since he'd spirited an entire table full of strangers to raise their glasses. She wondered if any of those people (for most of that group had survived the sinking, after all) would have absorbed his words, absorbed him at all; would they carry the sentiment into any corner of their lives? Jack had that ability, she believed. He moved people. "How did you know I liked Chardonnay?" She touched his hand before she took the glass from him, electric at the contact.

"I absolutely didn't," and that honeyed laugh, "I just picked this one because the script on the bottle was something I thought you might like." He turned the bottle and showed her. "It's elegant, like you, Rose." One beat. "My Rose." She gulped, gulped past a huge and wonderful lump in her throat. Rose wanted to feel like this around him every day of the rest of her life, with this hope, with this way his very presence made her excited, made her want to touch him and kiss his mouth, feel his mouth warm on her. If she could break through the fog around her head, she knew, they could have it all.

"To us."

She tapped her glass against his. "To us."

The wine burned beautifully, burned a line down her throat. The last time she'd had it she lived in another world. She was in every sense a completely different person than the girl who had boarded for Europe in the autumn, the girl with the four trunks full of everything and nothing. The anger and resentment toward her mother and Cal had hardened her, yes, but now she realized that it had all also matured her in a way that she wouldn't wish upon anyone but, lived out, it splayed her open, made her see what was important. It had been a perfect storm, all of it, really; Jack's optimism and his unbridled belief in her, born after just a few days, rushed the process of her self-actualization along into something sacred. In the timeline of her life there was before Jack and there was, undeniably, after Jack. So many tiny moments, like a line of candles that take you somewhere and light you up, inch by inch, along the way. The honest questions. The way he held her hand. His lips that first time, how they tasted faintly of tobacco and completely of the earth. How he felt inside her, how she'd shed tears from it. The way he looked at the iceberg, like he knew, like he knew all of what was to come. The way he guarded her body on that ship, the way he protected it until all that was left was the two of them, that blessed door, and the water that might take them or might not.

"It feels heady." She paused. "I'm sorry we haven't celebrated right yet, Jack." There it was, what she'd been wanting to say to him for days now. Since everything in her heart wedded to him yet she feared he didn't even know to what extent. Another sip, crisp, she could taste the oak. She looked at the ring on her finger from the corner of her eye. A simple gold band that contained, in her mind, every color of the universe. He'd gotten down on a knee, in the dark room of their hotel the night he proposed. She'd never forget how that moment felt. They were so young; they were grabbing the world by its waist, weren't they, spinning it at its very core.

Their eyes met. The blue of his, like the sky on a clear day, reflected the light of the oil lamp in the corner and she was sure there was a rogue tear in the left one. "I want you to know….I...it was the most important day of my life, marrying you." In her former life she would have looked down at emotion. But now. Now with him she looked into it. "I wish we could have had a proper celebration. I'm sorry I've been in a daze." She fingered the glass. "I can't..." He waited. "I'm trying to see through it, to focus on us."

"I know." He nodded and she saw his chest moving faster under his gray shirt, the top button undone because he never, ever can stand it any other way. "Rose, I know, and it's okay." He hurried down another sip, and Rose watched the column of his throat as he swallowed. Everything about him was long lines and litheness. "It's hard for me too, to reconcile what happened with what we have."

A cathartic sigh. He understood almost it all, of course, everything that had been coursing through her psyche over the past few days. Maybe not one thing, though, just because she hadn't been completely honest in it. She thought about the night before, thought about her hand stopping his as it inched up her bare thigh, as the rhythm of his kiss seemed to time up with how he caressed her, rubbing circles up her body; they were so warm in their bed, folded into the wool blanket, but she'd begun to shake, a gorgeous quaking between her legs but she was unable to concentrate. A pain in her temples. She'd whispered to him that she wasn't ready and it was, in some ways, a complete lie. She'd never wanted anyone, any single thing, more.

Her face was now not just its unblemished ivory but near-translucent with the lack of sun. Tonight felt different. A corner turned, Jack thought. They moved side by side in the kitchen, sipping, elbows touching, and he asked her to tell him more stories of her childhood, her father, whose name was Edward, as they prepared a simple meal of fruit and cheese and some cured meats they'd found at the market just the day before. Short bursts out into the world, that's what they'd had. Brief moments of the fresh air. He popped a cubed piece of apple into her mouth and she laughed; it seemed an avid thing, a melody, made him think of the first sunset he watched with her, twelve days ago but also somehow twelve-thousand years ago.

"It felt like summer today for about five minutes," he bit his lip, looked at her in anticipation, "I think it's on its way." She seemed to process the notion and he wondered if he was being banal, really, talking about something like the weather, but he was trying to convey to her the promise of better days, wasn't he. The two of them in the sun, laid out somewhere, comfortable somewhere. Green and sun. Could the sun, perhaps, just bake away all the bad?

"You could start to draw again, down in the park," she whispered it, but happily, sincerely, "like you spoke about. I want to see that, I want to see you draw again. Even when we get other jobs, you have to draw. You can't stop." And Jack sighed, outside, inside, his whole body felt as if one big sigh.

"And once we can, we're going to go somewhere warmer anyway, right, somewhere that's warmer all the time? Can you imagine? Just heat, not cold." He sighed, felt himself grinning. They'd talked about it. California. Or maybe Texas, he had a cousin there. Somewhere wide open. She nodded. "We'll make it happen, Rose trust me." Her sadness made him even more adamant about proving the life he could help make for her, what he could offer, that he could make her happy. He'd never doubted that on the ship, but he'd also never counted on their life together beginning on the back of all this.

"I trust you, Jack. I'm just scared we'll get stuck here longer than we want to be," she gulped down a drink of water but kept her eyes on him over the rim of the glass, "I don't want that for you, or for us. But it doesn't matter, does it, as long as we're together, right."

"We just have to get on our feet, save up, I've done it before Rose, and together it will be even faster," he sat up taller, working to convey every bit of hope by way of his posture. "I promise." The smile, then, on Rose's face, was perhaps different than any other he'd seen on her, like a light down a tunnel and the tunnel isn't as long as you feared it might be. Jack let out a yawn, reached to caress her left cheek and she moved her lips to kiss the inside of his right palm. They sat huddled at the round table, which was a surprisingly sturdy walnut piece; it made the otherwise unadorned and cramped space feel substantial, feel grounded, like a real home. It reminded Jack of the table his grandfather had built for the kitchen at the homestead back in Wisconsin.

"How in the world, Rose?" He watched in solemnity as she held onto his hand, held it near her face, went in again and again with soft kisses. She looked confused and he laughed, felt the Chardonnay seeping warm in his belly. "How in the world does someone like you want someone like me?" He felt bold, pressed his mouth deep, deep into her hand before surfacing again. "How are you my wife, how?" Rose's lips, devastatingly full, parted and he felt the desire well up in his body like the charge of a thousand soldiers up some daunting hill; he wasn't sure how long he'd be able to hold it in, this wanting of her, without going just a tad crazy.

The last couple of days all he'd been able to think about was the way she'd held him to her in the Renault, held his whole body on top of hers, the confidence she'd possessed in their love-making. He'd felt as though a window had opened the night before, the way they'd just sighed into one another, the way her mouth felt permissive and soft and he wanted to convey to her every bit of happiness in his bones, at their marriage, at her courage. But she'd stopped him, she said she felt too raw still, unready, and so he knew he'd need to wait for a sign from her. They slept huddled each night, heartbeat near heartbeat, so it wasn't a lack of intimacy, but it was something else entirely caught for her, a hitch. He watched as she shook her head now, some humor, some seriousness. So he kept talking, realizing he might sound like a lovesick kid, babbling. But she wouldn't care. "I don't understand and I never will."

"Don't be daft," she laughed and brought her hands to frame his cheeks. Every fiber of his body at attention. "You know you're my everything, Jack. It's me, I'm amazed, to have you." She was smiling but this was something deeper. This was a movement onward. "We're fate incarnate I think."

Fate incarnate. He wanted to respond, although with what he wasn't sure, to an eloquent profession such as this, but she moved her fingers to his lips and pushed them in, silencing him almost forcefully. She wasn't done speaking. Not by a long shot.

"Jack, I'm sorry if I haven't been clear about something, or if my actions have been confusing. You have to know that I want you." Jade eyes, so wide. "When you made love to me, in the Renault, that's it, that's the feeling I want for the rest of our lives." This woman. After everything, after even every quick and astounding discovery about her, she never ceased to surprise him with her beautiful, brazen sensibilities.

Those words from her.

Jack couldn't resist any longer, couldn't hold back, dropped his mouth directly on hers, a fierce pull, his hot tongue imploring entry, and she obliged with one gentle shiver. This kiss was different from anything since the sinking. He thought back to when they stood in the steam in the deepest part of that ship, when the hesitant kisses turned to something rasping and ardent, when they both realized in the same instant that they'd never be able to get enough of one another. This one, this was the first to resurrect that feeling. She threaded her fingers through his hair, pausing at the newly-shorn ends, and he leaned into her, thankful, deferential as she took his bottom lip in between both of hers, a habit she had. She tended to waver there sometimes, taking him in, sucking gently, and it ruined him every time. Complete ruination. A goddess holding steady at the front of her temple, he'd stand in reverence for every moment to the end of time. Her mouth opened wider again, he sunk in; this was heaven, wasn't it, the way she tasted this very moment of the wine and citrus and, always, that Rose essence, which was like honey and salt air even though they were no longer on the ocean.

"Air in my lungs and a few sheets of paper," words spoken almost inside her mouth, barely out before her tongue darted against his again, a few seconds' pause, then, "and you." She stopped at his words, lips hovering against lips, and reached with one hand to squeeze his right arm.

"Let's go lay down," she whispered, bringing her eyes up to his. He nodded, not allowing himself to solidify any expectations but at the same time relishing abstractly every single one his imagination could conjure. It took about twenty seconds for them to kiss frantically again, break that kiss, turn off a lamp, hurry into the bedroom, but in those twenty seconds he saw it all. Her beneath him, her on top of him. Her hair like fire cascading over both of them.

The bed groaned as they collapsed into it, its utterances joined by the sound of their deep breaths as they settled facing one another, mirror images of a splendid disquiet. Perhaps it was the liberation in a bottle of wine. Perhaps it was just being done with the immediacy of the fatigue, of the sadness, because it bore so much weight and there were only so many places it could all go. It had to diffuse eventually. Perhaps it was the thousand ways they'd had to adapt at the turn of a dime, at the paper thin edge of something. A shift was afoot.

"Jack, can I ask you something and you won't laugh at me, or get cross….I...I need to ask it, I've needed to ask it and I haven't been able to." She sucked in air when she should have been exhaling; she remembered being a tiny girl and holding in her breath when she was scared to ask her parents something, when she feared she'd misjudged the world around her in some way; her whole life, it seemed, she'd been discouraged from exploring feelings, stretching possibilities, conflict in any form. The necessity of some conflict, she understood that now. He nodded, eyes wide; and she had scared him a little. "Don't worry, it's not…" She closed her eyes briefly. When she looked at him again she knew there'd never be another moment for this. Ask now or ask never. She darted in to plant one kiss on his chin, desperate to convey to him that any question was asked out of love. Everything out of love. "Would you have, would you have wanted to get married so quickly if we hadn't, you know..." her increasingly reddened face buried into his neck, "if we hadn't already been together. If we hadn't already made love." Her breath on the skin of his neck, she stayed there and listened as her question evaporated into the air, into that skin. She'd never even uttered the phrase before. As of twelve days ago she'd never conceptualized it outside of the veiled references in her books, in the hazed daydreams of her sheltered mind, in how she'd transposed the abstractness of its imagery into the most exhilarating of private thoughts. A trembling, an ache. And then Jack, when she'd immediately understood what it meant to want someone. The realization that everything she'd conjured before was miserably muted. And now it was as if she just needed that final approval, from him, from the universe, from herself, that it was okay to want someone this way, this much. On the ship, all of it out of adrenaline, but now, living in it. Her whole body buzzed.

She was startled to feel him move so much, for he pulled her up, forced her face up and across from his; both hands, his strong hands, not her face but her head, her skull, gentle but full of power as he spoke. The row of bottom teeth, his teeth that were slightly misaligned, she loved that about him, and when he spoke passionately they became prominent.

"Rose." The sheets were cold beneath her, but his body, warm. He smelled like ivory soap married to the faint hint of a cigarette. Such a tantalizing combination of sensations and he was blurry before her. Maybe it was the wine, maybe she had just needed some line of defense knocked down. "Rose, I would have married you that night on the staircase, I would have married you at that clock," he leaned in frantically and kissed the bridge of her nose, "I would have married you any moment, any damn moment I've known you, whether we got into that car or not. When you told me you were getting off the ship with me...it was already kind of understood, you know, at least for me." He seemed flustered. "Rose, shit, please tell me this isn't something you've been worried about."

But her face gave her away. She wore everything not on her sleeve but on her eyelids, always frontward-facing; she was, for Jack Dawson, a book open and read and re-read a dozen times. In a dozen or so days, dog-eared. It had been gnawing at her, this notion she'd been indoctrinated with, that once she was with a man she was tainted, that she'd need to be sorted away, tamed down. That it was an end. To experience pleasure was for the man a fluid and entertaining beginning, for the woman an ending of sorts. Deep down she knew it wouldn't be with Jack. Deep down she knew the absurdity of such a line of thinking, how backwards, how shrouded in self-imposed misery it was for so many women she'd known. But insecurity is an ugly creature, and it creeps.

"Rose, no." He hadn't known, not this, she realized. He'd known her sadness, he dipped into the well with her. He'd anticipated her gradual recovery alongside his own. But he'd not seen this coming. Heart beating fast, she felt empted of words. She may have nodded, she may not have. "I want you...basically every minute of the damn day." She laughed at that, releasing a fair amount of tension. "But it has to be both of us, it has to be what you want."

"I just needed to make sure, I suppose it felt like a barrier in my head," and she leaned her forehead against his nose. "The way we met, the way things happened, I never had imagined anything like it…how much I want you." Dryness in her throat, on her teeth like a coating; her cheeks felt as if they might collapse in on themselves. "I think I've been worried I was too shameless, but then when I think about us, actually think about us, I know I'm just being absurd and self-conscious, which isn't like me...I don't want to be that way, Jack." He nodded. Golden smile, golden skin. She was a fool for him. Every square inch of his body she wanted, wanted to smother and kiss and press into; these feelings railed against the tautness, the confines of what she'd learned her entire life.

"Ya think?" He laughed and bit his lip, pushed the left side of his head into his pillow. He had his pillow, she had hers. A bed full of pillows that belonged to only them. Rituals, motions, the shuffling in this bed, the scent of him, learning the beginnings of what would hopefully be a lifetime together. "I'd say so. Rose, when you grabbed my hand, when you held my hand with all that confidence, when we went in to face Cal, that's you."

Rose went for his lips, but he stopped her, sighing.

"And you?" Eyes searching. It dawned on her directly that her words might have ignited some amount of insecurity in Jack, who she hadn't glimpsed an ounce of it in up to this point; she thought back, indeed, to how he walked with her to the suite, to her mother and Cal, after he'd essentially cuckolded another man. Not essentially. He had! Their boldness, their brashness before the iceberg, certainly it was what the great poets wrote about; was a great and passionate life not at least in part about breaking the rules? "I mean, it didn't...it didn't make your answer different?"

"No." The same tone, she recognized it in herself, as the no she gave him when he'd asked if she was nervous ten nights earlier. Miraculously she hadn't been then. Good God, she was now. Aware of every inch of his body near her own. Aware of every fiber of cloth and calculating how and when it might come off. His fingers at the edge of the low collar of her thin gown, dancing, slipping just underneath. He kissed her then, needing nothing, of course, but the one word from her. The room was unlit by lamp or electric light but the building next to theirs was bright, even in the evenings, and so they were illuminated across the bed despite the muslin curtains pulled tight. His hands, they cupped under her sides, and her head crushed down deep into the mattress, missing a pillow altogether. The weight of him. As she searched for new ways to move her tongue against his, as she grabbed and held his head, bold suddenly and applying pressure, she could see from the corner of an eye how his leg looked hitched over hers (almost as if she was, for a split second, some kind of voyeur). Adrenaline straight to the bottom of her belly like a shot into a barrel.

"Journey ends in lovers' meeting," Shakespeare wrote; she'd been visualizing a lot of verses in her head lately, the ones long-ingrained, reworking what they meant to her, and now she was convinced he was wrong. For her and Jack the journey to find one another was substantial, to be sure, but she knew instinctively that the true adventure was a thing yet to come. It would be a massive, multi-faceted thing to come. And ultimately she knew it would be about so much more than whether they came together on this particular night; but in doing so they initiated a thousand other parts of who they'd be, re-set the tone now, found joy...butterfly wings into ocean waves miles and miles away. She moaned into his mouth and he grunted, pulling her closer at the same instant his mouth left hers and made a trail to her right ear. "Rose, I have another question for you." That feeling in her belly, it moved down, like a blaze, into a throbbing between her legs that made the bottom half of her body thrust upward, almost uncontrollably. When she did she felt him for the first time, against her inner left thigh, and pulsed up against him once. Jack, man, husband. She felt like a cavewoman.

Waited for it.

"Rose, can I taste you?"

The description of a heart pounding, in all those poems, in all the damned novels or the plays, all seemed pointless now, for none of it had prepared her for this stripped-down moment in which she was so simultaneously aroused and confused; a very pregnant pause and she tilted her mouth to find his again, turned a kiss into a question and he spoke against her lips, "Not here, not…." He sighed and she felt him smile. One of his hands jutted up inside her nightgown hurriedly, coming to rest on everything of her aching like only those of a lover could, those of a husband, and she gasped as he pulled down an edge of her bloomers and touched her like he had only once before. "Here, can I taste you here?"

Never this type of shaking, never aware that this type of shaking existed. Unprepared beyond measure, feeling inexperienced, feeling less of the world than he, she tried to imagine it and couldn't. But she trusted him. And she wanted everything from him, every part of him, and so she nodded, bucking up against his hand out of nothing but instinct, gave into nothing but instinct, uttered a "yes" against his cheek even though part of her was so frightened she thought she might faint. Or die. She might die tragically in this bed from shock; the thought made her giggle, truly, which inspired Jack even more as he unbuttoned his shirt, slid it off and he moved down to the bottom of the bed. Never taking his eyes from her. He began to raise her nightgown and she decided to jump right into any awkwardness, any unease, by reaching to bring it over her head as he pulled her bloomers off below, making sure her chemise came with it so that when the cloth cleared her face, she was nothing but there for him, her breasts moving quickly, up, down, in tandem with her heartbeat. She felt air running through her thighs. How could thighs feel this much? Hers could feel him, could feel everything, prickling.

Seconds, minutes, who knows. She closed her eyes at the instant, felt that he wanted her to look at him but she couldn't quite yet. When his mouth made contact her first thought was of how warm he was, how all of his warmth could be summed up in how his tongue felt, a centrifugal point. How cold her skin could be, how cold the world could be, but he warmed her, always. When she was able to look at him she was astounded by how visceral it felt, his face on her, his mouth on her, and she understood, almost urgently, how rare it must be, to descend into someone like he did her. Like she did him. She heard sounds faintly from the street below and blushed at the thought of this in the vicinity of absolutely anyone. She wished they had their own private bubble, God, their own world.

"Jack, it's..I can't..." she felt raspy, felt disconnected from her own voice, certainly couldn't complete a whole sentence. "You're amazing." He was.

He paused in his movements, gripped her hips; there he was, hanging over the side of a bed, his face almost fused with the most intimate part of her, and she felt as if no painting, no work of art she'd ever seen, could compare to the composition of him, of his body like this, how he pleased her. When he spoke against her, his breath against her wetness, it was almost too much, almost a burning. She saw suddenly their first meeting rush through her head, the way he spoke his own name, the first time she took in the outline of his face. "Rose, my God," he sighed and she felt every bit of its wake, "I want every part of you, I want to do everything in the world with you. I want you to feel everything." Her former self, now shuttered like a summer house in the dead of the winter, except this time no one was going back; she wasn't going back, she was instead going to run head first into this. For it was a collaboration, wasn't it, both of them desperate for the other to be and to feel, which they both knew, from experience, was not necessarily a given in a coming together.

That they could find this kind of pleasure in joining, it was an epiphany for her not just in how it felt, not just in this building and building to the heights of what her body could hold, or do, but also in her understanding of how one heals. Her home was not a place; it was him. She tried then to tell him so, words broken, almost indiscernible, but he seemed to understand, his hands squeezing her thighs, his thumbs in gentle circles.

She tasted like sweet, and like salt, like anything and everything that's innate and organic. To tell the truth it had been a good portion of what occupied his mind ever since she'd stretched across that couch in her suite on the ship...how she'd taste, how he'd devour her if he could. His face felt so warm and he couldn't stop. He felt drunk on it, drugged on her; she was Rose, and she acclimated quickly, unshockingly, her movements seamless with his. Her hands digging into his hair, against his head, pulling him further into her. Her legs bucked, shaking, and he knew she was close to the edge, lost in it, and he watched her, hoping one day he'd be able to put into words what she looked like to him (this raw, this full of bliss). Perhaps he could draw it.

When, shortly thereafter, she pushed his pants down his thighs with nothing short of exuberance, pounced up and brought her mouth hungrily to his to taste herself, he let out a sound so guttural it felt like a growl. He didn't recognize himself anymore. Or, instead, perhaps he began to recognize some of his old self, some of that good kind of reckless he always chased. With her it would be different, but that was okay. It was more than okay, it was beautiful. When she pulled him down and smiled up at him with a joy he hadn't seen since the precious seconds before the iceberg, he whispered frantically, again, that he couldn't believe she'd chosen him. He had been an artist without a muse. But no more. And when she brought him inside her, it was af if they walked through yet another new door together; he whispered frantically to her, simply, "I love you," and felt in his bones that, even if the whole road ahead was unknowable, what he did know for certain was that they were for now decidedly out of the woods.

Finis

Author's Note: Hey there! Hope everyone has had a safe and joyful holiday season. I had some time to relax and sink into some Jack and Rose feeling(s) and this is what popped out from that. After working on a chaptered story for months, it's shamelessly fun to just drop in to see them in a new light. Hope you enjoyed! Thanks again SO MUCH for all the kind reviews/support of Bird on a Beam. It meant the world.

BTW, if you're a Taylor Swift fan, you might have noticed a couple of subtle homages to songs. Can't stop listening to her new album. Highly recommend, it's ethereal.

Cheers to lots of hope for 2021-

xxRGD